Abstract Anthropogenic pollen indicators in pollen records are an established tool for reconstructing the history of human impacts on vegetation and landscapes. They are also used to disentangle the influence of human activities and climatic variability on ecosystems. The comprehensive anthropogenic pollen-indicator approach developed by Behre (1981) has been widely used, including beyond its original geographical scope of Central and Western Europe. Uncritical adoption of this approach for other areas is risky because adventives (plants introduced with agriculture) in Central Europe can be apophytes (native plants favoured by human disturbances) in other regions. This problem can be addressed by identifying region-specific, anthropogenic-indicator pollen types and/or developing region-specific, human-impact indices from pollen assemblages. However, understanding of regional variation in the timing and intensity of human impacts is limited by the lack of standardization, validation and intercomparison of such regional approaches. Here we review the most common European anthropogenic pollen-indicator approaches to assess their performance at six sites spanning a continental gradient over the boreal, temperate and Mediterranean biomes. Specifically, we evaluate the human-indicator approaches by using independent archaeological evidence and models. We present new insights into how these methodologies can assist in the interpretation of pollen records as well as into how a careful selection of pollen types and/or indices according to the specific geographical scope of each study is key to obtain meaningful reconstructions of anthropogenic activity through time. The evaluated approaches generally perform better in the regions for which they were developed. However, we find marked differences in their capacity to identify human impact, while some approaches do not perform well even in the regions for which they were developed, others might be used, with due caution, outside their original areas or biomes. We conclude that alongside the increasing wealth of pollen datasets a need to develop novel tools may assist numeric human impact reconstructions.

中文翻译：

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基于人为花粉指标的人类影响指数的关键评估

摘要 花粉记录中的人为花粉指标是重建人类对植被和景观影响历史的既定工具。它们还被用来解开人类活动和气候变化对生态系统的影响。Behre (1981) 开发的综合人为花粉指标方法已被广泛使用，包括超出其原始地理范围的中欧和西欧。在其他地区不加批判地采用这种方法是有风险的，因为中欧的外来植物（农业引入的植物）可能是其他地区的植物（受人类干扰青睐的本地植物）。这个问题可以通过识别特定区域的人为指标花粉类型和/或从花粉组合中开发特定区域的人类影响指数来解决。然而，由于缺乏此类区域方法的标准化、验证和相互比较，对人类影响时间和强度的区域差异的理解受到限制。在这里，我们回顾了最常见的欧洲人为花粉指标方法，以评估它们在跨越北方、温带和地中海生物群落大陆梯度的六个地点的表现。具体来说，我们通过使用独立的考古证据和模型来评估人类指标方法。我们对这些方法如何帮助解释花粉记录以及如何根据每项研究的特定地理范围仔细选择花粉类型和/或指数是获得有意义的人为活动重建的关键提出了新的见解时间。被评估的方法通常在它们开发的地区表现更好。然而，我们发现它们识别人类影响的能力存在显着差异，虽然有些方法即使在它们被开发的地区也表现不佳，但其他方法可能会在适当谨慎的情况下用于原始区域或生物群落之外。我们得出的结论是，随着花粉数据集的日益丰富，需要开发新工具可能有助于数字人类影响重建。