Achaeometrical Research in Hungary II., 1988

ENVIRONMENT - Zsófia MEDZIHRADSZKY: The role and the potentiability of palynology in archaeometry

Zsófia MEDZIHRADSZKY: THE ROLE AND THE POTENTIABILITY OF PALYNOLOGY IN ARCHAEOMETRY The botanical, especially palynological investigations of archaeological sites have formed a new discipline in the Hungarian archaeometry. They rather belong to the archaeological environment and seem less related to archaeological features and finds. Pollen analysis provides a means for reconstructing the past flora (the distribution of individual plant taxa in time and space), past plant populations (the abundance of individual plant taxa in time and space), and the past vegetation (the distribution of individual plant assemblages or communities in time and space). Its role is thus to reconstruct the natural environment, the past plant communities and ecosystems of archaeological cultures and periods, including the detection of the anthropogenic influences on the vegetation. The primary contribution of palynology to archaeological investigations is the reconstruction of the environments of archaeological sites and the ecosystems during the archaeological periods as well as the study of evidence for human activity. Interpretations of palaeo- or archaeopalynological data are based almost entirely on the extrapolation of present-day ecological observations to the past. Past environments are reconstructed on the basis of analogies with known, present day ecological preferences of plant taxa (BIPvKS and GORDON 1985). The basic principles of Holocene palynology are as follows: Pollen grains and spores are very small (10-100 microns) but are produced in great abundance by vascular plants. Pollen and spores are well mixed by air turbulence, resulting in a more or less homogeneous pollen rain within any given area. The sporopollenin of the outer wall of pollen and spores is well preserved in nonoxidising sediments, so under such conditions we can take samples of the past pollen rain. As the composition of the pollen rain depends on the composition of the vegetation that produced it, from analysing a sample of the past pollen rain deposited in the sediment, we can draw conclusions concerning the composition of past vegetations. Sampling an individual layer of the sediment and performing quantitative and qualitative pollen analyses of this sample, the pollen spectrum is a reflection of the vegetation surrounding the site at the time the pollen was deposited. If remains of the pollen rain are preserved at multiple levels throughout the sediment, pollen assemblages provide a stratigraphic record of the past vegetation and its development through the time period represented in the sediment record. Stratigraphie pollen analytical data are most commonly presented as pollen diagrams in which the vertical axis represents depth, and the horizontal axis represents the percentage of each of the important taxa. In most cases, the sum of the arboreal and non-arboreal pollen is considered 100%. Sampling places in the archaeopalynology 1. The first possibility is to collect samples during the archaeological excavation itself While acidic soils facilitate pollen preservation, most of the archaeological sites are located on alkaline soils in Hungary. Frequently, present day acidic soils were originally 199