The post-glacial fate of central European grasslands has stimulated palaeoecological debates for a century. Some argued for the continuous survival of open land, while others claimed that closed forest had developed during the Middle Holocene. The reasons behind stability or changes in the proportion of open land are also unclear. We aim to reconstruct regional vegetation openness and test the effects of climate and human impact on vegetation change throughout the Holocene. We present a newly dated pollen record from north-western fringes of the Pannonian Plain, east-central Europe, and reconstruct Holocene regional vegetation development by the REVEALS model for 27 pollen-equivalent taxa. Estimated vegetation is correlated in the same area with a human activity model based on all available archaeological information and a macrophysical climate model. The palaeovegetation record indicates the continuous presence of open land throughout the Holocene. Grasslands and open woodlands were probably maintained by local arid climatic conditions during the early Holocene delaying the spread of deciduous (oak) forests. Significantly detectable human-made landscape transformation started only after 2000 BC. Our analyses suggest that Neolithic people spread into a landscape that was already open. Humans probably contributed to the spread of oak, and influenced the dynamics of hazel and hornbeam.

Department of Archaeology Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra SK 949 74 Nitra Slovakia

Department of Botany Faculty of Science Charles University Prague Benátská 2 CZ 128 01 Praha 2 Czech Republic

Department of GIS and Remote Sensing Institute of Botany of the Czech Academy of Sciences Zámek 1 CZ 252 43 Průhonice Czech Republic

Department of Vegetation Ecology Institute of Botany of the Czech Academy of Sciences Lidická 25 27 CZ 602 00 Brno Czech Republic

Institute of Archaeology and Museology Faculty of Arts Masaryk University Arne Nováka 1 CZ 60200 Brno Czech Republic

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