Managing wilderness? Holocene-scale, human-related disturbance dynamics as revealed in a remote, forested area in the Czech Republic

Abstract

In the lowlands and uplands of Central Europe, which were inhabited continuously from the very start of the Holocene to the present times, it is difficult to find territories suitable for investigation of natural baselines. For this reason, we picked the complicated rocky terrain of one upland area in NE Bohemia called Adrspach because, based on the absence of archeological finds, it was supposed to have never been deforested or managed by people. The remote and inhospitable character of this particular area further encouraged this assumption. To our great surprise, however, high-resolution pollen analyses, supplemented by analyses of non-pollen palynomorphs and microscopic charcoals reveals that the local forest ecosystem had a dynamic development over entire Holocene. We were able to correlate this high-resolution understanding of vegetation successions with repeated fire disturbances. Was this fire disturbance dynamic natural? Subsequent archeological exploration and excavation in the area brought unexpected evidence, pointing to rather continuous human presence throughout most of the Holocene. From the Early Mesolithic to the Late Neolithic, available evidence suggests a hunter-gatherer mode of resource management. From the start of the Late-Holocene (ca 4 ka BP), the occurrence of coprophilous fungal spores and secondary anthropogenic pollen indicators suggest this area was impacted by recurrent domestic animal grazing. Testing this approach also in other remote forested areas of Central Europe, we argue, can have far-reaching implications for understanding long term human-environment agency by transforming our understanding of alternative subsistence and land use strategies during prehistory. At the same time, this can significantly alter existing concepts used in Central European nature conservation strategies, which tend to be based on an underlying assumption that our work challenges – the survival of little impacted wilderness at the Holocene scale.