Ralph Fyfe
Biographic Data
| ID | 268619 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ralph Fyfe |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ralph |
| FAMILY NAME | Fyfe |
| SIGNATURE | FYFE R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Plymouth |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5676-008X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 52 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 434 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 52 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2003 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 15 |
Prehistoric Landscape Change Around the Sources of Stonehenge’s Bluestones in Preseli, Wales
Integrating Heritage Assets into Peatland Restoration
Palynology, landscape and land use
We would like to thank Marcos Martinon-Torres and Efthymia Nikita for the kind invitation to contribute to this 50th anniversary volume. The comments of the anonymous referees were much appreciated
The Biad Standards
This article presents a series of recommendations for the publication of archaeological data, to improve their usability. These 12 recommendations were formulated by archaeological data experts who mined thousands of publications for different data types (including funerary practices, accelerator mass spectrometry dating, stable isotopes, zooarchaeology, archaeobotany and pathologies) during the initial construction of the Big Interdisciplinary A…
Revolution and continuity? Reassessing nineteenth-century moorland reclamation through palaeoecological and archival research
The upland moorlands of Britain are environmentally and culturally important ecosystems. Yet, our understanding of historical attempts to ‘reclaim’ these landscapes is often based upon incomplete accounts of agricultural ‘improvement’. Studies of historical landscape change have frequently focused on singular ‘revolutionary’ moments due to the limitation and biases of surviving historical sources, which has created a contemporary fixation on ‘rev…
The development of arable cultivation in the south-east of England and its relationship with vegetation cover
The onset of prehistoric farming brought unprecedented changes to landscapes and their biodiversity. Past biodiversity patterns are broadly understood for different parts of Europe, and demonstrate trajectories that have been linked to prehistoric and historic demographic transitions, and associated land-use practices. To our knowledge, this paper is the first attempt to directly link evidence of agricultural practice from the archaeological reco…
Variability in feeding habitats of red deer sensu lato in Eurasia in the Late Pleistocene and Holocene
Agricultural systems regulate plant and insect diversity and induce ecosystem novelty
Land-use change plays an important role in shaping plant and insect diversity over long time timescales. Great Britain provides an ideal case study to investigate patterns of long-term vegetation and insect diversity change owing to the existence of spatially and temporally extensive environmental archives (lake sediments, peatlands, and archaeological sites) and a long history of landscape transformation through agrarian change. The trends ident…
Tracking Hunter-Gatherer Impact on Vegetation in Last Interglacial and Holocene Europe
We review palaeoenvironmental proxies and combinations of these relevant for understanding hunter-gatherer niche construction activities in pre-agricultural Europe. Our approach consists of two steps: (1) identify the possible range of hunter-gatherer impacts on landscapes based on ethnographic studies; (2) evaluate proxies possibly reflecting these impacts for both the Eemian (Last Interglacial, Middle Palaeolithic) and the Early–Middle Holocene…
Mediterranean landscape change during the Holocene
This synthesis paper offers a comparative perspective on how seven different Mediterranean regions, from Iberia and Morocco to the Levant, have been transformed by human and natural agencies during the past 10 millennia. It draws on a range of data sources: notably (1) archaeological site surveys ( n = 32,000) and 14 C dates ( n = 12,000) as proxies for long-term population change, (2) pollen records as a proxy for past vegetation and land cover …
Holocene landscape dynamics and long-term population trends in the Levant
This paper explores long-term trends in human population and vegetation change in the Levant from the early to the late Holocene in order to assess when and how human impact has shaped the region’s landscapes over the millennia. To do so, we employed multiple proxies and compared archaeological, pollen and palaeoclimate data within a multi-scalar approach in order to assess how Holocene landscape dynamics change at different geographical scales. …
Tyrrhenian central Italy
This paper compares changes in vegetation structure and composition (using synthetic fossil pollen data) with proxy data for population levels (including settlements and radiocarbon dates) over the course of the last 10 millennia in Tyrrhenian central Italy. These data show generalised patterns of clearance of woodland in response both to early agriculturalists and urbanism, as well as the specific adoption of tree crops and variations in stock g…
