landnam
landnam [De].A Danish term, literally meaning ‘taking land’, usually applied to the process of forest clearance in preparation for farming. The term was introduced to the archaeological literature by J. Iversen in 1941 when describing the results of his investigations of pollen profiles in Denmark. He found charcoal layers associated with falls in the proportion of forest tree pollen, a rise in non-tree pollen, and in some cases cereal and cultivation-weed pollen at the same horizon. Iversen proposed that these changes were the kind of indicators that would be expected as a reflection of forest clearance for cultivation. The fact that these clearance episodes were not all of the same date, and that some pollen profiles had more than one phase of clearance, led to the suggestion that some kind of shifting cultivation was happening in the early and middle Neolithic of northern Europe. This is now generally rejected, although the term remains a useful one,...
[The entire page is 168 words long]
Join eNotes
Over 3,500 study guides, question and answer forums, literature criticism, reference content, and much more!
Oxford University Press Titles
