Long-term Human-environment Interactions Research Articles

Archaeology in a fragile environment: archaeology of the lower Yangtze Shanghai region

ABSTRACT The Shanghai region is home to millennia of archaeological cultures and a massive modern metropolois. Until recently, this regional history has remained within the overarching framework of a north-China centric archaeology. Throughout the emergence of archaeological cultures in Shanghai and its periphery, however, we can observe striking adaptations to the vulnerability of its landscape, as well as ingenious technical and engineering solutions. This paper uses archaeological data to explore how this fragile environment was treated in the past and how people adapted to it, offering insights into the long-term human-environment interactions with the Lower Yangtze area.

Adaptive Dynamics of Settlement Models in the Urban Landscape of Termez (Uzbekistan) from c. 300 BCE to c. 1400 CE

The archaeological site of Ancient Termez is located in southern Uzbekistan. Despite the arid environment, the city benefited from its strategic position near two rivers, the Amu Darya and the Surkhan Darya. Its significance was mainly related to the expansion of trade routes connecting Eurasia. The city comprises several enclosures that attest long-term human-environment interactions. In order to identify the adaptive dynamics of the settlement models during an extended chronology covering the period from c. 300 BCE to c. 1220 CE (Greco-Bactrian/Yuezhi, Kushan, Kushano-Sasanian, and Islamic periods), a multidisciplinary study has been carried out, which includes: (1) archaeological excavations in several areas of the urban complex; (2) pedestrian surveying inside some enclosures and in the urban periphery; (3) an aerial survey based on high-resolution satellite imagery; (4) AMS dating of charcoal and bone samples; (5) archaeobotanical investigation through anthracological analysis; (6) zooarchaeological studies. The results point to variations in the development of the inhabited spaces, in which abandonment and occupation took place. The zooarchaeological and archaeobotanical data demonstrate the exploitation of natural resources in different environments (i.e., arid areas and irrigated land) and a certain evolution during the period considered.

Evaluating the relationships between climate change, population pressure, economic intensification, and childhood stress in the Prehispanic Nasca region of Peru

Climate change can adversely affect population health by limiting resource availability. Climate shocks may cause resource shortfalls directly via declining economic productivity, but favorable climate conditions may also create food shortages indirectly by promoting demographic growth that then pressures a resource base. Current population health and capacities for resilience reflect long-term human-environment interactions, highlighting the need for studies on the relationship between climate and population health through time. In this article, we combine theory from population ecology and life history with structural equation models to evaluate archaeological evidence of changing population health in response to climate change in the Nasca highlands of Peru from the terminal Middle Horizon to Late Intermediate period (1250 - 500 cal BP). Specifically, we examine potential causal chains between local precipitation, population growth, agricultural intensification, and two skeletal indicators of childhood physiological stress—cribra orbitalia (CO) and porotic hyperostosis (PH)—in 149 radiocarbon dated individuals. We find that higher precipitation has a positive indirect impact on PH frequency that is entirely mediated by local population pressure and maize agricultural intensification. Precipitation has a negative direct effect on CO, which is most common during intervals of extreme drought, low dietary maize inputs, and in periods of higher fertility. Additionally, we find that PH and CO negatively co-vary over time. These findings add to a growing body of evidence that, though PH and CO have historically been considered manifestations of the same pathological process, these two skeletal lesions likely result from distinct sources of physiological stress in the Prehispanic central Andes.

Practicing Critical Zone Observation in Agricultural Landscapes: Communities, Technology, Environment and Archaeology

