RECONSTRUCTION OF THE POST-GLACIAL ENVIRONMENTAL VARIATIONS BASED ON THE MULTI-PROXY APPROACH: DŪKŠTELIS LAKE, EASTERN LITHUANIA

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Palaeoecological data indicates land-use changes across Europe linked to spatial heterogeneity in mortality during the Black Death pandemic

The Black Death (1347–1352 CE) is the most renowned pandemic in human history, believed by many to have killed half of Europe’s population. However, despite advances in ancient DNA research that conclusively identified the pandemic’s causative agent (bacterium Yersinia pestis), our knowledge of the Black Death remains limited, based primarily on qualitative remarks in medieval written sources available for some areas of Western Europe. Here, we remedy this situation by applying a pioneering new approach, ‘big data palaeoecology’, which, starting from palynological data, evaluates the scale of the Black Death’s mortality on a regional scale across Europe. We collected pollen data on landscape change from 261 radiocarbon-dated coring sites (lakes and wetlands) located across 19 modern-day European countries. We used two independent methods of analysis to evaluate whether the changes we see in the landscape at the time of the Black Death agree with the hypothesis that a large portion of the population, upwards of half, died within a few years in the 21 historical regions we studied. While we can confirm that the Black Death had a devastating impact in some regions, we found that it had negligible or no impact in others. These inter-regional differences in the Black Death’s mortality across Europe demonstrate the significance of cultural, ecological, economic, societal and climatic factors that mediated the dissemination and impact of the disease. The complex interplay of these factors, along with the historical ecology of plague, should be a focus of future research on historical pandemics.The authors acknowledge the following funding sources: Max Planck Independent Research Group, Palaeo-Science and History Group (A.I., A.M. and C.V.); Estonian Research Council #PRG323, PUT1173 (A.Pos., T.R., N.S. and S.V.); European Research Council #FP7 263735 (A.Bro. and A.Plu.), #MSC 655659 (A.E.); Georgetown Environmental Initiative (T.N.); Latvian Council of Science #LZP-2020/2-0060 (N.S. and N.J.); LLNL-JRNL-820941 (I.T.); NSF award #GSS-1228126 (S.M.); Polish-Swiss Research Programme #013/2010 CLIMPEAT (M.Lam.), #086/2010 CLIMPOL (A.W.); Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education #N N306 275635 (M.K.); Polish National Science Centre #2019/03/X/ST10/00849 (M.Lam.), #2015/17/B/ST10/01656 (M.Lam.), #2015/17/B/ST10/03430 (M.Sło.), #2018/31/B/ST10/02498 (M.Sło.), #N N304 319636 (A.W.); SCIEX #12.286 (K.Mar.); Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness #REDISCO-HAR2017-88035-P (J.A.L.S.); Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports #FPU16/00676 (R.L.L.); Swedish Research Council #421-2010-1570 (P.L.), #2018-01272 (F.C.L. and A.S.); Volkswagen Foundation Freigeist Fellowship Dantean Anomaly (M.B.), Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation #RTI2018-101714-B-I00 (F.A.S. and D.A.S.), OP RDE, MEYS project #CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_019/0000728 (P.P.)Peer reviewe

Regional variations of carbonates in postglacial sediments and response of physical sediment properties to climatic events and vegetation

Despite an increasing number of geochemical and palynological data representing the Lateglacial and Holocene sediment sequences that are used to evaluate long-term and short-term interactions between soil and vegetation, the main environmental drivers of these processes are not fully understood so far. Soil composition, vegetation and lake evolution are diverse in all sites analysed in this study. The work was aimed to provide a comparison of the evolution of conifer and broad-leafed plant taxa spread with sediment geochemical data, including organic carbon and CaCO3 changes during the same sedimentation period. Problems addressed here analyze the increased carbonate mobility initiated by the invasion of conifers and a subsequent drop in soil pH. Together with this, the influence of organic material on accumulation of carbonates and sensitivity of Mn and Fe to redox conditions was evaluated. In general, chronologically defined changes in sediment composition revealed the intervals of more stable environmental conditions during which biotic factors were of greater importance in altering vegetation structure and the periods during which scarce vegetation had a negative impact on soil development leading to its progressive deterioration. Related changes occurred in sediments from different lakes; however, due to geographical position, responses to warming or cold events were a bit asynchronous

Regional variations of carbonates in postglacial sediments and response of physical sediment properties to climatic events and vegetation

