The Managed Landscape: Fields, Pastures, Woods and Gardens

Abstract

The postglacial colonization of the British Isles occurred in two phases, at first from about 14 000 years ago and then, after a short cold stage, from 10 000 years ago. It has been traditional to regard the Postglacial, the Flandrian or Holocene, as starting 10 000 years ago, and to divide it into two halves, the first ending about 5200 years ago with the advent of neolithic man and agriculture, and a change of climate from a warm, wet Atlantic phase to the drier Sub-Boreal phase. The division of the Postglacial into two halves has been convenient because it is marked in the pollen record by a sharp decline in Ulmus (elm) pollen abundance, which seemed to have occurred relatively simultaneously over much of north-western Europe (Figure 3.1).