Lake Ganau in the Rania Plain in Iraqi Kurdistan. A new limnic archive for palaeoenvironmental studies and the investigation of man-environment interaction

自全新世以来，中东肥沃的新月一直受到人类的青睐，用于定居和农业。自新石器时代以来，该地区也一直是动植物开发的重要地区。在过去的十年里，考古学家开始研究伊拉克库尔德斯坦的文化遗迹。该地区的文化遗迹具有多周期遗址数量多、密度高的特点。对于伊朗-图拉尼亚生物气候区，考古植物学家最近对原始自然植被已被人类破坏到目前状态的科学理论提出了质疑。相反，人们认为，当植物从冰川避难所重新迁徙时，最早的定居者就已经管理了这片土地，所以全新世的植被总是人类管理的结果。然而，与考古财富形成对比的是，在伊拉克库尔德斯坦，研究人与环境相互作用的自然档案很少。因此，我们建议对伊拉克库尔德斯坦拉尼亚平原的加瑙湖进行初步研究。一个新的古环境研究和人-环境相互作用研究的湖相档案，一个新的古环境重建档案，即伊拉克库尔德斯坦加瑙湖的湖相沉积物。我们将从湖底取回沉积物岩芯，并进行初步的考古植物学分析和数字测年。总的目标是测试加瑙湖沉积岩芯是否适合未来的研究，这可能包括高分辨率的孢粉学分析以及进一步的古生物、物理化学和同位素调查，这些研究适合重建从末次冰川到全新世过渡时期的地貌以及全新世人类居住的古环境。

The Fertile Crescent in the Middle East has been favored by man for settlement and agriculture since the beginning of the Holocene. Since Neolithic times the area has also been important for plant and animal exploitation. In the last decade archaeologists began to study the cultural remains of Iraqi Kurdistan. The cultural remains in this region are characterized by the high number and density of multi-periodic tell sites. For the Irano-Turanian bioclimatic region archaeobotanists recently questioned the scientific doctrine that the primary natural vegetation has been devastated to its present state by man. Instead, it is assumed, that the earliest settlers managed the landscape already when plants remigrated from their glacial refugia, so that the Holocene vegetation was always the result of human management. However, in contrast to the archaeological wealth, natural archives to investigate man-environment interaction are scarce in Iraqi Kurdistan. Therefore, here we suggest a pilot study 'Lake Ganau in the Rania Plain in Iraqi Kurdistan. A new limnic archive for palaeoenvironmental studies and the investigation of man-environment interaction' on a new archive for palaeoenvironmental reconstruction, i.e. the limnic sediments from Lake Ganau in Iraqi Kurdistan. We will retrieve sediment cores from the lake bottom and perform preliminary archaeobotanical analyses and numeric dating. The overall aim is to test the suitability of the Lake Ganau sediment cores for future research, which may include high-resolution palynological analyses as well as further palaeobiolimnic, physico-chemical and isotopic investigations that are suitable to reconstruct the landscape at the transition from the last glacial to the Holocene as well as the Holocene man-inhabited palaeoenvironment.