Case Studies:Case study 11

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Mid-Holocene Charcoal Fall in Southern Scotland
Richard Tipping and Paula Milburn

Department of Environmental Science, University of Stirling, Stirling FK9 4LA

British mid-Holocene stratigraphies have recorded a reduction in charcoal described as the ‘charcoal fall’, which may represent changes in the spatial patterning of land use as humans adopted agriculture. Alternatively, climatic controls could have affected forest fires causing a reduction in charcoal. Another possibility is that Neolithic activities may have become increasingly concentrated in lowland areas and the uplands were abandoned or managed by grazing rather than fire. Using charcoal stratigraphies at upland and lowland sites the fire frequency was related to climatic change by measures of the past groundwater. Lowland sites showed good evidence for relatively high numbers of charcoal fragments after 7000BP and the charcoal abundance in the later Mesolithic is high irrespective of dominant soil drainage. The charcoal falls in this region are not seen as products of climate change because the inferred shift in climate is to one of greater aridity and presumed heightened fire sensitivity. A simplistic distinction between hunter-gatherer and farming communities cannot be made because the charcoal fall at the Catharine Hill site occurred at 6450BP within the later Mesolithic.

Click on the link below to open a pdf with a more detailed summary of this project:

[[media:Mid Holocene Charcoal Fall.pdf|Mid-Holocene charcoal fall in Southern Scotland]]

The full article is Tipping, R. and P. Milburn (2000) Mid-Holocene charcoal fall Southern Scotland – River Annan and Nith in Dumfriesshire Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 164: 177-193

Keywords: Charcoal, Holocene, stratigraphy, colorimetry, Scotland

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