LandCover 6k is an international initiative sponsored by the Past Global Changes (PAGES) project (http://pastglobalchanges.org/landcover6k). One of the goals is to create a global data set of anthropogenic land use through the Holocene in order to improve the currently-available scenarios of land-use change that are used as inputs for climate and carbon-cycle model experiments. The European land-use group met in Hemmenhofen on the shores of Lake Constance last week (28-30th January), hosted by Dr Elena Marinova (who has been a long term collaborator of the SPECIAL group), to discuss progress in putting together these data for Europe. Hemmenhofen was a particularly appropriate venue for the meeting because the Institute there specialises in excavations and analyses of the pile-dwelling settlements around Lake Constance. We didn’t actually get to go to the Museum (see photo) – instead we focused on mapping the presence of agriculture across Europe at 6000 cal yr BP. There was much discussion about what people were eating – and I am delighted to say that hazelnuts and wild strawberries appeared to be a favourite on the menu, just pointing to the fact that early farmers still made a lot of use of natural woodland resources.
