Two mid-Holocene millennia of swamp forest in the Rhine/Meuse deltaic plain

The paleoenvironmental evolution of a Dutch deltaic swamp forest area during the mid-Holocene was strongly governed by a general rise of water level (bound to postglacial sea-level rise) and by fluctuations in this water-level rise. A phasing of this 2,000 years period shows alternation of closed swamp forest on the one hand, and (fluvio-) lacustrine environment with swamp forest islands on the other. The refined scale of investigation permits bird's-view landscape reconstructions. These also show how attractive the area was for neolithic fishermen.