Explaining Pollen

Pollen is a powdery substance produced by flowering species of plants and trees that contains the male reproductive cells and is carried by wind and insects to other plants which it fertilizes. Its highly resistant composition allows it to be preserved in most environments, chemical techniques that would damage beyond repair most other fossils, which may be found on a site.

Pollen, the most resistant of plant fossils, provides keys to the understanding of a host of human activities It can survive well in rivers, lakes, peat bogs, and in caves due to the consist humidity keeping a constant temperature level. Pollen has also been found to exist on bricks, vessels, and tombs. However, pollen cannot survive in sandy sediments or sites that are exposed to weathering such places preserves the pollen poorly. ‘And also cannot produce an exact picture of past environment. However on archaeological excavations, small samples are usually extracted at regular stratified intervals.

The study of pollen analysis is known as Palynology and has helped archaeologists in understanding past human activities and to further their understanding of what the environment looked like. Supplies a sequential record of changes in vegetation since the last Ice age for variations in temperature and rainfall

There are three main branches of Palynology. Quaternary Palynology focuses on the influence of vegetation and climate change on human behaviour patterns, Archaeopalynology refers to the study of human impact on the environment and Archaeological Palynology, which is the analysis of artefacts and features collected from an archaeological site as well as the results of the study of sediments.

Palynology deals with a variety of fossilised organism remains but a common feature of these is that they are invariably organic and, therefore, carbon based. They also share common materials, the most common of which is sporopollenin to be found in the cell walls of plant pollen and spores and it’s highly resistant nature allows the pollen spores to be preserved under the harshest conditions. 

In the 1920’s, pollen was first discovered on Scandinavian and British peat bogs. To carry out the task of gathering pollen requires drilling a borehole into the sediment. This produces a long core, typically 1 metre long. Sediments may be sampled to a depth of twenty or more metres, which are then wrapped in plastic and aluminium foil and are placed in plastic tubing for transporting them to the laboratory. The core produces stratigraphy layers, which will be in a natural time sequence and must be carefully preserved.

These resources are maintained by and © Webmaster of these pages No part of any of this text or pictures must be copied without consent All Rights Reserved. All information published on this site is corrected and was working when the site was launched by its owners