Vertical mobility or hidden mountain farming? Archaeological and pollen evidence from lower mountain ranges

0449055 - ARÚ 2016 GB eng A - Abstrakt
Dreslerová, Dagmar - Kozáková, Radka
Vertical mobility or hidden mountain farming? Archaeological and pollen evidence from lower mountain ranges.
21st Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists, Glasgow 2015, 2-5 September. Abstracts of the oral and poster presentations. Glasgow: University of Glasgow, 2015 - (Campbell, L.). s. 88. ISBN N.
[Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists /21./. 02.09.2015-05.09.2015, Glasgow]
Institucionální podpora: RVO:67985912
Klíčová slova: mountain farming * prehistory * pollen analysis
Kód oboru RIV: AC - Archeologie, antropologie, etnologie
http://eaaglasgow2015.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/EAA-Glasgow-Abstract-Book.pdf

Due to an increasing survey of high mountain regions in France, Switzerland and Austria in the past years, archaeological evidence of their exploitation, especially in the areas above the tree limit, becomes relatively common. On the contrary, it is extremely hard to find traces of past human activities in the forested mountain terrains of lower mountain ranges and therefore our knowledge of their use is poor. According to written sources, their regular exploitation came about with Medieval colonisation. However, a comparatively large number of pollen spectra from the Czech and Moravian frontier mountain ridges (Sudeten, West Carpathians) indicate that some activities must have happened in the mountains long before the Middle Ages, at least since Sub-Boreal (LBA). This evidence is not without problems: it is virtually impossible to standardise certain combinations of taxa in the pollen spectrum which would decidedly document human activity. Moreover, pollen indicators, which may document seasonal pasturing (e.g. Plantago lanceolata) usually appear in the pollen spectra together with the pollen grains of Secale cereale or Cerealia sp. The assumption that cereal pollen grains are transported by wind from the mountain foreland has not been sufficiently verified yet. Alternatively, a special form of montane farming management might have existed, based both on animal husbandry and cereal production. Such a hypothesis needs to be proven and we look for the possibilities, methods and tools (both archaeological and environmental) for means of getting sufficient results. However, the largely forested terrain of the Bohemian mountains makes this task extremely difficult.
Trvalý link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0250644