A middle to late Holocene paleo-environmental study of L’Anse aux Meadows National Historic Site, Newfoundland, Canada
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Paleoecological reconstructions offer insight into environmental and climatic conditions of the past, allowing us to understand how changing climate conditions have shaped Canada’s landscapes over millennia. While instrumental data only reaches back a few centuries, paleo-reconstructions allow us to understand past environmental variability over much longer periods of time as well as predict future changes. They also contextualize archaeological sites within the broader context of ecological conditions of the period. Using high-resolution, multi-proxy analysis, this study reconstructs the past 6,000 years of vegetation and fire history around the UNESCO World Heritage archaeological site of L’Anse aux Meadows and provides new understanding into long-term ecological changes and their relationship with regional climate variations and human activity. While many previous analyses have studied samples from directly within the archaeological remains, my research offers the first regional combined charcoal and pollen record, with a well-dated chronology based on a larger suite of AMS radiocarbon dates than previously used, for the area directly downwind of the site. First, I situate this site within the human history of the North Atlantic as well as review previous paleo-ecological work done within the region, including the Northern Peninsula of Newfoundland and that of southern Labrador. Then, I present a reconstruction of pollen, macrocharcoal, and loss-on-ignition analysis based on a 2 m peat core located 300 m east of the archaeological site. The core sequence was dated using 14C dating methods with the bottommost core-section dating to ~4055 BCE (6000 cal BP). The analysis shows transitions from fen- to bog-like environments, punctuated by fire events and shifts in vegetation composition. Early fen conditions (4055–1740 BCE) transitioned to a more bog-like environment, following a significant fire disturbance. The early fen conditions were followed by a prolonged period of low peat accumulation (1095 BCE–50 CE), potentially due drier conditions. Fire frequency increased during the first millennium CE, peaking during the Medieval Climate Anomaly (920–1280 CE), suggesting warmer conditions preceding the onset of the Little Ice Age. The long-term decline in pollen influx aligns with regional cooling trends documented in the other paleo-ecological studies in the North Atlantic, driven by decreasing solar radiation and sea-surface temperature changes. This research contributes to our understanding of Holocene environmental dynamics in northern Newfoundland, situating L’Anse aux Meadows within a broader climatic and ecological context, and explores potential anthropogenic impacts on fire regimes and landscape changes.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.005 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".