Research paper Pollen and sediment evidence for late-Holocene human impact at the Seonam-dong archeological site, Gwangju, Korea Jungjae Park a, ⁎, Minkoo Kim b , Hyoun Soo Lim c , Jinmu Choi d a Department of Geography and Institute for Korean Regional Studies, Seoul National University, Sillim-dong, Gwanak-gu, Seoul, 151-742, Republic of Korea b Department of Anthropology, Chonnam National University, Yongbong-dong, Buk-gu, Gwangju, 500-757, Republic of Korea c Department of Geological Sciences, Pusan National University, Busan 609-735, Republic of Korea d Department of Geography, Kyung Hee University, 26 Kyungheedae-ro, Dongdaemun-gu, Seoul, 130-741, Republic of Korea abstract article info Article history: Received 29 July 2012 Received in revised form 13 January 2013 Accepted 31 January 2013 Available online 19 February 2013 Keywords: pollen and sediment evidence Korea Seonam-dong human impact climate change late Holocene We present pollen and sediment evidence for late-Holocene human impact from the Seonam-dong archeological site in Gwangju in southwest Korea. Due to the lack of undisturbed profiles with high sedimentation rates, the relationship between the environment and agricultural activities has not been properly investigated in Korea using a paleoenvironmental approach. This study shows possible climate-induced changes in chestnut production, which was contemporaneously recognized by the Chinese as an important and unique local food source in southwestern Korea. Our results also show that human adaptation to climate change may have resulted in both the degradation and recovery of the local forest ecosystem in the study area. The data from the Seonam-dong archeological site provided evidence supporting the following hypotheses. 1) Chestnut cultivation declined from 400 BC to AD 200 (2350–1750 cal BP), as herbaceous crop production may have sufficiently expanded to sustain the population, possibly due to agricultural improvements and/or climatic amelioration. 2) Chestnut cultivation was enhanced from AD 200 to AD 800 (1750–1150 cal BP), probably to compensate for decreased herbaceous crop yields due to climatic deterioration. 3) The increase in chestnut cultivation led to forest disturbance and increased flooding, with intermittent forest recovery during periods of decreased cultivation. © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Scientists are increasingly interested in the impact of past climate change on human due to heightened concern over the recent global warming and its results. Various proxy data suggest that past climate changes have been powerful enough to cause the rise and fall of ancient dynasties (Weiss and Bradley, 2001; Haug et al., 2003; Zhang et al., 2008; Buckley et al., 2010; Patterson et al., 2010). Chinese cave records indicate that the stability of the Chinese dynasties over the last 1800 yr was highly dependent on the Asian monsoon (Zhang et al., 2008). The effect of climate change on past human societies should also be detectable on the Korean peninsula, where civilizations began as long ago as ca. 4000 BP (Yoon, 2002). It is important to investigate the impact of past climate change on human lives to accurately predict how future climate change will affect us. It is also important to study the past envi- ronmental change induced by human activities to ensure the sustain- ability of our future generations. The aim of this study is to infer the impact of past climate change on human lives and anthropogenic impact on the environment in response to climate change in the southwestern part of the Korean peninsula during the late Holocene. Prehistoric and historic agriculture on the Korean peninsula remains poorly understood, mainly due to a lack of reliable historical documents, archeological evidence, and proxy data. For example, the starting time and diffusion routes of rice agriculture have been hotly debated among Korean archeologists and geographers (Park, 2007). Low sedi- mentation rates and subsequent agricultural disturbance of the upper layers of sediment profiles make it difficult to obtain proxy data showing the mutual interaction between humans and the environment during the late Holocene. In Korea, the few related archeological studies have only used proxy data to infer agricultural history. Fifty four ancient statelets collectively called Mahan occupied the study area during ca. AD 1–660. There is no extant Korean historical document on the lifestyle of the Mahan people, but the Mahan statelets are briefly mentioned in the Houhanshu, a Chinese historical document of the 5th century AD. The Houhanshu notes that chestnut fruits as large as Chinese pears were produced in great quantity (Lee and Lee, 2005). The production of chestnut must have been significant for the Chinese to comment on it in this short description of the Mahan statelets. However, chestnut cultivation in the study area has not attracted research attention from archeologists or palynologists due to the absence of any relevant proxy data. Recently, Kim (2011) reported an interesting shift in the arboreal composition around villages in his examination of carbonized and waterlogged wood. He concluded that chestnut trees became important at the expense of pine and oak Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology 193 (2013) 110–118 ⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: +82 62 530 2687; fax: +82 62 530 2689. E-mail address: jungjaep@snu.ac.kr (J. Park). 0034-6667/$ – see front matter © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.revpalbo.2013.01.012 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/revpalbo