Table 18. Early Fields: Summary timeline of environmental and land use evidence compared to that from other sites in the region. Smith et al. Internet Archaeol. 47.

Table 18: Early Fields: Summary timeline of environmental and land use evidence compared to that from other sites in the region
	Mesolithic	Neolithic/Bronze Age	Early Iron Age-Middle Iron Age	Late Iron Age/Romano-British	Early Medieval	Mid-Medieval	Late Medieval	Post-medieval
Cwm Cilio	Woodland predominant – oak/hazel. Late Meso burning. ?clearance c. 5000 cal BC	EBA burning c. 1900–1750 cal BC. Soil micromorphological evidence of cultivation before field system established. First settlement nearby?	Predominantly grass and pasture with some woodland including alder, hazel, oak and birch. Scattered, open settlement	Woodland declines and increase in cultivation. Probable establishment of field system and nucleated settlement	Increasingly wet, grassland expanding. Recovery of woodland	Decline in woodland and increase in pasture. Some cultivation including hemp. Platform house settlement	Open, treeless landscape. Pasture with some cereals possible soil acidification. Possible decline in settlement
Braich y Gornel	Oak/hazel woodland maximum?	Some woodland locally. Burning clearance c. 1300–1000 cal BC followed by grassland, probably before establishment of field system	Grassland. Alder and hazel woodland declining. Associated with isolated roundhouse	Some cereal cultivation (barley). Associated with nucleated settlement?	Grassland increasing and further decline in woodland	Grassland increasing and further decline in woodland c. cal AD 1000–1100 cal BC	Sedges increasing from c. cal AD 1300 – Little Ice Age. Associated with rectangular hut?	Continued expansion of pasture but still some cereals
Fronhill, Muriau Gwyddelod	Brown earth soil developed under oak, hazel and alder woodland	Middle Neolithic clearance? Oak/hazel/alder woodland and grassland	?Boundary construction. Some cultivation of wheat and oats				Open landscape
Moel y Gerddi		More wooded prior to settlement construction	Wood land reduced. Plantago lanceolata shows human impact				Wood land declining	Wood land declining
Erw Wen		More wooded prior to settlement construction	As for MyG but more wooded
Moel y Gerddi upland valley mire	Fen with alder woodland increasing and later increase of birch and grasses	Early still much alder woodland. Then woodland, esp. alder and elm, declines sharply plus Mid Neo. first appearance of Plantago lanceolata	Woodland declining, grasses, heaths and Plantago lanceolata increasing suggesting much landscape impact	Some wood land recovery / Wood land declines	Some woodland recovery	Heathland – Grasses, sedges and heathers dominant. Woodland declining	Heathland dominant	Heathland dominant
Cefn Graeanog	Woodland with possibly some local clearance	Burning with pollen evidence of decline in woodland in Middle bronze Age	c. 400–200 cal BC major woodland clearance, start of agriculture and first buildings on site	Late Iron Age abandonment of site with hazel and birch secondary woodland up to about AD 50. After which Cefn Grg II – major increase in land use and arable	Site abandonment and woodland regeneration. From about AD 700–900 renewed woodland decline	Increase in cereal activity including hemp cultivation	Reduction in arable cultivation. Increase in grassland including damp grassland locally	Renewed cereal and hemp cultivation followed by change to pastoral economy

Internet Archaeology is an open access journal based in the Department of Archaeology, University of York. Except where otherwise noted, content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 (CC BY) Unported licence, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided that attribution to the author(s), the title of the work, the Internet Archaeology journal and the relevant URL/DOI are given.

Terms and Conditions | Legal Statements | Privacy Policy | Cookies Policy | Citing Internet Archaeology

Internet Archaeology content is preserved for the long term with the Archaeology Data Service. Help sustain and support open access publication by donating to our Open Access Archaeology Fund.