In tracing the changing face of the Irish landscape, scholars have traditionally relied primarily on evidence from historical documents.
Topic
How fossilized pollen analysis supplements (and sometimes corrects) the documentary record in tracing the Irish landscape's history.
Framework
Highlight Noteworthy. The author introduces pollen analysis as an additional method, walks through cases where it corrected or supplemented the documentary record, and notes its limits.
Main Point
Pollen analysis is a valuable supplement to the documentary record for studying Irish landscape change — sometimes correcting it (cereal cultivation in County Down predated the moldboard plough; flax was not actually cultivated in Down before the eighteenth century) — though pollen analysis has its own limits (it can't always identify species).
P1: The documentary record is fragmentary
Scholars traditionally relied on documentary evidence, but reliable accounts are scarce before the seventeenth century, and the surviving documents focus selectively on military or commercial matters.
P2: Pollen analysis as a supplement
Studies of fossilized pollen grains in peats and lake muds offer an additional method. Pollen identifies the plants that produced it and when. The findings can supplement or correct the documentary record.
P3: Example 1 — cereal grains in County Down
Pollen analysis at Long Lough shows significant cereal-grain pollen by 400 A.D. Historians had thought the heavy clay soil there couldn't have been tilled until the moldboard plough arrived in the seventh century. But cereal cultivation requires tilling — so the soils must have been successfully tilled before the new plough.