From the Neolithic to the present day: The impact of human presence on floristic diversity in the sandstone Northern Vosges (France)

Emilie Gouriveau,Loïc Duchamp,Vincent Robin,Anne Véronique Walter-Simonnet,Cécile Figus,Pascale Ruffaldi,Annik Schnitzler

doi:10.1051/bsgf/2020045

Abstract

The Northern Vosges and the Pays de Bitche (north-eastern France) are well-known regions for their rich recent industrial heritage. On the other hand, the ancient history of these regions is less well known and the relationships between human populations and their environments during ancient times is still largely unexplored. We carried out a multidisciplinary paleoenvironmental study on the site of the bog pond located below the ruins of the medieval castle of Waldeck in order to reconstruct the history of the vegetation in the region since 6600 cal. BP. Throughout the Holocene, the succession of forest vegetation (pine and hazelnut forests, reduced oak forest, beech forest, oak-beech forest) was largely dominated by pine. Human presence was tenuous during the Neolithic period, then well marked from the Bronze Age onwards with the introduction of crops and livestock crops in the catchment area. From the Middle Ages onwards, anthropic pressure increased dramatically with the building of Waldeck Castle in the thirteenth century, which led to a major opening of the area. The Modern period is characterized by a gradual return of the forest, with decreasing anthropogenic pressure. Over time, occupation phases were interspersed with abandonment phases during which human activities regressed or disappeared. Finally, the rarefaction analysis carried out on pollen data shows that human presence led to a gradual increase in plant diversity, which peaked in the Middle Ages, whereas the forest lost some of its resilience to human disturbance over time.

Highlights

The important and well-known industrial heritage of the Northern Vosges, extending from Saverne town to the German border (Fig. 1A), developed from the seventeenth century onwards and consists primarily of glass factories (Meisenthal, Saint-Louis crystal factory, Fig. 1A, 8-9) and metallurgy establishments (De Dietrich, Fig. 1A, 4-7, 10-11)
Except for the twelfth-fourteenth centuries, when abbeys and numerous castles were built in the heart of the Northern Vosges, historical and archaeological knowledge for earlier periods is much less abundant, in the Pays de Bitche (Fig. 1A) (Schmit et al, 2017)
The palaeoecological study of the Waldeck site broadens our knowledge of the evolution of landscapes in these midmountain areas of the Northern Vosges

Summary

Introduction

The important and well-known industrial heritage of the Northern Vosges, extending from Saverne town (in the south) to the German border (in the north) (Fig. 1A), developed from the seventeenth century onwards and consists primarily of glass factories (Meisenthal, Saint-Louis crystal factory, Fig. 1A, 8-9) and metallurgy establishments (De Dietrich, Fig. 1A, 4-7, 10-11). The plural identity of the Northern Vosges or the Pays de Bitche complicates tracing the history of these regions These regions are first and foremost geological and geographical entities; the former straddles Alsace and Lorraine, and the latter lies between the Northern Vosges and Lorraine Plateau. In the latter region, discoveries consist mainly of isolated remains discovered by field prospecting organised by local history and archaeology societies. Archaeological data are fragmentary, scattered and very poorly documented (Schmit et al, 2017) and very few discoveries have been confidently attributed to a specific time period. These discoveries indicate early human occupation since Palaeolithic times (Schmit et al, 2017)

Methods

Discussion

Conclusion