A 4.5 m sedimentary sequence collected from Sirok Nýrjes Tó in northeast Hungary reveals a record of environmental change from 10000 BP to the present day. Palaeoenvironmental analyses (pollen, charcoal, geochemistry and physical properties) of the sequence reveal an environment where parkland com posed of coniferous and broadleaved taxa existing at the start of the Holocene developed rapidly into deciduous broadleaved forest. From c. 8200 cal. BP, Corylus expanded rapidly and dominated the pollen assemblage until a series of fluctuations involving Corylus and Carpinus betulus which resulted in changes to the forest compo sition. These changes occurred over timescales of 72–288 years and are attributed to Neolithic and Copper Age forest use, perhaps under a woodland management regime such as coppicing or pollarding. Sedimentolog ical and geochemical records for this period are stable, suggesting that soil erosion was not occurring. Natural forest processes resumed following Copper Age settlement shifts but were subject to further, more extreme impacts during the Hungarian migrations and conquests of the 1st millennium ad. Landscape clearance is not evident until c. 2000 cal. BP, but was of insufficient intensity to initiate soil erosion.
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