From Rackham to REVEALS: Reflections on palaeoecological approaches to woodland and trees
In this paper we reflect on aspects of palaeoecological approaches to understanding past woodland environments. With increasing requirements for interdisciplinarity in research, and an increase in popular interest in the ‘natural environment’ such as ‘new nature writing’, we suggest that palaeoecology is potentially well situated to engage with other audiences and disciplines, and inform wider debates. However, in order to achieve this, we tentatively suggest that palaeoecology should be self-reflexive and examine how current methods, terminology and underlying theoretical perspectives inform (and inhibit) our practice.