Abstract
Pollen that falls on soil surfaces is moved down through the deposit by percolating groundwater. As it moves, the pollen is progressively destroyed by oxygen in the groundwater and by aerobic fungi. In the Chesapeake Bay region, the deepest pollen in unsheltered archaeological site profiles is about 100 years old. A comparative study of a stratigraphic pollen profile exposed to the elements at the surface and a series of pollen samples sheltered by artifacts was conducted with materials from a 17th-century refuse pit at Jamestown, Virginia. Pollen was recovered both from under rocks and artifacts lying flat or concave side down and from around iron objects. The shallowest pollen spectrum recovered from under an artifact was 25 cm below the deepest pollen preserved in the exposed stratigraphic profile. No pollen was found in unsheltered pollen samples at the same depths as the artifacts. The distributions demonstrate that the pollen associated with the 17th-century artifacts is contemporaneous with those artifacts; it did not percolate down from later deposits. The artifact pollen spectra were arranged by depth into an artificial profile and appear to record a series of edaphic changes in the pit and a landclearance episode in the Jamestown area.
References
Anderson, T. W. 1974 The Chestnut Pollen Decline as a Time Horizon in Lake Sediments in Eastern North America. Canadian Journal of Botany 11:678–685.
Bazzaz, F. A. 1974 Ecophysiology of Ambrosia artemisiifolia: A Successional Dominant. Ecology 55:112–119; Journal of Biology 11:678–685.
Behre, Karl-Ernst 1983 The Interpretation of Anthropogenic Indicators in Pollen Diagrams. Pollen et Spores 23(2):225–245.
Benninghoff, Willard S. 1942 Pollen Analysis of the Lower Peat. In The Boylston Street Fishweir, edited by Frederick Johnson. Papers of the Robert S. Peabody Foundation for Archeology 2:96–104. Andover, Massachusetts.
Brisbane, M., and S. Clews 1979 The East Moor Field Systems, Altarnun, and North Hill, Bodmin Moor. Cornish Archaeology 18:33–56.
Cotter, John L. 1958 Archaeological Excavations at Jamestown, Virginia. Archaeological Research Series 4. National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, Washington, D.C.
Cushing, Edward J. 1964 Redeposited Pollen in Late Wisconsin Pollen Spectra from East-Central Minnesota. American Journal of Science 262:1075–1088.
Davis, Owen K. 1987 Spores of the Dung Fungus Sporormiella: Increased Abundance in Historic Sediments and Before Pleistocene Megafaunal Extinction. Quaternary Research 28:290–294.
Dimbleby, Geoffrey W. 1985 The Palynology of Archaeological Sites. Academic Press, New York.
Edwards, Kevin J. 1979 Palynological and Temporal Inference in the Context of Prehistory, with Special Reference to the Evidence from Lake and Peat Deposits. Journal of Archaeological Science 6:255–270.
Goldstein, S. 1960 Degradation of Pollen by Phycomycetes. Ecology 41: 543–545.
Handel, S. N. 1976 Restricted Pollen Flow of Two Woodland Herbs Determined by Neutron Activation Analysis. Nature 260:422–423.
Havinga, A. J. 1967 Palynology and Pollen Preservation. Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology 2:81–98.
1984 A 20-Year Investigation into Differential Corrosion Susceptibility of Pollen and Spores in Various Soil Types. Pollen et Spores 26(3–4):541–558.
Janssen, C. R. 1973 Local and Regional Pollen Deposition. In Quaternary Plant Ecology, edited by H. B. J. Birks and R. G. West, pp. 31–42. Blackwell Scientific, London.
Kelso, Gerald K. 1993 Pollen-Record Formation Processes, Interdisciplinary Archaeology, and Land Use by Mill Workers and Managers: The Boott Mills Corporation, Lowell, Massachusetts, 1836–1942. Historical Archaeology 27(1):70–94.
1994a Pollen Percolation Rates in Euroamerican-Era Cultural Deposits in the Northeastern United States. Journal of Archaeological Science 21, in press.
1994b Palynology in Historical Rural-Landscape Studies: Great Meadows, Pennsylvania. American Antiquity 59(2):359–372.
Kelso, Gerald K., and Henry M. Miller 1993 Exploratory Pollen Analysis in the Back Lot of the Brome-Howard Slave Cabin, St. Mary’s City, Maryland. Manuscript on file, Cultural Ecology Laboratories, 17214 West 15th Place, Golden, Colorado.
Kelso, Gerald K., and George Stillson 1993 Pollen Analysis of Two Cores from Nauset Marsh, Eastham, Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Manuscript on file, PaleoResearch Laboratories, 17485 West 44th Avenue, Golden, Colorado.
Kelso, Gerald K., and Diana diZerega Wall 1992 Pollen Analysis in Urban Land-Use History: An Exploratory Soil Profile from the Garden of the Old Merchants’ House, Greenwich Village, New York City. Research progress report on file, Department of Anthropology, City College of City University of New York, New York.
King, James E., Walter E. Klipple, and Rose Duffield 1975 Pollen Preservation and Archaeology in Eastern North America. American Antiquity 40(2): 180–190.
Martin, Paul S. 1963 Geochronology of Pluvial Lake Cochise, Southern Arizona II, Pollen Analysis of a 42-Meter Core. Ecology 44:436–444.
Mehringer, Peter J., Jr. 1967 Pollen Analysis of the Tule Springs Area, Nevada. In Pleistocene Studies in Southern Nevada, edited by H. M. Wormington and D. Ellis. Nevada State Museum Anthropological Papers 13:120–200. Carson City.
Mrozowski, Stephen A., Gerald K. Kelso, and Douglas Currie 1994 The Use of Contextual Archaeology at Jamestown, Virginia. Paper presented at the 1994 Annual Conference for Northeast Historical Archaeology, Williamsburg, Virginia.
Paillet, Frederick L. 1982 The Ecological Significance of American Chestnut (Castanea dentata [Marsh.] Borkh.) in the Holocene Forests of Connecticut. Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club 109(4):457–473.
Rogin, Leo 1931 The Introduction of Farm Machinery in Its Relation to the Productivity of Labor in the Agriculture of the United States During the Nineteenth Century. University of California, Berkeley.
Solomon, A. M., and D. F. Kroener 1971 Suburban Replacement of Rural Land Uses Reflected in the Pollen Rain of Northeastern New Jersey. Bulletin of the New Jersey Academy of Science 16(1–2):30–44.
Tauber, Henrik 1965 Differential Pollen Dispersion and the Interpretation of Pollen Diagrams. Geological Survey of Denmark Series 2(89). Copenhagen.
Tschudy, R. H. 1969 Relationship of Palynomorphs to Sedimentation. In Aspects of Palynology, edited by R. H. Tschudy and R. S. Scott, pp. 79–96. John Wiley and Sons, New York.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Kelso, G.K., Mrozowski, S.A., Currie, D. et al. Differential pollen preservation in a seventeenth-century refuse pit, Jamestown Island, Virginia. Hist Arch 29, 43–54 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03373580
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03373580