Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Forest Ecology and Management journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/foreco Identifcation of woodland management by analysis of roundwood age and diameter: Neolithic case studies Welmoed A. Out a, ⁎ , Claudia Baittinger b , Katarina Čufar c , Oriol López-Bultó d , Kirsti Hänninen e , Caroline Vermeeren e a Moesgaard Museum, Department of Archaeological Science and Conservation, Moesgaard Allé 20, 8270 Højbjerg, Denmark b National Museum of Denmark, Environmental Archaeology and Materials Science, I.C. Modewegs Vej, Brede, 2800 Kongens Lyngby, Denmark c University of Ljubljana, Biotechnical Faculty, Department of Wood Science and Technology, Jamnikarjeva 101, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia d Autonomous University of Barcelona, Department of Prehistory, University Campus, 08193 Bellaterra, Spain e BIAX Consult, Symon Spiersweg 7d2, 1506 RZ Zaandam, the Netherlands ARTICLEINFO Keywords: Wood production by early farmers Pollarding and coppicing Branch and trunk age/diameter analysis Diameter selection Archaeology Neolithic ABSTRACT It is often presumed that woodland management, i.e. pollarding and coppicing, was practised in prehistory, but the precise beginning and the details of such practices in the past are unknown. This is because, in contrast to historical times, from which written and iconographic sources are available, prehistoric archaeological sites rarely yield direct evidence of intentional woodland management. Since it is regularly suggested that people practised woodland management at least from the Neolithic onwards, this study brings together data for wood assemblages from six Neolithic sites in Denmark, the Netherlands, Slovenia and Spain, with the aim of in- vestigating whether these provide evidence of woodland management. The method applied here is roundwood age and diameter analysis, based on an earlier developed model that has been tested on modern trees. None of the investigated European Neolithic sites provides evidence of woodland management. Various possible ex- planations for this outcome are discussed. 1. Introduction Woodland management practices such as pollarding and coppicing, i.e. repetitive cutting of branches representing the long-term infuence of people on trees and shrubs to improve and optimise the quantity and quality of the wood produced, are regularly discussed based on (un- carbonised) wood assemblages in Europe dating from the Mesolithic onwards (Rackham, 1977; Andersen, 1993; Murphy, 2001; Out, 2009, app. V; Pedersen, 2013; Göransson, 1995; Klooβ, 2014; Warren et al., 2014; Bishop et al., 2015 and references therein; Buckley and Mills, 2015; Bamford et al., 2018). Pollarding and coppicing enable trees to live longer and result in initial quick renewed growth of long, straight branches and increased wood and leaf production (Rasmussen, 1989, 1990; Rackham, 2006). While it can be considered likely that such management was practised in prehistory, repetitive branch removal does not exert selective pressure on a tree’s genome and has therefore not resulted in domestication and the development of adaptive traits. This makes it difcult to recognise woodland management in archae- ological wood assemblages. As a result, it is difcult to prove that pollarding and coppicing were practised in prehistory, or to recognise the beginning of such practices. In order to explore the development of woodland management, this contribution investigates whether pol- larding and coppicing were practised in Europe during the Neolithic by analysing the age and diameter of uncarbonised roundwood in assem- blages from six Neolithic sites located in four diferent countries. The Neolithic has been selected as a study period since woodland man- agement is regularly presumed to have been practised during this period, as explained further below. The Neolithic was a period which followed after the Mesolithic. During the Mesolithic, subsistence was based on hunting and gathering, and people were relatively mobile. In contrast, during the Neolithic, people had access to domestic animals and plants as well as new ceramic and lithic technologies, and mobility was replaced by se- dentarism. With regard to Europe, domesticated plants and animals became available from the Levant in Turkey from ca. 8000 BCE on- wards and in Greece from ca. 6500 BCE onwards. Domesticates gra- duallyandnon-linearlyspreadviaBulgaria,Macedoniaandthewestern Balkans as well as via the northern Mediterranean coast and the Iberian https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2020.118136 Received 31 December 2019; Received in revised form 1 April 2020; Accepted 2 April 2020 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: wo@moesgaardmuseum.dk (W.A. Out), claudia.baittinger@natmus.dk (C. Baittinger), Katarina.Cufar@bf.uni-lj.si (K. Čufar), oriollopezbulto@gmail.com (O. López-Bultó), hanninen@biax.nl (K. Hänninen), vermeeren@biax.nl (C. Vermeeren). Forest Ecology and Management 467 (2020) 118136 Available online 23 April 2020 0378-1127/ © 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. T