- People and Nature in the Celtic World -
onset of the Sub-Atlantic may have had similar effects, especially in high rainfall areas
of the west and in the north where the growing season was short. This may be an
important factor in the late bronze age abandonment of moorland, particularly
Dartmoor and the Scottish moors.
Subsequent climatic changes during the period in question are not as clearly
marked or widespread. Slow peat growth and a lack of recurrence horizons indicates
relatively dry conditions from C.400 Be to AD 450. Around AD 550 several upland
blanket mires have recently been identified as showing evidence of wetter conditions
(Blackford and Chambers 1991). The Greenland ice core evidence shows that around
c.AD 700 there was a warmer episode with temperatures I-2°C higher than present
(Dansgaard et al. 1975). This was the Little Climatic Optimum, a period of reduced
sea ice in the north Atlantic and the possibly related Viking expansion which
impacted on the Celtic world.
VEGETATION
Before the advent of farming, virtually all the area with which we are concerned had
a forest cover. The character of this natural 'wildwood' (Rackham 1980) can be re-
constructed from the sequence of pollen in peat bogs and lakes. Huntley (1990)
has collated the results of pollen analyses across Europe, to prepare maps of its
vegetation at thousand-year intervals over the last 13,000 years. Figure 9.1 shows
the vegetation map at around the birth of Christ. The west (the British Isles, the
Netherlands, France and Spain) had vegetation in which the predominant plants were
hazel, oak, and alder. The alpine area and southern France were characterized by oak,
beech and chenopods. Southern Germany and the Balkans had beech, spruce and
hornbeam woods. Parts of the Italian and Yugoslav coasts had oak, pine, heath
and chenopods. This map provides a useful picture of broad-scale vegetation patterns;
what it does not bring out is the extent to which individual pollen studies demonstrate
that the vegetation had, by this time, been changed by human activity.THE CULTURAL LANDSCAPE
Mainland Europe
Authors offer very different perceptions of the extent to which woodland survived
in mainland Europe into the Iron Age. Piggott (1975) speaks of the great uncleared
'Celtic jungle', a view based on classical authors who noted its contrast with the
more open landscapes of the Mediterranean. Palaeoenvironmental evidence paints a
different picture. By the time of the Roman conquest many areas had been cleared
and in the more densely settled areas the forest had been broken into small woods
and copses in a largely agricultural landscape (Audouze and Biichsenschiitz 1991).
Parts of Brittany were deforested well before the Iron Age but deforestation
increased greatly during the period and settlements are set within an agricultural
landscape containing scattered trees and wooded areas (Marguerie 1990). In the Paris