The changing face of the Mediterranean – Land cover, demography and environmental change
This paper introduces a special issue on The Changing Face of the Mediterranean: Land Cover, Demography, and Environmental Change, which brings together up-to-date regional or thematic perspectives on major long-term trends in Mediterranean human–environment relations. Particularly, important insights are provided by palynology to reconstruct past vegetation and land cover, and archaeology to establish long-term demographic trends, but with furth…
Pollen-inferred regional vegetation patterns and demographic change in Southern Anatolia through the Holocene
Southern Anatolia is a highly significant area within the Mediterranean, particularly in terms of understanding how agriculture moved into Europe from neighbouring regions. This study uses pollen, palaeoclimate and archaeological evidence to investigate the relationships between demography and vegetation change, and to explore how the development of agriculture varied spatially. Data from 21 fossil pollen records have been transformed into forest…
From influence to impact
Archaeobotany is used to discover details on local land uses in prehistoric settlements developed during the middle and beginning of late Holocene. Six archaeological sites from four countries (Spain, Italy, Greece, and Turkey) have pollen and charcoal records showing clear signs of the agrarian systems that had developed in the Mediterranean basin during different cultural phases, from pre-Neolithic to Recent Bronze Age. A selected list of polle…
Long-term trends of land use and demography in Greece
This paper offers a comparative study of land use and demographic development in northern and southern Greece from the Neolithic to the Byzantine period. Results from summed probability densities (SPD) of archaeological radiocarbon dates and settlement numbers derived from archaeological site surveys are combined with results from cluster-based analysis of published pollen core assemblages to offer an integrated view of human pressure on the Gree…
Prehistoric palaeodemographics and regional land cover change in eastern Iberia
Much attention has been placed on the drivers of vegetation change on the Iberian Peninsula. While climate plays a key role in determining the species pools within different regions and exerts a strong influence on broad vegetation patterning, the role of humans, particularly during prehistory, is less clear. The aim of this paper is to assess the influence of prehistoric population change on shaping vegetation patterns in eastern Iberia and the …
Holocene land cover and population dynamics in Southern France
This paper describes long-term changes in human population and vegetation cover in southern France, using summed radiocarbon probability distributions and site count data as population proxies and information from fossil pollen cores as a proxy for past land cover. Southern France is particularly well-suited to this type of study as a result of previous programmes of intensive survey work and excavation in advance of large-scale construction. The…
Supply and demand in prehistory? Economics of Neolithic mining in northwest Europe
Glastonbury Lake Village Revisited
Glastonbury Lake Village is one of the most iconic late prehistoric wetland settlements in Europe. A new excavation in the core of Glastonbury Lake Village, for the first time since 1907, provided the opportunity for sampling of deposits associated with occupation of the site and for reconstructing the environmental conditions before the settlement was constructed. The results of a detailed multiproxy study are presented, including palaeoecologic…
Holocene fluctuations in human population demonstrate repeated links to food production and climate
Significance The relationship between human population, food production, and climate change is a pressing concern in need of high-resolution, long-term perspectives. Archaeological radiocarbon dates have increasingly been used to reconstruct past population dynamics, and Britain and Ireland provide both radiocarbon sampling densities and species-level sample identifications that are globally unrivalled. We use this evidence to demonstrate multipl…
Late-glacial and Holocene European pollen data
The European Pollen Database (EPD) is a community effort to archive and make available pollen sequences from across the European continent. Pollen sequences provide records that may be used to infer past vegetation and vegetation change. We present here maps based on 828 sites from the EPD giving an overview of changes in postglacial pollen assemblages in Europe over the past 15,000 years. The maps show the distribution and abundance of 54 differ…
Trajectories of change in Mediterranean Holocene vegetation through classification of pollen data
Pollen‐based quantitative reconstructions of Holocene regional vegetation cover (plant‐functional types and land‐cover types) in Europe suitable for climate modelling
We present quantitative reconstructions of regional vegetation cover in north‐western Europe, western Europe north of the Alps, and eastern Europe for five time windows in the Holocene [around 6k, 3k, 0.5k, 0.2k, and 0.05k calendar years before present ( bp )] at a 1° × 1° spatial scale with the objective of producing vegetation descriptions suitable for climate modelling. The REVEALS model was applied on 636 pollen records from lakes and bogs to…
