Fazal, Hina & Ahmad, Nisar & Abbasi, Bilal. (2013). Identification, Characterization, and Palynology of High-Valued Medicinal Plants. TheScientificWorldJournal. 2013. 283484. 10.1155/2013/283484.
Palynology is the study of pollen often used in archeological surveying and I'm off down a deep rabbit hole exploring how amazing pollen is, or rather, how it can be read, a form of material evidence.
The University of Texas tells me that Palynology, or the study of pollen, is used to reconstruct ancient environments and document environmental changes that had significant impacts on past human societies.
I read that pollen can reveal the kinds of wind directions, climatic growing conditions, geologically specific growing conditions and ways that plants and humans have existed together for hundreds of thousands of years. Excess pollen is called pollen rain and it can be found in earth core samples. Pollen's tendency to cling to other plant materials after the plant has been harvested enables the identification of ancient human behaviours. This can include ancient recipes worked out from shards of collected ceramic.
In a 2005 report from explorations around Avonmouth during laying down of the Seabank powerstation pipeline, the palynology studies show that plantago lanceolata (ribwort plantain) and Lactuceae (includes dandelion and related Asteraceae) grew in the 2nd century. The enviorment would have been much like it is now, grassy and open, with areas of salt march.
In the same report ditches are mentioned. Maybe these were early rhynes. Maybe I use my historical imagination to suggest they were. And here I find; Therefore while these ditch fills supported essentially freshwater flora and fauna, these may have been punctuated by phases of brackish deposition from tidal events or perhaps occasional sluice gate operation.
Other plant seeds in the report state that Atriplex (saltbush) orache, clover and sweet clover and eyebright.
Molloscs are studied too; Hydrobia ventrosa is a spire snail, Hydrobia ulvae, the Laver spire shell or mudsnail, both live in brackish environments, and often completely submerged. And Elphidium Williamsoni, single celled armoured ameoba.
Pollen and molluscs. And fossilised pollen too. What would future archeology look like?
This report concludes that;
Prior to their reclamation, the Avonmouth Levels would have been a dynamic and changeable landscape, in which small fluctuations in sea level and differences in elevation of less than a metre would have had major consequences for the viability of land-use strategies in different locations. Gardiner et al. (2002) highlight the variability and complexity of the environmental sequence reconstructed from the Second Severn Crossing project.
P. Masser, J. Jones and B. McGill (2005) Romano-British Settlement and Land Use on the Avonmouth Levels: the evidence of the Pucklechurch to Seabank pipeline project, Vol. 123, 55-86, Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society. [accessed 20.04.24].
Foraminiferan
Phase-contrast photomicrograph of a foraminiferan (Ammonia tepida). Scott Fay Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 (Generic)
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