European Palaeobotany and Palynology Conference 2026

A central question in palaeoenvironmental research is whether and how past climatic changes influenced shifts in settlement patterns, subsistence strategies, and land use. This study investigates the interactions between vegetation dynamics, climate variability, and human land-use practices in northeastern Germany during the Late Bronze Age to Early Iron Age (ca. 1270–580 BC), a period marked by major socio-environmental transformations across Europe. There is a significant gap in high-resolution palaeoenvironmental research from northeastern Germany. To address this, we apply a multiproxy approach to a sediment core from Lake Kleiner Tornowsee (KTO). By combining pollen analysis, geochemical proxies, tephra identification, local pollen-based climate reconstructions, and climate model simulations, this research reconstructs environmental and anthropogenic changes and explores how settlement dynamics and land-use intensity responded to climatic variability, cultural developments, and environmental stress during the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age.

Keywords: Cultural transformation, Settlement dynamics, Climate change, Pollen-based climate reconstruction, Climate model simulation