Human occupation, slash-burning and vegetation response from the final Pleistocene to the middle Holocene, Daling River basin, NE China

Abstract We present new radiocarbon dating, pollen and microcharcoal date from a section at a well-known early Neolithic site, Chahai, in Northeast China, to reconstruct vegetation and human occupation history and to evaluate human influence on the regional vegetation. The results suggested that the site was occupied in at least four main stages, 12,700–12,570, 10,200–9300, 7200–6300 and 2070–1920 cal yr BP, and that the periodic occupation and abandonment of the Chahai site was probably related to global millennial scale climate change. The regional vegetation change in Chahai region showed an increasing trend in humidity from the final Pleistocene to the middle Holocene; the vegetation was successively dominated by an arid steppe (12,700–12,570 cal yr BP) and moist meadow (10,200–9300 and 7200–6300 cal yr BP). Nevertheless, the reduction of the regional forest cover, indicated by a decrease in the proportion of tree pollen, was synchronous with population expansion locally around 7200–6300 cal yr BP. Our results demonstrate that the vegetation succession in the Chahai region was mainly controlled by climate change in the final Pleistocene and the early Holocene (12,700–12,570 and 10,200–9300 cal yr BP), while increased human activities and agricultural behavior played major roles in the degradation of the regional forest during the middle Holocene (7200–6300 cal yr BP).