The Late Holocene in the western Pyrenees: A critical review of the current situation of palaeopalynological research

Abstract

As the vegetation is a social product resulting from the interaction of human beings with the environment, its study contributes towards an understanding of past human cultures. In particular, during the Late Holocene, the socio-cultural evolution of humans has undergone a series of major changes, which have impacted on their environmental setting. In this way, palynological analysis has been able to observe an interesting evolution in anthropization processes since the early Iron Age. However, these observations are conditioned by the volume of deposits that have been studied and their chrono-cultural sequencing. Other factors, such as the deficient preservation of sporo-pollen remains and the lack of well-dated continuous records in non-anthropic deposits, equally restrict our knowledge of the topic.The information available to date confirms that since the first millennium cal BC the vegetation (determining the bio-geographic variety of the territory) has been greatly influenced by human action, on both the Atlantic and the Mediterranean sides of the watershed.