Vegetation and Land-Use Change in Northern Europe During Late Antiquity
This chapter presents an overview of land cover and land use change in northern Europe, particularly during Late Antiquity ( ca . 3rd–8th c. AD ) based on fossil pollen preserved in sediments. We have transformed fossil pollen datasets from 462 sites into eight major land-cover classes using the pseudobiomisation method ( PBM ). Through using pollen-vegetation evidence, we show that north-central Europe, lying outside the Roman frontier (the so-c…
The impact of the Neolithic agricultural transition in Britain
Long-term trends of land use and demography in Greece
This paper offers a comparative study of land use and demographic development in northern and southern Greece from the Neolithic to the Byzantine period. Results from summed probability densities (SPD) of archaeological radiocarbon dates and settlement numbers derived from archaeological site surveys are combined with results from cluster-based analysis of published pollen core assemblages to offer an integrated view of human pressure on the Gree…
GIS and the application of a model of pollen deposition and dispersal
Towards mapping the late Quaternary vegetation change of Europe
The number of well-dated pollen diagrams in Europe has increased considerably over the last 30 years and many of them have been submitted to the European Pollen Database (EPD). This allows for the construction of increasingly precise maps of Holocene vegetation change across the continent. Chronological information in the EPD has been expressed in uncalibrated radiocarbon years, and most chronologies to date are based on this time scale. Here we …
Bronze Age upland settlement decline in southwest England
Mediterranean landscape change during the Holocene
This synthesis paper offers a comparative perspective on how seven different Mediterranean regions, from Iberia and Morocco to the Levant, have been transformed by human and natural agencies during the past 10 millennia. It draws on a range of data sources: notably (1) archaeological site surveys ( n = 32,000) and 14 C dates ( n = 12,000) as proxies for long-term population change, (2) pollen records as a proxy for past vegetation and land cover …
Holocene land cover and population dynamics in Southern France
This paper describes long-term changes in human population and vegetation cover in southern France, using summed radiocarbon probability distributions and site count data as population proxies and information from fossil pollen cores as a proxy for past land cover. Southern France is particularly well-suited to this type of study as a result of previous programmes of intensive survey work and excavation in advance of large-scale construction. The…
Historical context and chronology of Bronze Age land enclosure on Dartmoor, UK
From influence to impact
Archaeobotany is used to discover details on local land uses in prehistoric settlements developed during the middle and beginning of late Holocene. Six archaeological sites from four countries (Spain, Italy, Greece, and Turkey) have pollen and charcoal records showing clear signs of the agrarian systems that had developed in the Mediterranean basin during different cultural phases, from pre-Neolithic to Recent Bronze Age. A selected list of polle…
Moving forwards? Palynology and the human dimension
Prehistoric palaeodemographics and regional land cover change in eastern Iberia
Much attention has been placed on the drivers of vegetation change on the Iberian Peninsula. While climate plays a key role in determining the species pools within different regions and exerts a strong influence on broad vegetation patterning, the role of humans, particularly during prehistory, is less clear. The aim of this paper is to assess the influence of prehistoric population change on shaping vegetation patterns in eastern Iberia and the …
The European Pollen Database
Pollen stratigraphies are the most spatially extensive data available for the reconstruction of past land-cover change. Detailed knowledge of past land-cover is becoming increasingly important to evaluate the present trends in, and drivers of, vegetation composition. The European Pollen Database (EPD) was established in the late 1980s and developed in the early 1990s to provide a structure for archiving, exchanging, and analysing Quaternary polle…
The European Modern Pollen Database (EMPD) project
Pollen-inferred regional vegetation patterns and demographic change in Southern Anatolia through the Holocene
Southern Anatolia is a highly significant area within the Mediterranean, particularly in terms of understanding how agriculture moved into Europe from neighbouring regions. This study uses pollen, palaeoclimate and archaeological evidence to investigate the relationships between demography and vegetation change, and to explore how the development of agriculture varied spatially. Data from 21 fossil pollen records have been transformed into forest…
Is Neolithic land use correlated with demography? An evaluation of pollen-derived land cover and radiocarbon-inferred demographic change from Central Europe
