PALYNOLOGY AND GERMANIA

            Using palynology it is possible to identify agricultural crops growing in the region during the third century AD.  By utilizing a combination of all climate-crop relationships, it should be possible to connect palynological and tree ring records.  Palynology can reveal the agricultural crops, which will allow the researcher to know the available crops and the climate in which they can be cultivated.  Tree rings can identify change in climate that affects trees and crops alike.  Therefore, it should be possible to make a connection, between likely crop success and tree rings.  There have been some correlation studies that have shown some connection between agriculture and climate change in both the ancient and prehistoric times in Europe (Parry, 1981, Parry, 1978, Barker et al., 1991, Barker, 1985, Pott, 1992) .

            Palynological spectra reveal predominately the airborne germinating plants at a given time in a given area through analysis of sediments and varves in which pollen are contained (Faegri and Iversen, 1950, Prentice, 1985) .  Pollen analysis dominates paleoclimatic studies from lake and bog sediments (Birks and Birks, 1980) .  Through palynological reconstruction, it is possible to identify the floral assemblages of the past and compare it with modern times (Guiot, 1992) .  Central European pollen has not changed significantly over the last 6000 years (Figure 4.24).  Further, the palynological records reveal areas, such as southern Bavaria, have no breaks in the agricultural pollen from late prehistoric times to present, suggesting constant inhabitation of this region (Wells, 1999) .

            The first application of palynology to the inhabitation of Germania involves counts of Non-Arboreal Pollen (NAP).  Different tree-taxa have different pollen productions, the ratios of pollen will not be the same for all forests as tests have shown, but the presence of tree-taxa in the palynological strata is important (Dambach, 1998) .  An increase in NAP is indicative of a decrease in forest cover (Chernavskaya, 1992) .  There is a linear relationship between NAP percentages and the percentage cover of a forest in both closed forests as well as large cleared areas (Dambach, 1998) .  An example from modern Bulgaria reveals an increase in NAP from 10% of the palynological spectra in 400 BC to 13% in 100 BC to 25% in AD 200, which could be interpreted as reflecting habitation and forest clearance (Bozilova et al., 1994) .  There is further evidence of land clearance and an opening of forests in southern Germania in the both the NAP of palynological strata and also from the number of trees recovered from the gravel bed mines that date to this period (Behre, 1992, Andersen and Berglund, 1994, Dambach, 1998, Hughes, 1994, Spurk et al., 2001) .

            The second application of palynology is to climate change.  There are correlative connections between pollen and climate that are linked to changes in air temperature and precipitation (Chernavskaya, 1992) .  There is evidence from the palynological record of the third century becoming drier and warmer (Huntley and Prentice, 1988, Andersen and Berglund, 1994, Huntley and Birks, 1983, Dambach, 1998, Huntley, 1990) .

            The third application of palynology is to the identification of agricultural crops of the period.  There have been many agriculturally important plants identified in Germania through pollen studies (Table 2.1).  Through the knowledge of the flora of the period, it is possible to ascertain if the agricultural crops that were growing in the area were likely to have been affected by a climate shift.  Analogous crop-climate relationships in modern crops and laboratory studies show that some of these crops, not all, would be affected by a sustained dry period.  This would have severely affected the indigenous people severely (Parry, 1978) .  Could this climate change been sustained to the point of causing an agricultural drought?

An agricultural drought arises when the supply of soil moisture available to a crop over a critical time is inadequate (Flohn and Fantechi, 1984) .  This is directly related to the growth rates of trees from the river valley, which are affected by soil moisture availability not necessarily precipitation.  The variety of agricultural crops of Germania identified in the palynological reconstructions is consistent with the regions’ seasonal variability and would still be able to produce food crops in most climatic settings.  There are too many spring/ fall, moisture dependant/ drought resistant, and shade tolerant/ open land crops to have the entire agricultural system and livestock system fail.  This variety of crops in temperate Europe would, in all likelihood, not have caused the deaths of the Germanic tribes if they remained in their territory and did not invade the Roman Empire.  The climate change described in this thesis is not trying to paint an image of starving Germanic tribes who have lost all their crops and had no option but to attack the Roman Empire with their last dying breath.  The question is not necessarily starvation, which would have been improbable, but undernutrition and/ or a significant change in diet that lead to the desire to relocate, which would be just as influential a motivator as the threat of starvation.