Thanks Amy, this was really interesting:
>P.s., on the mention of Prynne, Sperling has also written usefully on the O.E.D. and 'The Glacial Question, Unsolved': http://centaur.reading.ac.uk/30729/1/g2-roebuck-and-sperling.pdf
Roebuck and Sperling's commentary on "parkland" (line 40) regards Butzer's use of "birch parkland" as puzzling:
"But his word-choice is enigmatic, given that every historical sense
recorded for ‘park’ specifies it as an enclosed, humanly managed
land-feature (‘A park was distinguished from a forest or chase by being
enclosed’ [OED, s.v. ‘park, n.’])."
This meaning of "parkland" may be modern - may even be Butzer's own - but it's fairly well established in studies of the arctic and glaciation.
Though it arises from analogy with the artificial landscape of parks (typified by a mixture of standard trees and open spaces), it refers to a natural vegetation type : It means open terrain with widely scattered trees (most commonly birch), sort of a half-way stage between tundra and wood, a fairly common sight in the reindeer-herding parts of the world.
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