The transformation of natural landscapes in Middle Europe began in the Neolithic as a result of the introduction of food-producing economies. This paper examines the relation between land-cover and demographic change in a regionally restricted case study. The study area is the Western Lake Constance area which has very detailed palynological as well as archaeological records. We compare land-cover change derived from nine pollen records using a p…
Trajectories of change in Mediterranean Holocene vegetation through classification of pollen data
Mid- to late-Holocene vegetation history of Greater Exmoor, UK
Tyrrhenian central Italy
This paper compares changes in vegetation structure and composition (using synthetic fossil pollen data) with proxy data for population levels (including settlements and radiocarbon dates) over the course of the last 10 millennia in Tyrrhenian central Italy. These data show generalised patterns of clearance of woodland in response both to early agriculturalists and urbanism, as well as the specific adoption of tree crops and variations in stock g…
Holocene landscape dynamics and long-term population trends in the Levant
This paper explores long-term trends in human population and vegetation change in the Levant from the early to the late Holocene in order to assess when and how human impact has shaped the region’s landscapes over the millennia. To do so, we employed multiple proxies and compared archaeological, pollen and palaeoclimate data within a multi-scalar approach in order to assess how Holocene landscape dynamics change at different geographical scales. …
Bronze Age landscape dynamics
Pollen modelling, palaeoecology and archaeology
A pollen-based pseudobiomisation approach to anthropogenic land-cover change
The degree of anthropogenic modification of land cover through the mid to late Holocene is of significant interest for archaeologists, climate modellers and conservation ecologists, amongst others. Spatially extensive pollen data provide an appropriate resource for the reconstruction of land-cover change; however, traditional simple methods (e.g. the AP/NAP ratio) do not provide the degree of detail required for these user groups. A range of more…
Characterising the late prehistoric, ‘Romano-British’ and medieval landscape, and dating the emergence of a regionally distinct agricultural system in South West Britain
Beyond Villages and Open Fields
(2006). Beyond Villages and Open Fields: The Origins and Development of a Historic Landscape Characterised by Dispersed Settlement in South-West England. Medieval Archaeology: Vol. 50, No. 1, pp. 31-70
The changing face of the Mediterranean – Land cover, demography and environmental change
This paper introduces a special issue on The Changing Face of the Mediterranean: Land Cover, Demography, and Environmental Change, which brings together up-to-date regional or thematic perspectives on major long-term trends in Mediterranean human–environment relations. Particularly, important insights are provided by palynology to reconstruct past vegetation and land cover, and archaeology to establish long-term demographic trends, but with furth…
Mid- to late-Holocene vegetation history of Greater Exmoor, UK
Mesolithic to Bronze Age Vegetation Change and Human Activity in the Exe Valley, Devon, UK
This paper presents the results of the first investigation of vegetation change and human activity from a river valley west of the Somerset Levels. The record is contrasted with the pollen and archaeological record from south-west uplands (Dartmoor and Exmoor) and the Somerset Levels. Vegetation change and archaeological evidence are shown to be generally consistent, with evidence from the middle valley of Mesolithic vegetation disturbance (with …
Characterising the late prehistoric, ‘Romano-British’ and medieval landscape, and dating the emergence of a regionally distinct agricultural system in South West Britain
GIS and the application of a model of pollen deposition and dispersal
Beyond Villages and Open Fields
(2006). Beyond Villages and Open Fields: The Origins and Development of a Historic Landscape Characterised by Dispersed Settlement in South-West England. Medieval Archaeology: Vol. 50, No. 1, pp. 31-70
Pollen modelling, palaeoecology and archaeology
Bronze Age upland settlement decline in southwest England
Pollen productivity estimates of key European plant taxa for quantitative reconstruction of past vegetation
Pollen productivity estimates from the forest—tundra ecotone in west-central Sweden
Successful reconstruction of vegetation from fossil pollen data in the arctic and alpine tundra, and at the forest—tundra ecotone, is hampered by low pollen production of the major taxa in these environments and the likely dominance of the background pollen component. New approaches to the quantification of vegetation from pollen data (the REVEALS and LOVE models) rely on quantification of background and local pollen by applying models of pollen …
Historical context and chronology of Bronze Age land enclosure on Dartmoor, UK
The use of pollen analysis to reveal Holocene treeline dynamics
