HOLIVAR2006 Abstracts
Climatic pacing of Mediterranean fire history from lake sedimentary micro-charcoal.
Rebecca Turner and Neil Roberts
School of Geography, University of Plymouth, Drakes Circus, Plymouth, PL4 8AA, UK
Contact: Rebecca Turner (rebecca.turner@plymouth.ac.uk)
Natural fire occurrence is inextricably linked to regional climate and biomass. Fires cannot burn unless there is fuel (i.e. plant matter) to burn; fuel availability is, in turn, determined by climatic factors. Humans affect this relationship, by using fire as a tool to manage the landscape. The Eastern Mediterranean has a long history of human occupation, which spans the transition from hunter-gatherers to the establishment of early agro-pastoralist communities. The transition from hunter-gatherer to agro-pastoralist communities in the region coincides with the Last Interglacial: Glacial period. It has been hypothesised that fire was used to manipulate the subsequent postglacial recolonisation of the vegetation (Roberts 2002). The analysis of microscopic charcoal from lake sediments has successfully been used to reconstruct fire histories in North America, Australasia, and Europe (e.g. Whitlock and Millspaugh 1996), but has yet to be applied systematically in the Eastern Mediterranean. This research uses a novel technique of contiguous sampling and micro-charcoal extraction from lake sediments (Turner et al. 2006) to reconstruct regional fire history at high temporal resolution from annually laminated lake sediments preserved in a crater lake in Central Turkey. The charcoal record of this site has then been correlated with existing multi-proxy data (stable isotopes and pollen) (Roberts et al. 2001). The Eski Acigöl record shows that from the Last Glacial Maximum through to the Early Holocene climatic controls and biomass availability, rather then people, were the main factors controlling the timing of regional fire activity. The Holocene portion of this record contains a significant cyclicity with a periodicity of 1400 to 1500 years which may be linked with Bond Cycles and solar forcing.
Roberts, N., 2002. Did prehistoric landscape management retard the postglacial spread of woodlands in South-west Asia? Antiquity, 76, 1002-1010.
Roberts, N. et al., 2001. The tempo of Holocene climate change in the Eastern Mediterranean region: new high-resolution crater-lake sediment data from central Turkey. The Holocene, 11, 721-736.
Turner, R., Kelly, A., Roberts, N., in press. A critical assessment and experimental comparison of microscopic charcoal extraction methods. In: Charcoal from the past: cultural and palaeoenvironmental implications. Proceedings of the Third International Meeting of Anthracology, Cavallino (Lecce), June 2004. BAR International Series, Archaeopress, Oxford (due 2006).
Whitlock, C., Millspaugh, S.H. 1996. Testing the assumptions of fire history studies: an extension of modern charcoal accumulation in Yellowstone National Park. The Holocene, 6, 7-15.