Environment and settlement - A multiproxy record of holocene palaeoenvironmental development from Lake Wonieść, Greater Poland

Abstract

This multi-proxy approach combines results of sedimentological, pollen and diatom studies on sediments of Lake Wonieść, Greater Poland. This enables reconstruction of the natural and anthropogenic drivers of past environmental change. Several steps of lake development are recorded, from a eutrophic to an oligotrophic stage, and with increasing human influence back to a hypereutrophic one. Human influence in the form of eutrophication due to arable farming has been the main driver in the changing ecology of the lake in the second half of the Holocene. The record provides a diachronic perspective of regional “boom and bust” phases of greater or lesser human pressure on the landscape. Early evidence of cereal-type pollen indicates human occupation of areas of chernozem soil during the Linearbandkeramik (LBK) Neolithic period from 5250 cal bc onwards. A clear opening of the landscape occurred during the Trichterbecher (Funnel Beaker) period at ca. 3800 cal bc. From this time onwards, the human influence on the lake can be traced by the geochemical and diatom records. Neolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age and medieval boom and bust phases of settlement intensity are discussed. A comparison with two other high-resolution lake records from Poland (Lakes Gościąż and Szurpiły) show a good agreement of many of the “boom and bust” phases with Lake Gościąż (“boom” at 3500 and 2150 cal bc, “bust” at 3250, 1560 and 1 bc) and a few even with both, Lake Szurpiły and Lake Gościąż (“boom” at bc and “bust” at 500 cal bc and cal ad 400). This is indicative of supra-regional changes in intensity of land use.