Tracing the history of highland human management in the Eastern Pre-Pyrenees (Spain): an interdisciplinary palaeoenvironmental approach

Abstract

Although high mountain areas have traditionally been viewed as predominantly grazing areas, with low population and a high degree of land-use stasis, recent research suggest that land-use complexity and change over time has been underestimated. This interdisciplinary palaeoenvironmental analysis has been carried out on the Pradell calcareous fen, located in the eastern Pre-Pyrenees (Spain) at 1975 m a.s.l., and it comprises different environmental indicators: pollen, stomata, non-pollen palynomorphs, macrocharcoal particles, lithostratigraphy, sedimentology and geochemistry. The results of this high temporal resolution study are integrated with archaeological data, and together provide strong evidence for the complexity of the high-mountain land-use system over the last 1500 years. Archaeological fieldwork has shown the rise of highland mining activities during the Roman period. Later, frequent fires resulted from the farming and settlement that followed the Christian conquest. Geochemical analysis of sediment cores records late-Mediaeval metal production, while the expansion of feudal cropping and the advent of several Mediaeval crises are clearly recorded in both the pollen and the historical data. Finally, the rise of a mixed economy system based on transhumance, farming, metallurgy and woodland exploitation was established during Modern and Contemporary times. The high correlation between the palaeoenvironmental, archaeological and historical data at the Pradell fen stresses the value of calcareo us fens for palaeoenvironmental reconstructions of historical landscapes. Results obtained also depict high mountain landscapes as the result of the long-term interaction of many human practices, including mining and smelting, grazing, cropping and tree exploitation for the production of wood, charcoal and resin.