Despite an increasing number of geochemical and palynological data representing the Lateglacial and Holocene sediment sequences that are used to evaluate long-term and short-term interactions between soil and vegetation, the main environmental drivers of these processes are not fully understood so far. Soil composition, vegetation and lake evolution are diverse in all sites analysed in this study. The work was aimed to provide a comparison of the evolution of conifer and broad-leafed plant taxa spread with sediment geochemical data, including organic carbon and CaCO3 changes during the same sedimentation period. Problems addressed here analyze the increased carbonate mobility initiated by the invasion of conifers and a subsequent drop in soil pH. Together with this, the influence of organic material on accumulation of carbonates and sensitivity of Mn and Fe to redox conditions was evaluated. In general, chronologically defined changes in sediment composition revealed the intervals of more stable environmental conditions during which biotic factors were of greater importance in altering vegetation structure and the periods during which scarce vegetation had a negative impact on soil development leading to its progressive deterioration. Related changes occurred in sediments from different lakes; however, due to geographical position, responses to warming or cold events were a bit asynchronous

Dating of the Cultural Layers from Vilnius Lower Castle, East Lithuania: Implications for Chronological Attribution and Environmental History

Complex interdisciplinary studies carried out in the territory of the Vilnius Lower Castle, E Lithuania, were used to construct a chronological framework based on radiocarbon data and archaeological information. Bulk samples (wood and sediment) were collected from an approximately 3-m core that crossed cultural layers and underlying strata. 14C dates indicate that the underlying bed possibly formed during the 6th century AD, although no archaeological finds were discovered there. Paleobotanical (pollen and plant macrofossil) investigations reveal evidence of agriculture that points to the existence of a permanent settlement in the area at that time. The chronological data indicates a sedimentation hiatus before the onset of the deposition of the cultural layer in the studied area. The 14C dates showed that the formation of the cultural bed began during the late 13th-early 14th centuries AD, that is, earlier than expected according to the archaeological record. The ongoing deposition of the cultural beds continued throughout the middle to latter half of the 14th century AD as revealed by the archaeological records and confirmed by well-correlated 14C results. After some decline in human activity in the middle of the 14th century AD, a subsequent ongoing development of the open landscape, along with intensive agriculture, points to an increase in human activity during the second half of the 14th century AD. The first half of the 15th century AD was marked by intensive exploitation of the territory, indicating a period of economic and cultural prosperity. The chronological framework indicates that the investigated cultural beds continued forming until the first half of the 16th century AD.The Radiocarbon archives are made available by Radiocarbon and the University of Arizona Libraries. Contact [email protected] for further information.Migrated from OJS platform February 202

RECONSTRUCTION OF THE POST-GLACIAL ENVIRONMENTAL VARIATIONS BASED ON THE MULTI-PROXY APPROACH: DŪKŠTELIS LAKE, EASTERN LITHUANIA

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The Late Pleistocene–Early Holocene palaeoenvironmental evolution in the SE Baltic region: a new approach based on chironomid, geochemical and isotopic data from Kamyshovoye Lake, Russia

© 2020 Collegium Boreas. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd The Kamyshovoye Lake sedimentary record in the southeastern Baltic Sea region was studied to reconstruct climatic fluctuations and the abiotic responses to them during the Lateglacial and Early Holocene. New results from chironomid, isotopic, palaeomagnetic and geochemical data analyses were correlated with earlier evidence of lithological and palynological changes in the Kamyshovoye Lake record. The section of the record that was studied covered the interval between 15 200 and 6500 cal. a BP. Palaeoclimatic reconstructions showed that during the Younger Dryas there was a two-step decrease in the mean July temperature. The temperature dropped by 3 °C in the period from ̃12 650 to 12 300 cal. a BP, and then it dropped by another 0.5 °C to a minimum of 11.5 °C at 11 900 cal. a BP. During the Younger Dryas–Holocene transition, a temperature increase of 3 °C can be seen over a period of several centuries, inferred from the chironomid data. Further, the temperature curve showed that significant fluctuations continued until ̃9500 cal. a BP. During the coolings, the average July temperature dropped to values that were typical for the Younger Dryas, while values characteristic for the Allerød were only reached at around 9700 cal. a BP. After 9500 cal. a BP, a more stable, gradual increase in temperature was recorded. The short-term Early Holocene climatic oscillations are clearly traced in the Kamyshovoye sequence, although the responses of the natural components are sometimes asynchronous. In the case of the Kamyshovoye study, the geochemical data seem to be a sensitive indicator of the climatic and environmental changes despite the absence of an evident response to the Holocene onset at ̃11 700 cal. a BP. Considerable changes in the geochemical pattern are recorded later, at ̃11 500 cal. a BP, coinciding with noticeable changes in the development of vegetation. The results obtained in this study contribute to a deeper understanding of how global climatic trends are manifested on a local scale