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History of a Wood |
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As soon as I saw electron micrographs of pollen I started to imagine these small ‘worlds’ from which palaeobotanists could, through radio carbon dating, pinpoint their age and subsequently understand how our world would have looked millions of years ago.
What follows are my visual thoughts on how these microscopic ‘worlds’ record the waves of change which have passed over this small piece of Oxfordshire from the Mesolithic period to the present day.
I would like to thank Dr Petra Dark of Reading University for allowing me to use her research on an ancient woodland site, Sidlings Copse in Oxfordshire. I am also grateful to Dr Heidemarie Halbritter of the University of Vienna and Dr Margaret Collinson/Blackwell Publishing (Pinus sylvestris), who gave me their permission to manipulate their electron micrographs of pollen of the different species of plants which Dr Dark had found at the site. Thank you also to Ordnance Survey for allowing me to reproduce the map. |
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