ABSTRACT
In theory, the location of pollen profiles on the sites of past human activity might be expected to provide the fullest and most sensitive records. The off-site location of pollen profiles enables the palynologist to examine the environmental history of what may be a greater number of sites at the possible expense of the degree of certainty regarding the precise location of activity registered in the fossil record. Pollen and charcoal evidence comes from a raised-beach mire deposit 300m from the excavation site of Farm Fields. The environmental data show dramatic changes in both the pollen and charcoal records which would seem to reflect very local changes in, and even human impacts upon, the vegetation. period of reduced alder and hazel pollen between 5950 and 5700 radiocarbon years bp, with high amounts of microscopic charcoal, may well reflect human influence. Pollen analysis at this raised-bog site on the Kintyre Peninsula of south-western Scotland was first carried out by Nichols.