This paper presents the results of simulated pollen counts from the central Scandes Mountains in Sweden which are used to examine the application of a pollen-based modelling approach to treeline fluctuations. Treelines are considered sensitive indicators of climate variability, and greater consideration of the palynological signal of treeline fluctuations is important in critical and rigorous use of pollen analysis to reconstruct variations in tr…
The European Pollen Database
Pollen stratigraphies are the most spatially extensive data available for the reconstruction of past land-cover change. Detailed knowledge of past land-cover is becoming increasingly important to evaluate the present trends in, and drivers of, vegetation composition. The European Pollen Database (EPD) was established in the late 1980s and developed in the early 1990s to provide a structure for archiving, exchanging, and analysing Quaternary polle…
Lindow Man
Holocene land-cover reconstructions for studies on land cover-climate feedbacks
The major objectives of this paper are: (1) to review the pros and cons of the scenarios of past anthropogenic land cover change (ALCC) developed during the last ten years, (2) to discuss issues related to pollen-based reconstruction of the past land-cover and introduce a new method, REVEALS (Regional Estimates of VEgetation Abundance from Large Sites), to infer long-term records of past land-cover from pollen data, (3) to present a new project (…
Pushing the boundaries of data? Issues in the construction of rich visual past landscapes
A pollen-based pseudobiomisation approach to anthropogenic land-cover change
The degree of anthropogenic modification of land cover through the mid to late Holocene is of significant interest for archaeologists, climate modellers and conservation ecologists, amongst others. Spatially extensive pollen data provide an appropriate resource for the reconstruction of land-cover change; however, traditional simple methods (e.g. the AP/NAP ratio) do not provide the degree of detail required for these user groups. A range of more…
The date and context of a stone row
The beginning of monolithic monumentality in Europe is of outstanding significance and its accurate dating a consummation devoutly to be wished. In this case study from England, the researchers had the good fortune to find monoliths stratified above and below by peat and so were able to give them a bracketed radiocarbon date and an environmental context. The results show that the stones, belonging to a linear alignment of eight others, were erect…
How ‘close’ can we push data? The challenges and potential of fossil pollen data for local-scale reconstruction of vegetation change
A spatial approach to upland vegetation change and human impact
Uplands have long been considered important ‘barometers’ for human-environment relationships. Five pollen sequences from the upper Aber Valley (Snowdonia), across an altitudinal gradient, reveal that human impacts have varied temporally on small spatial scales in the region. Woodland taxa persisted into the later Holocene at lower altitudes and sites located at higher altitude reveal a more open landscape history, possibly as a result of increase…
The impact of the Neolithic agricultural transition in Britain
Bronze Age landscape dynamics
Towards mapping the late Quaternary vegetation change of Europe
The number of well-dated pollen diagrams in Europe has increased considerably over the last 30 years and many of them have been submitted to the European Pollen Database (EPD). This allows for the construction of increasingly precise maps of Holocene vegetation change across the continent. Chronological information in the EPD has been expressed in uncalibrated radiocarbon years, and most chronologies to date are based on this time scale. Here we …
The European Modern Pollen Database (EMPD) project
Managing, Valuing, and Protecting Heritage Resources in the Twenty-First Century
This paper argues that the development of the Ecosystem Services framework, which has recently emerged as an internationally recognized framework for valuing 'the 'natural capital' of ecosystems, presents a number of opportunities for heritage management and the archaeological record, arguing that the inclusion of archaeological and palaeoenvironmental 'value' within this framework presents an opportunity to incorporate heritage alongside a range…
Is Neolithic land use correlated with demography? An evaluation of pollen-derived land cover and radiocarbon-inferred demographic change from Central Europe
The transformation of natural landscapes in Middle Europe began in the Neolithic as a result of the introduction of food-producing economies. This paper examines the relation between land-cover and demographic change in a regionally restricted case study. The study area is the Western Lake Constance area which has very detailed palynological as well as archaeological records. We compare land-cover change derived from nine pollen records using a p…
Geography (46 works) · Geology and Paleoclimatology Research (40 works) · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies (39 works) · Ecology (38 works) · Archaeology (37 works) · Physical geography (27 works) · Pollen (27 works) · Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology (25 works) · Biology (24 works) · Holocene (24 works)