The aims of agricultural land management change continuously, reflecting shifts in wider societal priorities. Currently, these include addressing the climate crisis, promoting environmental sustainability, and supporting the livelihoods of rural communities while ensuring food security. Working toward these aims requires information on the character of agricultural land and how dynamic processes influence it. Remote and near-surface sensing data are important sources of information on the characteristics of soils, plants, water, topography, and related processes. Sensing data are collected, analysed, and used in decision-making by specialists in multiple domains connected to land management. While progress has been made to connect the use of sensing data across agricultural and environmental applications under the umbrella of integrated sustainable land management, archaeological and heritage uses of these data remain largely disconnected. This creates barriers to accounting for the impacts of past human activities on contemporary agricultural landscapes through the alteration of soils, topography, and plant communities. In parallel, it hinders the creation of knowledge about the archaeological features which form an essential part of the heritage of agricultural landscapes. The ipaast-czo project explores the potential of a coordinated approach across all these domains, which would reduce these barriers and provide benefits by better integrating information generated using sensing. To do so, both conceptual and practical barriers to developing shared practices and how these might be overcome were considered. In this study, a conceptual framework designed to create a shared understanding of how agricultural landscapes work and enable collaboration around their management was proposed. This framework treats present-day rural agricultural landscapes as Critical Zones: complex entities shaped by long-term human–environment interactions including contemporary farming. Practitioners in precision agriculture and archaeological remote and near-surface sensing, as well as users of these data, were engaged using workshops and interviews. The relationships between practitioners’ objectives, data requirements for their applications, and their perceptions of the benefits and disadvantages of changing working practices were interrogated. The conceptual framework and assessment of practical benefits and challenges emerging from this work provide a foundation for leveraging shared sensing data and methods for long-term integrated sustainable land management.

Landscape change and settlement dynamics in Prehistory and Late Antiquity in the Firuzabad plain (South Fars, Iran); a preliminary consideration

The Firuzabad Plain in south Fars (Iran) is well known due to the circular city of Ardashir-Xurra, the first Sasanian (220 – 651 CE) capital, built by Ardashir Papakan around 220 CE, but its landscape evolution is not. Firuzabad is a relatively large and well-watered intermediate plain in the Zagros folded belt, about 80 km south of Shiraz. The archaeological record suggests a thin and sporadic prehistoric occupation compared to a dense and planned occupation with extensive land use in Later Antiquity. Historical accounts suggest a drastic and anthropogenically triggered landscape change in the third century CE, during the city’s foundation, including draining the swamps and changing the course of the main river to make the supposedly unhabitable wetlands of Firuzabad into a flourishing plain with a perfectly planned circular city.Such large-scale projects are known from other areas as part of the early Sasanian Iranshahr concept and have been historically discussed. However, their proposed landscape change has never been investigated using interdisciplinary methods to support or falsify this narrative. Therefore, the Firuzabad Plain has been subjected to a recent interdisciplinary project to comprehend its landscape evolution from Prehistory to Late Antiquity and address this issue with geoarchaeological data.This paper reports the preliminary results of this project and discusses future steps to address the proposed wetlands of Firuzabad. The authors present the area in geomorphological and archaeological terms and elaborate on geoarchaeological analyses, including surface and sub-surface soil and sediment texture, organic matter, slope, and elevation of the plain, as well as integrated archaeological and historical investigation. Based on these results, the landscape of Firuzabad seems to have changed from its original state of a heterogeneous, poorly drained, and highly eroded plain in Prehistory into a mosaic of well-planned and extensively used anthropogenic landscapes in Late Antiquity. Independent comparisons with regional paleoenvironmental records support those interpretations. This is considered a case study for investigating long-term human-environment interaction within the framework of Niche Construction Theory in the archaeology of the Ancient Near East.

Human-environmental interactions and seismic activity in a Late Bronze to Early Iron Age settlement center in the southeastern Caucasus

