Reading Pollen Records at Peloponnese, Greece

Abstract: The eastern Mediterranean area is a region of high archaeological importance, it is also a region where climate has been a force interacting with humans in shaping the landscape and vegetation history. Variations in pollen content and composition in various climate archives (e.g. lake sediments and peat sections) are widely used to reconstruct vegetation changes and human impact in the Quaternary environments. Pollen sampling has been conducted throughout the Peloponnese peninsula but there is a lack of regional synthesis of these locally based studies. The aims of the thesis are partly to show how pollen data may be used in a regional analysis on Late Pleistocene and Holocene vegetation changes, partly to assemble all published pollen data from Peloponnese peninsula in a database. The question formulations are; i) how may a database with pollen dataserve as a basis for interpretations of regional vegetation changes on Peloponnese?, ii) what are the possibilities of using classification of pollen and distinguish between driving factors behind the historic vegetation changes? The constructed database facilitates further research regarding pollen records at Peloponnese. Pollen recordsmay show important patterns in landscape changes during Late Pleistocene and Holocene but using pollen records at a regional scale need comparisons between coring sites which may be troublesome due to different approaches, different species investigated and varied calculation of pollen sum. In order to distinguish between driving forces and actors affecting the vegetation, pollen data may be used both in detail but also in using groups and classifications of the pollen included.