Exploring the past through lynchet landscapes in the Vosges Mountains and the Lorraine Plateau (France)

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Abstract

Lynchets are ridges formed by erosion and sediment accumulation downstream of agricultural plots and offer valuable insights into past agricultural activity. These microtopographies cover vast areas and serve as indicators of historical changes in land use. As a result, their ubiquity across Europe makes them particularly interesting. In this study, we propose a geoarchaeological approach to analyze six lynchets, four in the Vosges Mountains and two on the Lorraine Plateau (France). The lynchets can be considered soil archives with no stratigraphic organization or chronological sequence from bottom to top, making it difficult to determine the age of the lynchets and identify changes in land use over time. To this end, we propose the analysis of historical and geo‐historical archives combined with the “pedosedimentary” archives of lynchets through charcoal identification and dating combined with near‐infrared spectroscopy to determine the age, vegetation, and past land use changes associated with lynchet landscapes. By combining these multiple data sources, we are better able to show the chronological development of these ancient agricultural systems and uncover valuable information on landscape history. Charcoal dating suggests a higher frequency of fires from the Middle Ages. The dating aligns with the regional dynamics of anthropogenic fires, indicating a potential use of fire for cultural purposes. We also demonstrate the difficulty of extrapolating the dating of a lynchet to the entire lynchet system. Our results highlight the difficulties of interpreting the formation and dating of lynchets and the lynchet system on the sole basis of charcoal analysis. However, we highlight the value of applying pedoanthracology to lynchets to determine the dynamics of land use change in former fields.

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THE INTCAL20 NORTHERN HEMISPHERE RADIOCARBON AGE CALIBRATION CURVE (0–55 CAL kBP)

Paula J. Reimer, William E. N. Austin, Edouard Bard … (2020)

Radiocarbon ( 14 C) ages cannot provide absolutely dated chronologies for archaeological or paleoenvironmental studies directly but must be converted to calendar age equivalents using a calibration curve compensating for fluctuations in atmospheric 14 C concentration. Although calibration curves are constructed from independently dated archives, they invariably require revision as new data become available and our understanding of the Earth system improves. In this volume the international 14 C calibration curves for both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, as well as for the ocean surface layer, have been updated to include a wealth of new data and extended to 55,000 cal BP. Based on tree rings, IntCal20 now extends as a fully atmospheric record to ca. 13,900 cal BP. For the older part of the timescale, IntCal20 comprises statistically integrated evidence from floating tree-ring chronologies, lacustrine and marine sediments, speleothems, and corals. We utilized improved evaluation of the timescales and location variable 14 C offsets from the atmosphere (reservoir age, dead carbon fraction) for each dataset. New statistical methods have refined the structure of the calibration curves while maintaining a robust treatment of uncertainties in the 14 C ages, the calendar ages and other corrections. The inclusion of modeled marine reservoir ages derived from a three-dimensional ocean circulation model has allowed us to apply more appropriate reservoir corrections to the marine 14 C data rather than the previous use of constant regional offsets from the atmosphere. Here we provide an overview of the new and revised datasets and the associated methods used for the construction of the IntCal20 curve and explore potential regional offsets for tree-ring data. We discuss the main differences with respect to the previous calibration curve, IntCal13, and some of the implications for archaeology and geosciences ranging from the recent past to the time of the extinction of the Neanderthals.

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Particle motion and the theory of charcoal analysis: Source area, transport, deposition, and sampling

James S Clark (1988)

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Estimation of Inbuilt Age in Radiocarbon Ages of Soil Charcoal for Fire History Studies

Daniel G Gavin (2001)

Radiocarbon age determinations of wood charcoal are commonly used to date past forest fire events, even though such ages should be greater than the fire event due to the age of the wood at the time of burning. The difference in the 14C-derived age of charcoal and the time-since-fire (the “inbuilt age”) may be considerable in some vegetation types and thus must be estimated before interpreting fire dates. Two methods were used to estimate the potential range of inbuilt age of soil charcoal dated to determine ages of forest fires on the west coast of Vancouver Island (Canada). First, 26 14C ages on charcoal in surficial soil were compared directly with ages of forest fire determined by tree-ring counts, suggesting inbuilt ages of 0–670 years. Second, a simulation model that uses estimated fuel loads, fuel consumption, charcoal production, and the ages of charred wood (time since wood formation), suggests that the combination of slow growth rates and slow decay rates of certain species can account for inbuilt ages of more than 400 years in this forest type. This level of inbuilt age is large enough such that the actual age of a fire may not occur within the 2σ confidence interval of a calibrated charcoal 14C age determination, and thus significantly affect the interpretation of fire dates. A method is presented to combine the error of a calibrated 14C age determination with the error due to inbuilt age such that the larger adjusted error encompasses the actual age of the fire.

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Author and article information

Contributors

Damien Ertlen: (View ORCID Profile)

Journal

Title: Geoarchaeology

Abbreviated Title: Geoarchaeology

Publisher: Wiley

ISSN (Print): 0883-6353

ISSN (Electronic): 1520-6548

Publication date (Electronic): January 23 2024

Affiliations

[1 ] Laboratoire Image, Ville, Environnement (LIVE)—UMR 7362 CNRS—University of Strasbourg Strasbourg France

[2 ] Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire des Environnements Continentaux (LIEC)—UMR 7360 CNRS—Université de Lorraine, Campus Bridoux Bât. IBISE Metz France

Article

DOI: 10.1002/gea.21993

SO-VID: d82f76ae-7206-4f10-8106-714913abe324

License:

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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Exploring the past through lynchet landscapes in the Vosges Mountains and the Lorraine Plateau (France)

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