Long-term human-environmental interactions in naturally fragile drylands are a focus of geomorphological and geoarchaeological research. Furthermore, many dryland societies were also affected by seismic activity. The semi-arid Shiraki Plain in the tectonically active southeastern Caucasus is currently covered by steppe and largely devoid of settlements. However, numerous Late Bronze to Early Iron Age city-type settlements suggest early state formation between ca. 3.2-2.5 ka that abruptly ended after that time. A paleolake was postulated for the lowest plain, and nearby pollen records suggest forest clearcutting of the upper altitudes under a more humid climate during the Late Bronze/Early Iron Ages. Furthermore, also an impact of earthquakes on regional Early Iron Age settlements was suggested. However, regional paleoenvironmental changes and paleoseismicity were not systematically studied so far. We combined geomorphological, sedimentological, chronological and paleoecological data with hydrological modelling to reconstruct regional Holocene paleoenvironmental changes, to identify natural and human causes and to study possible seismic events during the Late Bronze/Early Iron Ages. Our results show a balanced to negative Early to Mid-Holocene water balance probably caused by forested upper slopes. Hence, no lake but a pellic Vertisol developed in the lowest plain. Following, Late Bronze/Early Iron Age forest clear-cutting caused lake formation and the deposition of lacustrine sediments derived from soil erosion. Subsequently, regional aridification caused slow lake desiccation. Remains of freshwater fishes indicate that the lake potentially offered valuable ecosystem services for regional prehistoric societies even during the desiccation period. Finally, colluvial coverage of the lake sediments during the last centuries could have been linked with hydrological extremes during the Little Ice Age. Our study demonstrates that the Holocene hydrological balance of the Shiraki Plain was and is situated near a major hydrological threshold, making the landscape very sensitive to small-scale human or natural influences with severe consequences for local societies. Furthermore, seismites in the studied sediments do not indicate an influence of earthquakes on the main and late phases of Late Bronze/Early Iron Age settlement. Altogether, our study underlines the high value of multi-disciplinary approaches to investigate human-environmental interactions and paleoseismicity in drylands on millennial to centennial time scales.

Reviewing the Palaeoenvironmental Record to Better Understand Long-Term Human-Environment Interaction in Inner Asia During the Late Holocene

The Middle to Late Holocene spread of agropastoralism throughout Eurasia not only subjected domesticated taxa to stressors associated with novel environments but also induced changes in these environments following the introduction of these social-ecological systems. The mountainous region of Inner Asia comprises various steppe, meadow, and forest landscapes where zooarchaeological evidence suggests occupation by herding populations as early as 7,000 years Before Present (BP). Recent archaeobotanical findings indicate the introduction of cropping and the development of agropastoralism around 4,500 BP. Here, we review and synthesize palaeoenvironmental studies and data to examine anthropogenic impacts and modifications of these landscapes. From around 4,000 BP, we find significant changes in palynomorph, charcoal, sediment, and other proxy data, related to the introduction of agriculture to the region, with later intensifications in land use indicators at around 2,000 and 1,000 BP. We note that these impacts are not uniform or continuous through and across the records and may be evidence of shifting phases of occupation and landscape management. This temporal and spatial variability may also be a response to shifts in moisture availability due to long-term Holocene changes in the intensity of the summer monsoon and Westerly circulation systems. Changes in arboreal pollen indicate the development of intensified use of forest resources in the region, which we identify as a topic for future investigation. Based on these data, we stress the long-term human paleoecology in the study area and argue that traditional agropastoralist systems should be considered in future programs of landscape conservation in the region. This study also emphasizes the importance of future local scale multiproxy studies into past anthropogenic changes within the Inner Asian landscape.

Prolonged landscape stability sustained the continuous development of ancient civilizations in the Shuangji River valley of China's Central Plains

The continuous development of the Neolithic to Bronze-Age cultures on China's Central Plains is well contested by archaeological and historical research. Environmental factors that sustained such an exceptionally long cultural continuity are, however, poorly understood. The evolution of fluvial landscapes and its relationship with cultural developments are key to disentangle the close interaction between the environment and civilizational discourse on the Central Plains. Here, we present OSL and AMS 14C ages and other environmental data collected from a range of typical geomorphological locations in the Shuangji River valley, which is situated at the heartland of the Central Plains and long considered to be one of the most important regions for the rise of the Chinese civilization. Combining the OSL and 14C dates, results of particle size and soil/sediment micromorphological analyses, and geoarchaeological field observations, we reconstructed the evolution of Holocene geomorphological landscape in the Shuangji River valley. The results show that the Neogene alluvial fan was incised into a wide valley during the early Pleistocene. Subsequent alluvial processes were constrained within this general framework of regional landform. The period of 20 ka BP and 10–8 ka BP saw two episodes of basin-scale alluvial incision, which created two alluvial terraces (i.e., T4 and T3), respectively. Despite the occurrence of episodic floods and some large-scale alluvial siltation during 8–3 ka BP, the alluvial surfaces remained stable for a prolonged period of time and thus provided optimal living conditions for prehistoric inhabitation. We argue that the geomorphological foundation and prolonged landscape stability were instrumental to the continuous cultural developments on the Central Plains as seen in the Shuangji River valley as a representative of such long-term human-environment interactions. Our geoarchaeological survey for the first time reveals basin-scale evidence on the mechanism responsible for this distinctive relationship between alluvial landscape and cultural development, in which the terrace-surface stability, alongside many other cultural factors, profoundly shaped the celebrated cultural continuity on prehistoric Central Plains.

