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The spread of a sedentary lifestyle and agricultural economy during Neolithic period, is considered a turning point for human impact on the environment in Central Europe. Early Neolithic (late 6th mill. – early 4th mill. BC) settlement in Silesia (SW Poland) was limited to areas with a loess-derived soil cover, where the landscape was transformed by vegetation clearance and establishment of a network of villages, fields and pastures. It is widely assumed that these ‘pioneering’ activities relied heavily on the use of fire. It was also suggested that large-scale burning and the resulting input of carbon particles, contributed significantly to long-term processes, such as the formation of chernozemic soils in Central Europe.
Since there is a general lack of sediment traps such as lakes and bogs/mires in the loess zone in Silesia, to obtain material for paleoenvironmental reconstructions, we studied original, Neolithic soils buried and preserved beneath four barrow mounds (built ca 3500 BC) discovered in the Muszkowice and Głubczyce Forests. All four paleosols were classified as Phaeozems, what is especially noteworthy, as the prevalent present-day soil cover in the region consists of Luvisols.
The results suggests a widespread presence of chernozemic soils, which dominated in the open, forest-steppe Silesian landscape at the onset of the Neolithic (late 6th mill. BC) and persisted well into the Late Holocene. The investigated paleosols delivered proxy data related to prehistoric agriculture (crop growing), as well as evidence of the use of fire – most likely for in situ vegetation clearance. Nevertheless, it remains difficult to assess the specifics of the applied burning regimes: whether they were ‘multi-episode’, ‘intensive’ or ‘large-scale’.
At present, we can indicate that: 1) it seems unlikely that Neolithic fires contributed directly (by addition of carbon particles) to the formation of chernozemic soils in Silesia, however, 2) the sustainment of ‘open’, agriculturally used landscapes was crucial for the persistence and preservation of chernozemic soils during the Neolithic (in the Atlantic period).
