Considerable evidence for Holocene palaeoenvironmental change has been obtained from the Somerset Levels and Moors since the pioneering work of Harry Godwin in the 1940s. In this paper we present an up-to-date synthesis of these records, with independent scientific chronologies, reconstructing the wider landscape setting and land cover dynamics in and around the Levels from the Late Mesolithic to Early Bronze Age (c. 4500–2000 cal BC). As part of the ERC funded Times of Their Lives project, extant pollen datasets have been collated, age-depth models refined, and the Multiple Scenario Approach (MSA) to land cover reconstruction is being undertaken in order to create maps of possible past vegetation mosaics in and around the Levels for key time slices.
Environmental reconstructions from pollen records collected within archaeological landscapes have traditionally taken a broadly narrative approach. Pollen diagrams are interpreted in the form of a series of descriptions of changing land cover, drawing on ecological and archaeological understandings, with few attempts made at hypothesis testing or formal assessment of uncertainty. The MSA offers a radically different way to use pollen data to reconstruct past land cover. Using ecological, topographic, geological and archaeological constraints within a GIS to produce a large number of hypothetical landscapes, the MSA simulates the pollen signal of each of these alternates then compares it statistically with an actual pollen record to identify which are plausible reconstructions.
Analysis of these reconstructions allows us to consider the extent to which activity within and around the wetlands and in the surrounding hills might be expected to be detectable in pollen records from the Levels peats, and to provide a context for improved understanding of the cultural reshaping of this iconic landscape during the Neolithic.