Data from: Long livestock farming history and human landscape shaping revealed by lake sediment DNA

The reconstruction of human-driven, Earth-shaping dynamics is important
for understanding past human/environment interactions and for helping
human societies that currently face global changes. However, it is often
challenging to distinguish the effects of the climate from human
activities on environmental changes. Here we evaluate an approach based on
DNA metabarcoding used on lake sediments to provide the first
high-resolution reconstruction of plant cover and livestock farming
history since the Neolithic Period. By comparing these data with a
previous reconstruction of erosive event frequency, we show that the most
intense erosion period was caused by deforestation and overgrazing by
sheep and cowherds during the Late Iron Age and Roman Period. Tracking
plants and domestic mammals using lake sediment DNA (lake sedDNA) is a
new, promising method for tracing past human practices, and it provides a
new outlook of the effects of anthropogenic factors on landscape-scale
changes.