Potential millennial-scale avian declines by humans in southern China.

Mounting observational records demonstrate human-caused faunal decline in recent decades, while accumulating archaeological evidence suggests an early biodiversity impact of human activities during the Holocene. A fundamental question arises concerning whether modern wildlife population declines began during early human disturbance. Here, we performed a population genomic analysis of six common forest birds in East Asia to address this question. For five of them, demographic history inference based on 25-33 genomes of each species revealed dramatic population declines by 4- to 48-fold over millennia (e.g. 2000-5000 thousand years ago). Nevertheless, summary statistics detected nonsignificant correlations between these population size trajectories and Holocene temperature variations, and ecological niche models explicitly predicted extensive range persistence during the Holocene, implying limited demographic consequence of Holocene climate change. Further analyses suggest high negative correlations between the reconstructed population declines and human disturbance intensities and indicate a potential driver of human activities. These findings provide a deep-time and large-scale insight into the recently recognized avifaunal decline and support an early origin hypothesis of human effects on biodiversity. Overall, our study sheds light on the current biodiversity crisis in the context of long-term human-environment interactions and offers a multi-evidential framework for quantitatively assessing the ecological consequences of human disturbance.

A trans-holocene approach to assess maritime development on the California Channel Islands archipelago: A case study from Eel Point, San Clemente island

The Channel Islands of California have received much attention from researchers, in part, due to the long occupation history of the islands that spans at least 13,000 years. The Northern Channel Islands have played an important role in our understanding of early coastal adaptations and development of complexity among maritime adapted peoples; however, this is only part of the picture. The Southern Channel Islands, located approximately 90 km south of the Northern Channel Islands, have a similar occupational history to their northern counterparts, but exist in a very different environmental and geographic context. Occupants on each island would have faced marine and terrestrial environments that could be vastly different based on issues such as fluctuating sea temperatures, fresh water accessibility, and plant, animal, and marine shell seasonality. The coastal adaptations along all the Channel Islands reflected these differences. Understanding variation on the Channel Islands archipelago can be realized by comparing and contrasting multiple types of environmental and material data from trans-Holocene sites, archaeological deposits that present continuous data sequences over a wide time span of the Holocene. One such site from San Clemente Island in the southern portion of the archipelago is Eel Point. Previous excavations at this site resulted in a rich array of cultural material; however, recent research has shown major portions of the collections have not yet been processed, are unanalyzed, or are under-analyzed. Specifically the groundstone and archaeobotanical assemblages have not been comprehensively analyzed or reported on, but are integral to understanding not only subsistence strategies, but also technological development and island paleo and historical ecology. These data form the basis for an inter-island comparative approach to understand long-term human-environmental interactions and impacts to ancient ecosystems on the Channel Islands archipelago. This study focuses on leveraging these under-analyzed and unanalyzed data to present on the variation in adaptions on the archipelago and to demonstrate the relevance of multi-island studies for considering the cultural impacts of climatic change in Mediterranean environments.

Endowment, investment, and the transforming coast: Long-term human-environment interactions and territorial proprietorship in the Prince Rupert Harbour, Canada

We propose connections between long-term persistent use of landscapes, anthropogenic landform modifications, and the production of systems of territorial ownership/proprietorship. Exploring the case of the socio-politically complex cultures of the Northwest Coast, we argue that while tenure and proprietorship were mediated by historical precedent of use (proprietorship-through-endowment), investments in places through physical engagement with or transformation of coastal landforms could be used to make explicit these endowed rights or to assert or negotiate new rights (proprietorship-through-investment). A key ingredient in negotiating proprietorship was an engagement with the dynamic coast itself, an active agent in landscape transformation perceived as being spiritually powerful. Using the archaeological landscape of the Prince Rupert Harbour area, we assess the timing and tempo of measurable investments in the physical landscape at village sites and the occurrence of independent archaeological proxies for restricted or unequal access to territory or resources. Systems of territorial proprietorship existed there by at least the mid-Holocene, though we document increasingly institutionalized proprietorship systems coincident with increased investments into the built environment beginning ~3000 years ago. Our approach has broad applicability, and encourages archaeologists to explore the role of human engagement with dynamic landscapes in the generation of senses of identity and social or political organization.

