Inland/Forest

Oxford University Press eBooks, pp. 513–526

Abstract

Abstract Forests, defined as vegetation consisting of trees and woody plants, covered large parts of Europe during the Mesolithic. The inland forests of Europe differed regionally in species composition, cover type, openness, and temporal change. We suggest that they consisted of a patchwork of tree and plant resource types. This chapter shows how Mesolithic hunter-gatherers exploited, managed, manipulated, and transformed the forests that they called their home. It argues that the forest was an environment subject to a variety of human niche construction practices including burning. Human-driven fires during the Mesolithic were generally small and mostly with local-scale effects of limited temporal extent. However, the increased frequency of Late Mesolithic fire use may have led to cumulative effects at a regional or even subcontinental scale, a scale previously only attributed to more recent populations.

Authors 2

1. Alexander Verpoorte Aachen Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University

   Leiden University

   Affiliation as printed

   Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University

2. Fulco Scherjon Aachen Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University

   Leiden University

   Affiliation as printed

   Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University