If we could stand in a landscape that our Mesolithic ancestors called home, what would we see around us? Scientists have devised a method of analyzing preserved hazelnut shells to tell us whether the microhabitats around archaeological sites were heavily forested or open and pasture-like. This could help us understand not only what a local environment looked like thousands of years ago, but how humans have impacted their habitats over time.

“By analyzing the carbon in hazelnuts recovered from archaeological sites in southern Sweden, from Mesolithic hunter-gatherer campsites through to one of the largest and richest Iron Age settlements in northern Europe, we show that hazelnuts were harvested from progressively more open environments,” said Dr. Amy Styring of the University of Oxford, lead author of the article in Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology.