While it was only yesterday I was speculating that perhaps the anthropocene began with the invention of the steam locamotive, a new idea has already come to light.
While browsing the web for climate data, as you do, I came across a series of articles highlighting the environmental impact of the Baltic crusades. Only last year Brown and Pluskowski were able to show through pollen and peat analysis at 2 sites how crusaders transformed the landscape of Northern Poland through the clearence of boradleaved woodland and agricultural intensification between the 13th and 15th centuries.
These ideas stem from a 2009 conference on the 'Ecology of the Crusades'. Other work also based around this conference includes a considerably longer paper by Pluskowski et. al (2011). While at points it seems to lack the place specific detail of the Brown and Pluskowski article mentioned before, it gives a neat overview of the ways in which crusaders impacted on ecology across the whole of medieveal Europe.
While these ideas do require further testing they are beginning to be supported by increased zooarcheological and documentary data, and therefore warrant serious consideration when thinking about the start of the anthropocene.
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