Archaeological digs turn up exciting artefacts – jewellery, utensils and buildings that our ancestors left behind as clues to how they lived and died thousands of years ago. But as well as the man-made items, there’s another vast bank of information to be plundered: the record that nature left behind. If you look closely, pollen, charcoal and preserved wood found at or near excavation sites can tell us how humans understood and interacted with their environment, particularly with the woodlands on which many relied for building materials and fuel.“They really knew their trees,” says archaeologist Ellen OCarroll, who is looking at woodland use in the Midlands going as far back as the Stone Age. “Trees were part of their life and folklore and history, and they were used to make artefacts. It’s hard for us now to appreciate just how important they were.” To find out more about how humans used the woodlands around them, ocarroll is doing a PhD on the environmental context of 86 archaeological excavations along the N6 route between Kinnegad and Athlone. [...]