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The archaeobotanical study of Dilling includes the analysis of 719 samples, representing 115 houses, most of which collectively cover the Pre-Roman Iron Age to the Migration Period (200 BC – AD 500). This extensive sampling allows for a general picture of everyday activities to be reconstructed from the remains of plants found at the site, and which can be extrapolated to the region as a whole. The results show that a variety of activities have taken place, at different intensities, across the seven excavation areas. The preservation of the plant remains, however, differs considerably between the areas. In general, the preservation of plant macrofossils is poor at the site, but the large number of samples, and the application of a multiproxy approach, provides a unique opportunity to better understand everyday life in the region during the Iron Age. The combination of the archaeobotanical results, geoarchaeology (see chapter 13) and charcoal remains (chapter 11) collectively provides a valuable source of information on past agricultural practices, crop processing and diet. This is the first attempt to present an overview of the huge dataset from Dilling, and there is undoubtedly room for further interpretation and discussion.

To understand the implications of past changes in climate, landscape and human activity on contemporary biodiversity patterns, data from modern and palaeoecological studies must be connected. The Strategic Environmental Archaeology Database (SEAD) provides access to big data from archaeology and Quaternary science and is an enormous potential resource for investigating past changes in biodiversity. By linking SEAD to SBDI, past species distributions can be analysed for their implications for landscape and climate change. Recent macroecological research using SEAD/ SBDI illustrates trends in Late Holocene anthropogenic landscape change in north-western Europe. Over the past few thousand years, humans have impacted insect biodiversity as much as climate change did after the last Ice Age. This demonstrates that data from archaeology, and the consequences of human activity, are essential for fulfilling the promi- se of using data driven ecology for guiding future conservation practices in response to climate change. 

The geoarchaeological investigation of the large settlement at Dilling involved 1171 bulk geochemical analyses (fractionated P, LOI, MS, and MS550) and 92 thin section studies (including SEM/EDS microchemistry). Geology played a crucial role in site location and development, and Pre-Roman Iron Age–Roman Iron Age Areas 1-6 span the beach sands and finest sediments, with Area 6 at the lowest elevation. The very large number of 14C dates available allowed the suggestion that settlement in Areas 2-6, which had been established and consolidated from ca. 600 BC, had ceased by ca. AD 250. This date coincides with the onset of climatic change when conditions became wetter and cooler. We conclude that the settlement was first established on low ground on fine marine sediments, but as the climate deteriorated free drainage from the end-moraine led to increased soil wetness and wetland development downslope. PCA analysis of dated posthole and post imprints also highlighted this settlement shift upslope. Chemistry clearly suggested a dominance of organic phosphate (LOI v PQuota) at Dilling, reinforcing the long-held view that the Pre-Roman Iron Age–Roman Iron Age settlements were mixed farming communities that concentrated on organic manured arable fields (Hristova et al., this volume). Livestock were housed in long house byres and possible postals – sunken byres, like those found across Roman Belgium, for example. Trackways recorded animal movements and possible transport of composted dung to the fields through time, rather than always employing raw byre waste (see Ødegaard, this volume). Settlement morphology and function were also scrutinised.

Northern Fennoscandia is a geologically complex region affected by both glacial and postglacial processes. Quartzite was a key material type utilized by hunter-gatherers in Northern Sweden around the period 4 000 – 2 000 BP, and is thus critical to the understanding of raw material procurement and material flow within the region. However, there is a severe lack of methodological development in the characterization of these materials, and provenance of locally available geological material is complex and fraught with uncertainty. 126 quartz/quartzite points and preforms were sampled from 47 archaeological sites along the upper Ångerman river valley in Västerbotten, Sweden. The material has been analysed non-destructively using three separate portable spectroscopic instrumentations (Near-infrared, Raman, X-Ray Fluorescence). Evaluation of the spectra and exploratory data analysis using Principal Component Analysis demonstrates detectable differences in the material that likely stem from diagenetic/paragenetic origin. The presence of graphite, muscovite and biotite could likewise provide information on the material’s metamorphic grade. In addition to reaffirming the potential of field-based screening instrumentation, these results will benefit future surveys of geological sources in the region. They also indicate potential for the construction of a predictive model that could classify the quartzite based on its chemical characteristic. Such a model would prove useful in future spatial analysis and testing of models of raw material management.

