Pollen grains and spores have a highly resistant wall than can preserve over thousands of years. Using this characteristic, palynologist research the past environments and human-environment...Show morePollen grains and spores have a highly resistant wall than can preserve over thousands of years. Using this characteristic, palynologist research the past environments and human-environment relations. For archaeology this is crucial information and often a general part of research on a site. As was the case at the Bronze Age burial landscape at Oss-Gewandeweg. At this site, only remains of burial mounds were left due to agricultural levelling. The remaining features, circular ditch fills were sampled for palynological analysis. However, the samples were taken from a sandy depositional context which is unideal for pollen and spore preservation. In this thesis, the reliability of these samples is assessed. If the samples are not reliable they will portray an false vegetational reconstruction. This has scientific and social implications. Palynology is plays a role in the climate change debate and should be used wrongly because of this societal value. Two research questions have been formulated in order to fulfil this goal. The first research question was aimed to study the taphonomy of the palynomorphs and the effect the sandy depositional context had on the preservation. Besides the typical production bias and dispersal bias, the preservation context increases the differential degradation bias. The sand grains provide gaps through which water can leach and oxidize the pollen. The more oxidized the pollen are, the more susceptible to micro-organism attack. Biological degradation is thus also increased. The preservation states of the pollen in the samples also illustrated the poor preservation. The second research question included a comparative analysis between the ecological reconstruction based on the samples form Oss-Gewandeweg and Oss-Mettegeul, just five kilometres apart. The lower taxa diversity, absence of certain taxa and lower proportionality of certain taxa all point to a worse preservation context compared to the samples at Oss-Mettegeul. Recommendations for future research is to sample sediment which is dark-coloured and fine-grained. If samples from the Bronze Age ditch fill are required, phytolith analysis would be a great alternative. Phytoliths are inorganic and preserve better than pollen, spores and macrofossils.Show less
For a project, sediment samples of a lake located in the Libellenvallei, Meijendel (Wassenaar), were taken throughout the winter. Botanic macrofossils were extracted from these taken samples. These...Show moreFor a project, sediment samples of a lake located in the Libellenvallei, Meijendel (Wassenaar), were taken throughout the winter. Botanic macrofossils were extracted from these taken samples. These macrofossils got identified by multiple students of the University of Leiden. Taphonomic processes were the main focus of this project, and the choice was made to focus on the sexual strategies and the lifecycles of the found taxa. Sexual strategies can be considered a key element when it comes to the forming of a macrofossil assemblage. That can grant researchers plenty of information. The present can serve as a good indication of taphonomic processes that happened in the past. The mission of the project at Meijendel was to better understand the environmental context of archaeological sites. Knowing the taphonomic processes of a modern macrofossil assemblage and having good indications of how these macrofossils ended up at this location, can be a good source of information for less modern archaeological sites. The present can help us with making conclusions of vegetations of the past. Observations of taphonomic processes at different archaeological sites can allow predictive models to be constructed that can show palaeovegetation reconstruction. These predictive models are the reason why this research can be considered valuable for future archaeological research.Show less
