Pollen taphonomy at Shanidar Cave (Kurdish Iraq): An initial evaluation

Caves provide important locations for the study of ancient human activity and environment. One important strand of this ancient environmental work is palynology, yet the taphonomy of pollen in caves is locally contingent and often complex. Shanidar Cave in Kurdish Iraq was the site of important Neanderthal finds and early palynological research, but pollen taphonomy in the cave has not been previously studied, so it is difficult to judge what these ancient pollen assemblages might represent. In this paper we present pollen from a transect of surface samples within the cave and from comparative surface samples from outside the cave. These show that at present there is a reasonably close correspondence between assemblages accumulating within and in the external environs of the cave, and with the local vegetation. This may suggest that stratigraphic samples may also reflect past local vegetation

Palynology of surface sediments from caves in the Zagros Mountains (Kurdish Iraq): patterns and processes

Cave palynology has been widely used to reconstruct past vegetation in areas where other conventional sources of pollen are scarce. However, the mechanisms involved in pollen transport, deposition and accumulation in caves are still poorly understood, mostly because of the number of interplaying factors that affect these processes. In this paper we explore some of these factors further by assessing differences in pollen assemblages in transects of surface samples from six caves in the Zagros Mountains of Kurdish Iraq. Simple sac-like caves show a clear pattern in pollen distribution with anemophilous taxa declining from the highest percentages near the front of the cave to lower percentages at the rear of the cave and entomophilous taxa showing the opposite trend. There is a tendency for this pattern to be most marked in caves which are narrow in relation to their length. It is less clear at Shanidar Cave, most probably because of the geometry of the cave but also because of the disturbance and mixing of the superficial sediments caused by the large numbers of people visiting the cave. Only one of the sampled caves shows a different pattern, which is likely to reflect its geomorphological complexity and, consequently, its air circulation. Other factors, such as the presence of a cave entrance flora, are considered but here they seem to have little influence on the pollen assemblages, contrary to that found in temperate-zone caves

Late Pleistocene Humans used Rice in Sri Lanka: Phytolith Investigation of the Deposits at Fahien Rock Shelter

Phytolith (microscopic plant silicate bodies) evidence suggests that anatomically modern humans lived at Fahien rock shelterin the south-western Sri Lanka in tensively used wild rice species (e.g. Oryza cf. nivara) in association with lowland rain forests from 48.35ka (48,350 calyrs BP). The intensive use of wild rice could be a local innovation

Late Pleistocene humans in Sri Lanka used plant resources: A phytolith record from Fahien rock shelter

Little is known of the human use of rainforest plant resources of prehistoric Sri Lanka due to the lack of preservation of organic material and the effects of various destructive taphonomic processes. Phytoliths recovered from a AMS radiocarbon and OSL dated sequence at Fahien Rock Shelter indicate interactions of anatomically modern humans with the lowland rainforests of south-western Sri Lanka from 44,952–47,854 cal. BP to 11,936–12,239 cal. BP. During this period, the Rock Shelter occupants extracted their livelihood from a number of wild plants including bananas, rice, breadfruits, durians, canarium and species of palm and bamboo. These taxa are associated with present-day disturbed lowland rainforests. Gathering and processing of plant resources by existing modern rainforest foragers cannot directly be compared with the subsistence activities of the Late Pleistocene Rock Shelter occupants. © 2018 Elsevier B.V

Receipt from Richard M. Hunt to Ogden Goelet

https://digitalcommons.salve.edu/goelet-interior/1050/thumbnail.jp

Receipt from Richard M. Hunt to Ogden Goelet, no. 3985

https://digitalcommons.salve.edu/goelet-interior/1051/thumbnail.jp

The effect of preparation methods on dung fungal spores: Implications for recognition of megafaunal populations

Spores from coprophilous fungi are emerging as an important palaeoecological indicator of the presence of large herbivores, but the methods by which they are recovered may have a significant impact on their preservation and recognition. Here, we test a number of chemical and mechanical techniques used in palynology. Spore occurrence, size and shape is affected by preparation technique and is particularly affected by acetolysis. This has important implications for recognition of past megafaunal populations

Agroforestry and Its Impact in Southeast Asia

Research during the late 20th and early 21st centuries found that traces of human intervention in vegetation in Southeast Asian and Australasian forests started extremely early, quite probably close to the first colonization of the region by modern people around or before 50,000 years ago. It also identified what may be insubstantial evidence for the translocation of economically important plants during the latest Pleistocene and Early Holocene. These activities may reflect early experiments with plants which evolved into agroforestry. Early in the Holocene, land management/food procurement systems, in which trees were a very significant component, seem to have developed over very extensive areas, often underpinned by dispersal of starchy plants, some of which seem to show domesticated morphologies, although the evidence for this is still relatively insubstantial. These land management/food procurement systems might be regarded as a sort of precursor to agroforestry. Similar systems were reported historically during early Western contact, and some agroforest systems survive to this day, although they are threatened in many places by expansion of other types of land use. The wide range of recorded agroforestry makes categorizing impacts problematical, but widespread disruption of vegetational succession across the region during the Holocene can perhaps be ascribed to agroforestry or similar land-management systems, and in more recent times impacts on biodiversity and geomorphological systems can be distinguished. Impacts of these early interventions in forests seem to have been variable and locally contingent, but what seem to have been agroforestry systems have persisted for millennia, suggesting that some may offer long-term sustainabilit