Relating Norwegian palynological records and archaeological datasets
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 2019-11-13

In this contribution we present the first results of a project that aims to create detailed GIS-based paleoenvironmental information from a comprehensive dataset of pollen core data from Norway. This comprehensive dataset is created by the Norwegian paleobotanist Helge Høeg during more than 30 years. The pollen data comes from more than 300 drill cores and the main part of them are collected as part of archaeological excavation projects in South-Eastern Norway. Until now this data was published mostly in textual form as tables or as figures (pollen diagrams). The digital pollen count data itself has never been published and has therefore not been available for quantitative analysis before. The study will use quantitative statistics and software tools like R and GIS to create a comprehensive paleoenvironmental dataset of high temporal and spatial resolution for the last ~10.000 years of South-East Norway. This new paleoenvironmental data set of high temporal and spatial resolution, will help to better analyze and understand the Holocene history and archeology of Norway, by relating to archaeological spatial datasets from the Museum of Cultural History at the University of Oslo. This pilot study has a large potential for more advanced paleoenvironmental studies in Norway and neighbouring countries (especially for the Stone Age), and also for technical/theoretical refinement of GIS applications to archaeological metadata.

(Christian Willmes, Espen Uleberg, Mieko Matsumoto, Helge Høeg)