Making the Holocene cultural landscape; archaeological and palaeoecological perspectives from Quaternary entomology

The proposed work will be a major review book which will summarise and evaluate, for the first time, research associated with fossilised insect fragments from archaeological sites over the last 10,000 years. Such fragments are preserved in waterlogged and damp deposits and can tell us immense detail about how humans lived in prehistory, how they affected the landscape when they moved to a farming way of life and destroyed the wildwood, and how the development of urban centres changed the appearance of the landscape forever. Such an exercise has not been previously undertaken from a fossil insect perspective, in the context of current archaeological and palaeoenvironmental debates, nor has the research been made readily accessible to the non-specialist. The geographical focus of the work will be on the British Isles, where the majority of research in this field has been undertaken, although records from elsewhere in Europe and further a field will be drawn upon where relevant.

The central theme of the book is concerned with the development of the 'cultural landscape'. The cultural landscape is the environment which surrounds us and which has been shaped by our interactions with all the constituent parts of that environment. It is the habitat that the human race has created through conflict and cooperation over thousands of years, the product of human interaction with nature and is as much part of the story of our existence as that of the physical landscape. The book will build upon the author's doctoral research entitled 'The evolution of the Holocene wetland landscape of the Humberhead Levels from a fossil insect perspective', drawing upon case studies therein, published and unpublished research by the applicant, but also other archaeological investigations undertaken by specialists in this field over the last fifty or more years.

The review will be underpinned by a through and robust re-evaluation of the timing of events and differences at the national and regional scale. The sorts of questions which will be addressed are, for instance, what are the differences between the development of the British and Irish landscapes? Although superficially very similar landscapes, their development has been subject to different physical and socio-political forces. What are the differences between regions of Britain, such as southern and northern England? Do these tell us something about how these landscapes developed and were manipulated by humans? What were the major impacts with the development of agriculture and urbanisation? How do results compare with other archaeological and palaeoenvironmental data? What are the major challenges to our understanding of the fossil insect fauna? What are its limitations and the areas which require addressing further, both in terms of space and time coverage and methodologies?

There will be no primary collection of data. The project will utilise published and unpublished material from the applicant's PhD thesis and other unpublished Irish work, as well as drawing upon a selection of published sites by other workers. The book will follow a chronological narrative, opening with the end of the last ice age and following key stages in the development of the cultural landscape and finishing in the 18th century, the date of the most recent information available.

There will be two outputs to the project: a single authored book and a paper in a peer-reviewed journal. The book will be primarily aimed at other archaeologists (including but not exclusively environmental archaeologists), landscape historians and those interested in Quaternary environmental change and students of these disciplines. The paper will be aimed at archaeological scientists and will summarise the major trends and findings of the project. The programme of research is already advanced and outputs will be complete by the end ofthe sabbatical period.