Reconstruction of Forest Vegetation Between the Neolithic and the Early Middle Ages in the Territory of the Czech Republic Based on Archaeoanthracological Data
Abstract
The aim of the study is to reconstruct the forest vegetation of the Czech Republic in the period between agricultural prehistory (Neolithic, LnK, c. 7600 BP) and the Early Middle Ages on an elevation gradient from 140 to c. 500 m above sea level using anthracological data from archaeological sites - ARV (anthracologically reconstructed vegetation). A large set of data from 601 archaeological sites (990 components) containing 289,489 identified charcoal fragments was analysed. The analysed set of data contains both a selection of previously published results and, especially, a large amount of as yet unpublished data from the authors of the article. A basic comparison of the ARV with the composition of the potential natural vegetation (PNV after Neuhäuslová et al. 1998) was then conducted.
The chronological development of the anthracologically reconstructed vegetation is compared with information from pollen analyses (PRV after Abraham et al. 2016) from the Czech Republic. The results of our study clearly show that anthracological data are an important source of information concerning the forest vegetation on land mostly deforested today, at lowland forest sites heavily affected by erosion and forests at medium elevations. The text outlines the basic ecological characteristics of selected anthracologically distinguishable tree taxa and methodological challenges in anthracological analysis.