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In tracing the changing face of the Irish landscape, scholars have traditionally relied primarily on evidence from historical documents. However, such documentary sources provide a fragmentary record at best. Reliable accounts are very scarce for many parts of Ireland prior to the seventeenth century, and many of the relevant documents from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries focus selectively on matters relating to military or commercial interests.
Studies of fossilized pollen grains preserved in peats and lake muds provide an additional means of investigating vegetative landscape change. Details of changes in vegetation resulting from both human activities and natural events are reflected in the kinds and quantities of minute pollen grains that become trapped in sediments. Analysis of samples can identify which kinds of plants produced the preserved pollen grains and when they were deposited, and in many cases the findings can serve to supplement or correct the
For example, analyses of samples from Long Lough in County Down have revealed significant patterns of cereal-grain pollen beginning by about 400 A.D. The substantial clay content of the soil in this part of Down makes cultivation by primitive tools difficult. Historians thought that such soils were not tilled to any significant extent until the introduction of the moldboard plough to Ireland in the seventh century A.D. Because cereal cultivation would have required tilling of the soil, the pollen evidence indicates that these soils must indeed have been successfully tilled before the introduction of the new plough.
Another example concerns flax cultivation in County Down, one of the great linen-producing areas of Ireland during the eighteenth century. Some aspects of linen production in Down are well documented, but the
It must be stressed, though, that there are limits to the ability of the pollen record to reflect the vegetative history of the landscape. For example, pollen analyses cannot identify the species, but only the genus or family, of some plants. Among these is madder, a cultivated dye plant of historical importance in Ireland. Madder belongs to a plant family that also comprises various native weeds, including goosegrass. If madder pollen were present in a deposit it would be indistinguishable from that of uncultivated native species.
25.
The phrase "documentary record" (
a
documented results of analyses of fossilized pollen
b
the kinds and quantities of fossilized pollen grains preserved in peats and lake muds
c
written and pictorial descriptions by current historians of the events and landscapes of past centuries
d
government and commercial records, maps, and similar documents produced in the past that recorded conditions and events of that time
e
articles, books, and other documents by current historians listing and analyzing all the available evidence regarding a particular historical period