The Celtic World (Routledge Worlds)

• Chapter Nine -

2,000 B.P.

1000 km

~16~3

!mHl17 ~4

~o • o •• <»^018 Do:::: .....^000005 •••••

~6

~7

D... ·:·8 ··

Figure 9.1 The predominant vegetation types in Europe 2,000 years ago. (After Huntley 1990.

Reprinted by permission of John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.).

KEY

(1 )hazel-oak -alder; (2 )oak -beech -chenopods; (3) beech -spruce-hornbeam; (4 )oak-pine-

beech; (5) hazel-oak-elm; (6) pine-chenopods; (7) spruce-pine-birch-alder; (S)oak-hazel-

grasses; (9) oak-chenopods-Ostrya; (10) pine-birch-chenopods-oak; (11) spruce-pine-birch;

(12) pine-birch-alder; (13) birch-pine-alder; (14) pine-birch; (15) birch-willow-juniper-heaths;

(16) ice sheets; (17) spruce-lime-elm-birch; (IS) pine-beech-sclerophyll taxa.

Basin pollen diagrams show uninterrupted clearance from C.200 Be, though some
forest remained (van Zeist and Spoel-Walvius 1980). A similar story of land-use
intensification in the later Iron Age comes from the valleys of the Massif Central,
although here, as in many parts of France, extensive clearance continued into the
Roman period (van Vliet-Lanoe et al. 1992). The rare occurrence on French iron
age sites of wild animals such as aurochs, wildcat, lynx, wolf and bear shows that
areas of wild habitat survived, but Meniel (1987) argues that the more commonly
found wild animals such as deer and boar were killed in order to protect crops in an
increasingly agricultural landscape.