Landscapes for Neolithic people in Mainland, Orkney (2022)
Journal Article
Bunting, M. J., Farrell, M., Dunbar, E., Reimer, P., Bayliss, A., Marshall, P., & Whittle, A. (2022). Landscapes for Neolithic people in Mainland, Orkney. Journal of world prehistory, 35(1), 87-107. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10963-022-09166-y

Neolithic occupation of the Orkney Islands, in the north of Scotland, probably began in the mid fourth millennium cal BC, culminating in a range of settlements, including stone-built houses, varied stone-built tombs and two noteworthy stone circles.... Read More about Landscapes for Neolithic people in Mainland, Orkney.

Land management explains major trends in forest structure and composition over the last millennium in California's Klamath Mountains (2022)
Journal Article
Knight, C. A., Anderson, L., Bunting, M. J., Champagne, M., Clayburn, R. M., Crawford, J. N., …Battles, J. J. (2022). Land management explains major trends in forest structure and composition over the last millennium in California's Klamath Mountains. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 119(12), Article e2116264119. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2116264119

For millennia, forest ecosystems in California have been shaped by fire from both natural processes and Indigenous land management, but the notion of climatic variation as a primary controller of the pre-colonial landscape remains pervasive. Understa... Read More about Land management explains major trends in forest structure and composition over the last millennium in California's Klamath Mountains.

Do Local Habitat Conditions Affect Estimates of Relative Pollen Productivity and Source Area in Heathlands? (2022)
Journal Article
Bunting, M. J., & Farrell, M. (in press). Do Local Habitat Conditions Affect Estimates of Relative Pollen Productivity and Source Area in Heathlands?. Frontiers in ecology and evolution, 10, Article 787345. https://doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2022.787345

Relative Pollen Productivity is an essential parameter for quantitative reconstruction of past land cover from pollen records, but published studies have produced a range of different values for the same taxa. Heathland habitats have limited plant di... Read More about Do Local Habitat Conditions Affect Estimates of Relative Pollen Productivity and Source Area in Heathlands?.

Modern pollen studies from tropical Africa and their use in palaeoecology (2021)
Book Chapter
Julier, A. C., Manzano, S., Razanatsoa, E., Razafimanantsoa, A. H., Githumbi, E., Hawthorne, D., …Bunting, J. (2021). Modern pollen studies from tropical Africa and their use in palaeoecology. In J. Runge, W. D. Gosling, A. Lézine, & L. Scott (Eds.), Quaternary Vegetation Dynamics – The African Pollen Database (317-348). London: CRC Press. https://doi.org/10.1201/9781003162766-21

Modern pollen studies are valuable for the calibration of pollen records and contribute to the understanding of past vegetation dynamics. Here, we present a qualitative review of available published and (where possible) unpublished modern pollen stud... Read More about Modern pollen studies from tropical Africa and their use in palaeoecology.

Pollen productivity estimates from KwaZulu-Natal Drakensberg, South Africa (2021)
Book Chapter
Hill, T. R., Duthie, T. J., & Bunting, J. (2021). Pollen productivity estimates from KwaZulu-Natal Drakensberg, South Africa. In J. Runge, W. D. Gosling, A. Lézine, & L. Scott (Eds.), Quaternary Vegetation Dynamics – The African Pollen Database (259-274). London: CRC Press. https://doi.org/10.1201/9781003162766-16

Pollen assemblages from sedimentary sequences reflect the landscapes surrounding the basin at the time of deposition, however the translation of pollen records into estimates or maps of past landcover is complex. Models of the pollen-vegetation relat... Read More about Pollen productivity estimates from KwaZulu-Natal Drakensberg, South Africa.

Are modern pollen assemblages from soils and mosses the same? A comparison of natural pollen traps from subtropical China (2021)
Journal Article
Fang, Y., Bunting, M. J., Ma, C., & Yang, X. (2022). Are modern pollen assemblages from soils and mosses the same? A comparison of natural pollen traps from subtropical China. CATENA, 209(1), Article 105790. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.catena.2021.105790

This study investigated the pollen spectra from 46 pairs of soil and moss samples (pairs collected within a 1 m2 squared area). The samples were collected from six common subtropical vegetation communities in the Meiling Mountains, southeast China, w... Read More about Are modern pollen assemblages from soils and mosses the same? A comparison of natural pollen traps from subtropical China.

Brownfield sites promote biodiversity at a landscape scale (2021)
Journal Article
Macgregor, C. J., Bunting, M. J., Deutz, P., Bourn, N. A., Roy, D. B., & Mayes, W. M. (2022). Brownfield sites promote biodiversity at a landscape scale. The Science of the total environment, 804, Article 150162. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.150162

Repurposing of brownfield sites is often promoted, because it is perceived that protecting the “green belt” limits damage to biodiversity; yet brownfield sites provide scarce habitats with limited disturbance, so conversely are also perceived to be e... Read More about Brownfield sites promote biodiversity at a landscape scale.

Linking modern pollen accumulation rates to biomass: Quantitative vegetation reconstruction in the western Klamath Mountains, NW California, USA (2021)
Journal Article
Knight, C., Baskaran, M., Bunting, M. J., Champagne, M., Potts, M., Wahl, D., …Battles, J. (2021). Linking modern pollen accumulation rates to biomass: Quantitative vegetation reconstruction in the western Klamath Mountains, NW California, USA. Holocene, 31(5), 814-829. https://doi.org/10.1177/0959683620988038

Quantitative reconstructions of vegetation abundance from sediment-derived pollen systems provide unique insights into past ecological conditions. Recently, the use of pollen accumulation rates (PAR, grains cm−2 year−1) has shown promise as a bioprox... Read More about Linking modern pollen accumulation rates to biomass: Quantitative vegetation reconstruction in the western Klamath Mountains, NW California, USA.

Relative pollen productivity estimates for alpine meadow vegetation, northeastern Tibetan Plateau (2019)
Journal Article
Qin, F., Bunting, M. J., Zhao, Y., Li, Q., Cui, Q., & Ren, W. (2020). Relative pollen productivity estimates for alpine meadow vegetation, northeastern Tibetan Plateau. Vegetation History and Archaeobotany, 29(4), 447-462. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00334-019-00751-4

A promising method of reconstructing past vegetation from pollen records uses mathematical models of the relationship between pollen and vegetation. These can be calibrated using the extended R-value (ERV) approach on datasets of modern pollen assemb... Read More about Relative pollen productivity estimates for alpine meadow vegetation, northeastern Tibetan Plateau.

Opening the woods: towards a quantification of Neolithic clearance around the Somerset Levels and Moors (2019)
Journal Article
Farrell, M., Bunting, M. J., Sturt, F., Grant, M., Aalbersberg, G., Batchelor, R., …Whittle, A. (2020). Opening the woods: towards a quantification of Neolithic clearance around the Somerset Levels and Moors. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 27(2), 271-301. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-019-09427-9

© 2019, The Author(s). Environmental reconstructions from pollen records collected within archaeological landscapes have traditionally taken a broadly narrative approach, with few attempts made at hypothesis testing or formal assessment of uncertaint... Read More about Opening the woods: towards a quantification of Neolithic clearance around the Somerset Levels and Moors.