Archaeobotany and paleoecology

My field of research the Archaeobotany (or called also Paleoethnobotany) is a discipline of Botany closely related to Archaeology and its techniques. It focuses on the investigation of the relation between man and the plants in the past and could be considered as part of the research on vegetation history. By analysing plant remains related to both historical and prehistorical sites ancient cultivated and wild growing floras are reconstructed. The main questions of this research topic are:

•Where did the cultivated plants originate and how they spread and how did their use develop through the time?

•Which plants and plant materials were used for which purposes and why?

•How was the vegetation shaped by the human activities into its present state?

•To which extend the vegetation change was climatically or anthropogenically driven?

Plant remains as different as plant macrofossils (seeds, fruits, inflorescences, leaves, wood, etc. plant remains bigger than 0,2 mm) or plant microfossils (pollen, spores, phytoliths, algae, etc. usually smaller than 0,2 mm) are used as sources of archaeobotanical information. According to this fact, archaeobotany makes use of manifold related disciplines: macrofossil analysis (carpology), wood anatomy and wood charcoal analysis (anthracology), dendrochronology (with annual ring analysis) and dendroclimatology, palynology (pollen analysis), plant morphology and anatomy, plant systematics and plant sociology.

Current Projects:

SUSTAIN: Sustainability of Agriculture in Neolithic Europe

Bad Waldsee: Auswirkungen mittelalterlicher bis frühneuzeitlicher Stadtentwicklung auf Gewässer am Beispiel von Bad Waldsee

THEFBO: Textile craftsmanship in the prehistoric wetland settlements on Lake Constance and Upper Swabia

PLANTCULT: Investigating the food cultures of ancient Europe