Génesis y configuración microregional de un paisaje cultural pirenaico de alta montaña durante el holoceno: estudio polínico y de otros indicadores paleoambientales en el valle del Madriu-Perafita-Claror (Andorra)

Identifier:  TDX:421

Handle: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11797/TDX421

Authors:  Ejarque Montolio, Ana

Abstract:
Previous research acknowledges the ancient and complex land-use history of European mountainous areas, which are characterised by a remarkable regional variability in terms of human practices and patterns of occupation during the Holocene. However, the combined palaeoenvironmental and archaeological study of highland human management at a microregional scale remains a largely unexplored research field, especially in the Pyrenees. This PhD project was performed as a part of an integrated palaeoenvironmental and archaeological research program which aims to understand the long-term shaping of the Madriu-Perafita-Claror valley (MPCV, Andorra), a high mountain cultural landscape included in 2004 in the UNESCO World Heritage List. Main objectives of this study are, firstly, to reconstruct human management and landscape shaping of high altitudinal Pyrenean spaces along the Holocene assessing those environmental and/or human factors involved, and secondly, to reconstruct microregional land-use and landscape variability in the shaping of highland spaces.<br/><br/>To accomplish these objectives a high temporal resolution palaeoenvironmental study which combines pollen with other biological proxies providing more local information such as stomata, non-pollen palynomorphs (NPPs), and macrocharcoal charred particles was carried out in the upper subalpine and alpine belts of the MPCV following a fine spatial-resolution strategy. Four nearby small peat and lake basins were studied at different altitudes and landscape settings of the main Madriu valley. Palaeoenvironmental results were afterwards compared with those of two other peat sequences located at the Madriu and the Perafita valley (Miras et al. 2007; Miras et al. in press) in order to detect small-scale land-use variability at both intra-valley (within the Madriu valley) and inter-valley (between Madriu and Perafita valley) scales. Palaeoecological results were further integrated with archaeological local data, and together underline the marked complexity of high mountain land-use system over the Holocene period. <br/><br/>Results drawn from this study stress the existence in the MPCV of different phases of microregional land-use and landscape variability at both intra-valley and inter-valley scales from the early Neolithic to the early Bronze Age and from the Roman Period to the Modern Era. The study show that landscape variability is not necessarily connected to topographic or climatic parameters, and underline the role of social, economical and cultural parameters in the land-use organisation and the landscape shaping of high mountain spaces since Prehistory. This study depicts highlands as cultural landscapes resulting from the long-term interaction of a diversified rage of land-uses, comprising grazing but also other activities related with woodland exploitation. Finally it demonstrates the value of combined palaeoenvironmental multi-proxy records and archaeological studies carried out at a microregional scale in the study of human mountain management and landscape change during the Holocene.<br/><br/>Keywords: cultural landscapes, landscape change, microregional landscape variability, high-mountain land-use, multi-proxy study, pollen, high mountain, landscape archaeology, eastern Pyrenees, Holocene