Approximately 50 percent of all endangered species in Scandinavia are associated with old agricultural landscapes. During the agricultural industrialization of the past century the traditional practices and methods that created these environments have been phased out. This has brought on a serious decline and fragmentation of biomes that many endangered species depend on. Knowledge of traditional agricultural landscapes and their species dynamics is needed to make well informed decisions regarding their care and restoration. One way to acquire such knowledge is to study fossil plant remnants from old agricultural contexts. In this study sub-fossil Cyperaceae achenes were analyzed in an attempt to identify them. The achenes had been preserved in three Iron Age wells (80-980 AD) at the Gilltuna settlement in central Sweden and were found during an archeological investigation in 2010. The purpose of this study was to identify the achenes to species level, make conclusions about the ecology of the surrounding landscape, and construct simple species identification key as well as evaluate archaeobotany as an ecological tool. The identification attempt resulted in 14 determined species, which were in consistency with previous landscape analyses made using ecological species distribution. The resulting identification key is a suggestion, to be expanded in the future. This method can undoubtedly provide further knowledge of prehistoric and historical biomes, but in order to draw useful conclusions the identification technique further as well as knowledge of present regional ecology must be developed, especially concerning different Cyperaceae species‟ response to different kinds of stress.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-321511 |
| Date | January 2017 |
| Creators | Pettersson, Siri |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Institutionen för biologisk grundutbildning |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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