The Old Wood in a New Light database project focuses on the digitization and accessibility of the results of dendrochronological samples analyzed and archived at four Swedish university-based tree-ring laboratories at Lund University, Stockholm University, University of Gothenburg, and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. Collaboration with the Environmental Archaeology Laboratory and Humlab at Umeå University enables long-term open access to data, raw data, and metadata. In this project, we (1) systematically undertake large-scale entry and open access publication of results from wood samples scientifically analyzed and archived by Swedish laboratories and the associated metadata, into the Strategic Environmental Archaeology Database (SEAD; www.sead.se) research data infrastructure, and (2) actively promote the database as a resource for new and ongoing interdisciplinary research initiatives. Including dendrochronological data in SEAD infrastructure allows interdisciplinary studies that combine major scientific and societal questions. Building on a pilot study of construction timber from southern Sweden and adaptation of SEAD digitization workflows, more than 70 000 samples archived at the four dendrochronological laboratories are now being handled in the project. The broad coverage of research networks, stakeholder interaction, and strategic support from the cultural heritage community is guaranteed owing to the ongoing collaboration between laboratories and an established international and multidisciplinary reference group.

During archaeological excavations on the site of the Norse farm at Gården under Sandet (GUS), in Ameralik Fjord, south-west Greenland, the opportunity was taken to sample the modern ground-living insect fauna by pitfall trapping from a range of natural habitats for comparison with fossil assemblages from the medieval farm and its midden. Two species, the predatory bug Nabis flavomarginatus Scholtz, 1847 and small ladybird Nephus redtenbacheri Mulsant, 1846 are recorded for the first time in this part of Greenland, although there are earlier records from the sediments associated with medieval farms in the region and both have been regarded as Norse introductions. The minute staphylinid Mycetoporus nigrans Mäklin, 1853, added to the Greenland list from this material by Peter Hammond (in Buckland et al. 1998), was found to be common in most natural habitats around GUS. Grids of eight traps, four at ground level and four on posts, were set out in six localities defined by their vegetational characteristics and emptied three times over the month-long sampling period. The cicadellid Psammotettix lividellus (Zetterstedt, 1840) appeared in all ground traps being particularly abundant on the dwarf birch and sedge dominated floodplain, to which the polyphagous mirid bug Chlamydatus pullus (Reuter, 1870) appears confined.

Late Quaternary deposits on the Yorkshire coast southwards from Sewerby Cliff in Bridlington Bay to Dimlington north of Spurn Point (Figs. 1a-1c, p82) have been the subject of stratigraphic and palaeontological research for well over a century (Bateman et al., 2011; Catt, 2007 and references therein, Evans et al., 1995). The region contains the type-site for the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) in Britain at Dimlington (Rose, 1985) and extensive outcrops of at least three glacial diamicts, locally the Basement, Skipsea and Withernsea Tills, indicating the dynamic nature of the North Sea ice lobe during the final stages of the British and Irish Icesheet (BIIS). Work by Bateman et al. (2015) indicates that the Skipsea and Withernsea Tills represent icesheets that were present across Holderness for less than 6 ka between 20.9 and 15.1 ka BP before retreating north and east. However, the deglaciation remains insufficiently constrained, with a hiatus between the preserved glacial deposits and the earliest Lateglacial sequences at Gransmoor and Roos Bog (Walker et al., 1993; Beckett, 1981). Organic sediments directly overlying glacial till have been examined at Barmston which provide additional evidence of Lateglacial environments and climate in Holderness. This paper presents fossil insect and chronological evidence from coastal exposures from which climatic reconstructions can be made.

Excavations close to the Anglo-Saxon church at Conisbrough, South Yorkshire, UK, revealed a plank-walled construction dated by dendrochronology to the late sixth or early seventh century. It is suggested that this formed part of a stock pond for fish, associated with an elite residence to which a partly surviving Anglo-Saxon church incorporating Northumbrian features is related. Environmental evidence shows a neglected wood pasture landscape associated with the infilling of a ditch which cuts through the structure. This is likely to be related either to a burh centred on the church or to a deer park established shortly after the Norman Conquest and associated with the castle.