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- Izdebski, A., et al.
(author)
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Palaeoecological data indicates land-use changes across Europe linked to spatial heterogeneity in mortality during the Black Death pandemic
- 2022
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In: Nature Ecology & Evolution. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2397-334X. ; :6, s. 297-306
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The Black Death (1347–1352 CE) is the most renowned pandemic in human history, believed by many to have killed half of Europe’s population. However, despite advances in ancient DNA research that conclusively identified the pandemic’s causative agent (bacterium Yersinia pestis), our knowledge of the Black Death remains limited, based primarily on qualitative remarks in medieval written sources available for some areas of Western Europe. Here, we remedy this situation by applying a pioneering new approach, ‘big data palaeoecology’, which, starting from palynological data, evaluates the scale of the Black Death’s mortality on a regional scale across Europe. We collected pollen data on landscape change from 261 radiocarbon-dated coring sites (lakes and wetlands) located across 19 modern-day European countries. We used two independent methods of analysis to evaluate whether the changes we see in the landscape at the time of the Black Death agree with the hypothesis that a large portion of the population, upwards of half, died within a few years in the 21 historical regions we studied. While we can confirm that the Black Death had a devastating impact in some regions, we found that it had negligible or no impact in others. These inter-regional differences in the Black Death’s mortality across Europe demonstrate the significance of cultural, ecological, economic, societal and climatic factors that mediated the dissemination and impact of the disease. The complex interplay of these factors, along with the historical ecology of plague, should be a focus of future research on historical pandemics.
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| 2. |
- Díaz, S, et al.
(author)
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Assessing nature's contributions to people
- 2018
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In: Science. - : American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). - 0036-8075 .- 1095-9203. ; 359:6373, s. 270-272
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- A major challenge today and into the future is to maintain or enhance beneficial contributions of nature to a good quality of life for all people. This is among the key motivations of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), a joint global effort by governments, academia, and civil society to assess and promote knowledge of Earth's biodiversity and ecosystems and their contribution to human societies in order to inform policy formulation. One of the more recent key elements of the IPBES conceptual framework is the notion of nature's contributions to people (NCP), which builds on the ecosystem service concept popularized by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. But as we detail below, NCP as defined and put into practice in IPBES differs from earlier work in several important ways. First, the NCP approach recognizes the central and pervasive role that culture plays in defining all links between people and nature. Second, use of NCP elevates, emphasizes, and operationalizes the role of indigenous and local knowledge in understanding nature's contribution to people. The broad remit of IPBES requires it to engage a wide range of stakeholders, spanning from natural, social, humanistic, and engineering sciences to indigenous peoples and local communities in whose territories lie much of the world's biodiversity. Being an intergovernmental body, such inclusiveness is essential not only for advancing knowledge but also for the political legitimacy of assessment findings.
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| 3. |
- Jimenez, T. R., et al.
(author)
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The Canaveral de Leon stela (Huelva, Spain). A monumental sculpture in a landscape of settlements and pathways
- 2021
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In: Journal of Archaeological Science-Reports. - : Elsevier BV. - 2352-409X. ; 40
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- A newly discovered prehistoric stela from Can similar to averal de Le ' on (Huelva, Spain) is studied through a combination of scientific methods, including thin section petrography and lithological contextualisation, various state-of-the-art digital imaging techniques for the analysis of the engraved motifs (3D modelling and Reflectance Transformation Imaging), and detection of pigments on its surface (Principal Components Analysis, HSI-contrast stretch, ferric pigments index and algebraic operations between bands), as well as archaeological surveys aimed at establishing the landscape context the stela was part of. The results reveal this stela is analogous to a larger series of late prehistoric sculptures portraying personages with 'headdresses', largely concentrated in the Iberian south-west and often connected to Bronze Age settlements and burial sites. In addition, the Can similar to averal de Le ' on stela is closely associated to an old pathway that has had a historical prominence in terms of long-distance mobility, connecting various regions of western Spain in a South-North direction.
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