PALEODEM/ What burned the forest? Wildfires, climate change and human activity during the Mesolithic – Neolithic transition in SE Iberian Peninsula

This repository contains new XRD data from the Villena paleolake, archaeological radiocarbon evidence from the Villena area and the R code used to produce Summed Probability distribution analyses.  

They correspond to the following reference:  

Sánchez-García, C., Revelles, J., Burjachs, F., Euba, I., Expósito, I., Ibáñez, J., Schulte, L., Fernández-López de Pablo, J. What burned the forest? Wildfires, climate change and human activity during the Mesolithic – Neolithic transition in SE Iberian Peninsula (submitted to Catena). 

We specify the content of file further down:

Vinalopo.csv: the list of radiocarbon dates from Villena spanning ca.9500-5500 cal BP from the following sites: Arenal de la Virgen, Cueva del Lagrimal and Casa Corona. 

ngrip.csv: NGRIP GICC05 paleotemperature record based on oxygen isotope series from Rasmussen SO et al.2006 A new Greenland ice core chronology for the last glacial termination. J. Geophys. Res. Atmos.111. (doi:10.1029/2005JD006079) and Andersen KK et al.2006 The Greenland Ice Core Chronology 2005, 15–42ka. Part 1: constructing the time scale. Quat. Sci. Rev.25, 3246–3257.

Char.csv:  Sedimentary charcoal data set from the Villena Paleolake (VL3 core) published by Jones, S.E., Burjachs, F., Fernández-López de Pablo (2018) DOI/10.5281/zenodo.1244003, according to the new Bacon chronological model of the Villena paleolake (Fernández-López de Pablo et al., 2022 . Impacts of Early Holocene environmental dynamics on open-air occupation patterns in the Western Mediterranean: insights from El Arenal de la Virgen (Alicante, Spain). https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/5yqsr)

SPD_analysis.R: R script with the code to reproduce the SPD analysis presented in the manuscript. 

SupplMat1xlsl: an excel file This file is composed by 8 spreadsheets:

‘Selected variables 12.6-5.5’: all the data included in the time frame 12600-5500 cal BP, interpolated to 50 yr time windows. These data have been used for the Spearmans’rs correlation analysis (see spreadsheet ‘Spearmans’rs 12.6-5.5’ to track the results), Detrended Correspondence Analysis (see spreadsheet ‘Figure 5_DCA 12.6-5.5’ to track the results) and have been plotted in Figure 3 and 7. 

'Selected variables 9.1-5.5’: data included in the analysis focused on the time period 9.1-5.5 cal BP, interpolated to 50 yr time windows. These data have been used for the Spearmans’rs correlation analysis (see spreadsheet ‘Spearmans’rs 9.1-5.5’ to track the results), Detrended Correspondence Analysis (see spreadsheet ‘Figure 6_DCA 9.1-5.5’ to track the results) and have been plotted in Figure 8.

‘Spearmans’rs 12.6-5.5’: Spearmans’rs correlation analysis applied to the 12600-5500 cal BP dataset (data from ‘Selected variables 12.6-5.5’).

‘Spearmans’rs 9.1-5.5 cal BP’ Spearmans’rs correlation analysis applied to the 9100-5500 cal BP dataset, including here high-resolution XRD data (data from ‘Selected variables 9.1-5.5’).

‘Figure 2 charcoal results’: original sedimentary charcoal results provided in this work. Data plotted in Figure 2. 

‘Figure 4 XRD results’: original XRD results provided in this work. Data plotted in Figure 4.

‘Figure 5 DCA 12.6-5.5’: results of Detrended Correspondence analysis focused on the time period from 12600 to 5500 cal BP. Data plotted in Figure 5.

‘Figure 6 DCA 9.1-5.5’ results of Detrended Correspondence analysis focused on the time period from 9100 to 5500 cal BP, including here high-resolution XRD data. Data plotted in Figure 6.