Humans take control of fire-driven diversity changes in Mediterranean Iberia’s vegetation during the mid–late Holocene

Fire regime changes are considered a major threat to future biodiversity in the Mediterranean Basin. Such predictions remain uncertain, given that fire regime changes and their ecological impacts occur over timescales that are too long for direct observation. Here we analyse centennial- and millennial-scale shifts in fire regimes and compositional turnover to track the consequences of fire regime shifts on Mediterranean vegetation diversity. We estimated rate-of-change, richness and compositional turnover (beta diversity) in 13 selected high-resolution palaeoecological records from Mediterranean Iberia and compared these with charcoal-inferred fire regime changes. Event sequence analysis showed fire regime shifts to be significantly temporally associated with compositional turnover, particularly during the last three millennia. We find that the timing and direction of fire and diversity change in Mediterranean Iberia are best explained by long-term human–environment interactions dating back perhaps 7500 years. Evidence suggests that Neolithic burning propagated a first wave of increasing vegetation openness and promoted woodland diversity around early farming settlements. Landscape transformation intensified around 5500 to 5000 cal. yr BP and accelerated during the last two millennia, as fire led to permanent transitions in ecosystem state. These fire episodes increased open vegetation diversity, decreased woodland diversity and significantly altered richness on a regional scale. Our study suggests that anthropogenic fires played a primary role in diversity changes in Mediterranean Iberia. Their millennia-long legacy in today’s vegetation should be considered for biodiversity conservation and landscape management.

Towards a dialogue of sustainable agriculture and end-times theology in the United States: insights from the historical ecology of nineteenth century millennial communes

Almost one-third of all U.S. Americans believe that Jesus Christ will return to Earth in the next 40 years, thereby signaling the end of the world. The prevalence of this end-times theology has meant that sustainability initiatives are often met with indifference, resistance, or even hostility from a significant portion of the American population. One of the ways that the scientific community can respond to this is by making scientific discourse, particularly as related to sustainability, more palatable to end-times believers. In this paper, I apply a historical–ecological framework, which emphasizes the interdisciplinary study of landscapes to understand long-term human–environment interactions, to three millennial religious groups that formed communes in nineteenth century America. The Shakers, Inspirationalists, and Mormons all blended deep beliefs in end-times theology with agricultural practices that were arguably more sustainable than those in use in the mainstream, and their ability to reconcile eschatology with sustainability provides us with potential lessons. By examining the history, doctrines, and agroecology of these nineteenth century communes, I propose communication strategies based in autonomy, institutional support, multigenerational narratives, and anthropocentricism as potential pathways for a more productive dialogue between advocates of sustainability initiatives and end-times believers in the modern United States.

Human ecodynamics in the north-west coast of Finland 10,000–2000 years ago

High-quality palaeoenvironmental proxies and well-preserved archaeological record make Fennoscandia as an excellent area for the studies of long-term human-environment interaction in high-latitude settings. Here, we use palaeoenvironmental data and temporal frequency distributions of 754 shoreline dated hunter-gatherer sites to analyse the relationship between environmental changes and hunter-gatherer population dynamics, mobility, social organisation, and conflicts in the Baltic Sea coast of western Finland. Our results suggest, firstly, that hunter-gatherer population dynamics were strongly influenced by changes in the productivity of terrestrial and marine environments. Secondly, the degree of residential mobility, as indicated by the frequency of house pit sites, was correlated with population size. Thirdly, large villages and large co-residential units were tightly associated with the highest population size and their frequency dropped sharply when population size started to decrease. Fourthly, intensity of conflicts, as indicated by frequency of defensive structures, was the highest slightly after the highest population sizes, when environmental productivity had started to decline. Increased conflicts were probably caused by the imbalance between human population and its resources. Lastly, dramatic population crash (76% within 200 years) occurred just after the intensity peak in conflicts. The crash was partly density dependent (conflicts) and partly density independent phenomenon as it coincided with the onset of the Late Holocene acceleration in the cooling trend in climate. Continuing decline in the environmental productivity during the Late Holocene did not allow hunter-gatherer population to recover from the collapse. All this highlights the importance of environmental forcing on hunter-gatherer populations in northern Europe.

