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Late Holocene landscape development around a Roman Iron Age mass grave, Alken Enge, Denmark

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Abstract

Sediments from the small lake Ilsø situated in the Illerup/Alken Enge Valley were studied in order to investigate past landscape development at the time of a probably ritual human mass burial following battle during the Roman Iron Age (ad 1–400). A pollen record from Ilsø and a number of other records from Jutland were combined using the Landscape Reconstruction Algorithm to reconstruct local vegetation changes through the last 2,800 years. These methods were supplemented by studies of catchment-related geochemistry of the Ilsø lake sediments. The results show a marked reforestation event associated with a strong decrease in erosion levels at the very beginning of the first century ad, contemporaneous with the finds of human remains at Alken Enge. Comparison with a pollen record 10 km away and with those from other sites, reveals that this reforestation occurs unusually early and rapidly, and is an unparalleled development in a Danish context. We suggest that the major landscape changes at the beginning of the Roman Iron Age and forest cover for the next few centuries comprise a possible example of ritual control of local land-use.

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Acknowledgments

This research was financially supported by The Carlsberg Foundation (2012_01_0495) and carried out during a Ph.D. co-funded by the Graduate School of Science and Technology, Aarhus University. We thank Andreas Lücke for advice and analysis of stable isotopes on cellulose samples at the Jülich Research Center, Germany. Richard Bradshaw is acknowledged for improving the English.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geoscience, Aarhus University, Høegh-Guldbergs Gade 2, 8000, Aarhus C, Denmark

    Niels Emil Søe, Bent Vad Odgaard & Søren M. Kristiansen

  2. Department of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science, Lund University, Sölvegatan 12, 223 62, Lund, Sweden

    Anne Birgitte Nielsen

  3. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Aarhus University, Ny Munkegade 120, 8000, Aarhus C, Denmark

    Jesper Olsen

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  1. Niels Emil Søe
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  2. Bent Vad Odgaard
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  5. Søren M. Kristiansen
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Correspondence to Bent Vad Odgaard.

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Communicated by M.-J. Gaillard.

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Søe, N.E., Odgaard, B.V., Nielsen, A.B. et al. Late Holocene landscape development around a Roman Iron Age mass grave, Alken Enge, Denmark. Veget Hist Archaeobot 26, 277–292 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00334-016-0591-x

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