Archaeological sites as Distributed Long-term Observing Networks of the Past (DONOP)

Archaeological records provide a unique source of direct data on long-term human-environment interactions and samples of ecosystems affected by differing degrees of human impact. Distributed long-term datasets from archaeological sites provide a significant contribution to establish local, regional, and continental-scale environmental baselines and can be used to understand the implications of human decision-making and its impacts on the environment and the resources it provides for human use. Deeper temporal environmental baselines are essential for resource and environmental managers to restore biodiversity and build resilience in depleted ecosystems. Human actions are likely to have impacts that reorganize ecosystem structures by reducing diversity through processes such as niche construction. This makes data from archaeological sites key assets for the management of contemporary and future climate change scenarios because they combine information about human behavior, environmental baselines, and biological systems. Sites of this kind collectively form Distributed Long-term Observing Networks of the Past (DONOP), allowing human behavior and environmental impacts to be assessed over space and time. Behavioral perspectives are gained from direct evidence of human actions in response to environmental opportunities and change. Baseline perspectives are gained from data on species, landforms, and ecology over timescales that long predate our typically recent datasets that only record systems already disturbed by people. Biological perspectives can also provide essential data for modern managers wanting to understand and utilize past diversity (i.e., trophic and/or genetic) as a way of revealing, and potentially correcting, weaknesses in our contemporary wild and domestic animal populations.

The Saale-Unstrut cultural landscape corridor

Cultural landscapes are the result of long-term human–environment interaction, but they are nevertheless worldwide vulnerable to processes of global change such as land-use change, urbanization, neglect and abandonment. The cultural landscape mosaic along the rivers Saale and Unstrut (Germany, Central Uplands) provides many features of (pre-)historical human activities, in particular since the Middle Ages. Most of these elements occur in what can be defined as “cultural landscape corridor” along the river valleys, thus conveying a broad insight in historic land-use, including viticulture, and architecture of the past centuries in a nutshell. The area has been nominated for inscription in the List of World Heritage, due to its famous components in Naumburg, Freyburg and Pforta that representatively reflect cultural processes of the High Middle Ages. However, population loss and land-use change as well as neglect of lower-ranking monuments may lead to a gradual decline of the historical cultural landscape and its multiple elements. In this contribution, we summarize the landscape development in the Saale-Unstrut area and discuss measures to raise awareness of selected elements of a coherent cultural landscape corridor.

Radiocarbon dating uncertainty and the reliability of the PEWMA method of time-series analysis for research on long-term human-environment interaction.

Statistical time-series analysis has the potential to improve our understanding of human-environment interaction in deep time. However, radiocarbon dating—the most common chronometric technique in archaeological and palaeoenvironmental research—creates challenges for established statistical methods. The methods assume that observations in a time-series are precisely dated, but this assumption is often violated when calibrated radiocarbon dates are used because they usually have highly irregular uncertainties. As a result, it is unclear whether the methods can be reliably used on radiocarbon-dated time-series. With this in mind, we conducted a large simulation study to investigate the impact of chronological uncertainty on a potentially useful time-series method. The method is a type of regression involving a prediction algorithm called the Poisson Exponentially Weighted Moving Average (PEMWA). It is designed for use with count time-series data, which makes it applicable to a wide range of questions about human-environment interaction in deep time. Our simulations suggest that the PEWMA method can often correctly identify relationships between time-series despite chronological uncertainty. When two time-series are correlated with a coefficient of 0.25, the method is able to identify that relationship correctly 20–30% of the time, providing the time-series contain low noise levels. With correlations of around 0.5, it is capable of correctly identifying correlations despite chronological uncertainty more than 90% of the time. While further testing is desirable, these findings indicate that the method can be used to test hypotheses about long-term human-environment interaction with a reasonable degree of confidence.

Histories and Trajectories of Socio-Ecological Landscapes in the Lesser Antilles: Implications of Colonial Period Zooarchaeological Research

ABSTRACTThe plantation era in the Caribbean was characterised by significant ecological degradation and change through the shift to sugar monoculture, and the introduction of exotic taxa to the island, leading to the extensive depletion of native flora and fauna. During European colonial rule in this region, marginalised and enslaved communities developed informal domestic economies such as artisanal fishing, small-scale animal husbandry and agriculture to survive within this oppressive structure. Zooarchaeology from this period offers insight into the variability of historical human eco-dynamics, and how these pasts impact modern social, economic and ecological systems. This study presents archaeological case studies from three plantation sites in the Lesser Antilles, from the islands of Martinique, Barbados and Dominica, to illustrate the potential contributions of historical archaeology to understanding long-term human–environment interaction, and explore the ecological consequences of colonialism in the Caribbean. Results of faunal analysis at the three sites suggest that resilient, small-scale subsistence and economic practices that persist today began during slavery, and that these data provide a more nuanced picture of past and present issues of biodiversity, ecosystem health and food security in the Caribbean.

Holocene treeline history of a high-mountain landscape inferred from soil charcoal: The case of Sierra de Gredos (Iberian Central System, SW Europe)

Unravelling the precise Holocene altitudinal fluctuation of the highland vegetation communities (>1800 m asl) in the Gredos Range (Central System, Spain) is challenging owing to the complexity of the long-term human-environmental interactions in the area. Aiming at improving the knowledge of these highland dynamics, a pedoanthracological analysis was conducted on six soil profiles located on the northern slope of the central sector of the Gredos Range, following an altitudinal transect between 2200 and 1700 m asl in the Las Pozas valley. The soil charcoal analysis revealed the long-term stability of the Leguminosae shrublands, which have dominated the landscape over 1800 m asl since the Early Holocene. The highest ancient timberline was stimated to be at approximately 1700 m asl in this valley, from the Early Holocene until the beginning of the Late Holocene. This ancient forest contained Pinus gr. sylvestris, with significant numbers of deciduous Quercus. However, scattered individuals or small groves of pioneer deciduous taxa (Betula sp., Populus sp., Salix sp., Maloideae and Prunus sp.) were found to have thrived over the timberline during the Early and Middle Holocene, especially between 1900 and 2000 m asl. The highest treeline was marked by Betula at 2100 m asl. Elevated values of charcoal concentration reflect the intense fire regime of the area. The pattern of fire events accumulation periods that can be inferred from the 23 dated charcoal samples is consistent with previous data, which supports an increase in fire frequency around 2000 cal yr BP, during the first reported period of significant human influence.

Anthropological contributions to historical ecology: 50 questions, infinite prospects.

This paper presents the results of a consensus-driven process identifying 50 priority research questions for historical ecology obtained through crowdsourcing, literature reviews, and in-person workshopping. A deliberative approach was designed to maximize discussion and debate with defined outcomes. Two in-person workshops (in Sweden and Canada) over the course of two years and online discussions were peer facilitated to define specific key questions for historical ecology from anthropological and archaeological perspectives. The aim of this research is to showcase the variety of questions that reflect the broad scope for historical-ecological research trajectories across scientific disciplines. Historical ecology encompasses research concerned with decadal, centennial, and millennial human-environmental interactions, and the consequences that those relationships have in the formation of contemporary landscapes. Six interrelated themes arose from our consensus-building workshop model: (1) climate and environmental change and variability; (2) multi-scalar, multi-disciplinary; (3) biodiversity and community ecology; (4) resource and environmental management and governance; (5) methods and applications; and (6) communication and policy. The 50 questions represented by these themes highlight meaningful trends in historical ecology that distill the field down to three explicit findings. First, historical ecology is fundamentally an applied research program. Second, this program seeks to understand long-term human-environment interactions with a focus on avoiding, mitigating, and reversing adverse ecological effects. Third, historical ecology is part of convergent trends toward transdisciplinary research science, which erodes scientific boundaries between the cultural and natural.