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• Comprehensive remote sensing survey of the monumental funerary landscapes of SE Mauritania. • Characterisation of three newly documented prehistoric tumulus fields. • A size-based classification system for simple stone tumuli in the Sahara is presented. • First application of Gini coefficients to the study of prehistoric funerary landscapes. • Discussion of socio-economic dynamics in the pre-Islamic Sahara-Sahel ecotone. The archaeological record of southeastern Mauritania has considerable potential to contribute to longstanding anthropological debates in world prehistory, such as early cereal domestication or the emergence and organization of complex societies, although research remains limited. The archaeological study of funerary rites offers invaluable insights into cultural attitudes towards the dead and the socio-economic dynamics of the living. The materiality of remembrance is a political statement, rooted on the ability of different social agents to mobilize labor pools and networks of obligations within a given cultural framework. As such, understanding the spatial distribution and size variability in burial monuments within funerary landscapes provides insights into the social energetics of ancestor memorialization. To that end, this paper first presents a size-based classification system for pre-Islamic conical tumulus cairns in the highlands of southeastern Mauritania, West Africa, that has much wider applicability within prehistoric Saharan archaeology. Through the first application of Gini coefficients to the study of funerary landscapes, the paper then analyses the spatial distribution and degree of monument size variability within large, spatially bounded clusters ("tumulus fields") in Dhar Tichitt in order to contextualize the socio-economic dynamics of labor mobilization at three previously undocumented tumulus fields in the western Tagant Plateau. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding how human societies interacted with environmental changes is a major goal of archaeology and other socio-natural sciences. In this paper, we assess the human-environment interactions in the Pampa del Tamarugal (PDT) basin of the Atacama Desert over the last 13,000 years. By relying on a socio-environmental model that integrates ecosystem services with adaptive strategies, we review past climate changes, shifting environmental conditions, and the continuities and discontinuities in the nature and intensity of the human occupation of the PDT. As a result we highlight the importance of certain key resources such as water, an essential factor in the long-term trajectory of eco-historical change. Without water the outcome of human societies becomes hazardous. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hunting groups are closely linked to the environments in which they live, especially in the deserts. This paper explores the relationship between people and desert environments in the long term using key concepts such as resilience, refugia and habitat loss. A thorough paleoenvironmental analysis was conducted to improve our understanding about continuities and discontinuities in the archaeological record of the South Andean highlands. This allowed us to test ideas about the availability of adequate human habitats during the Holocene. Cultural archives such as archaeofauna and lithic technology are employed to illustrate and discuss methodological perspectives for the identification and description of resilient human habitats in arid landscapes in the South Andean Puna. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we model patterns of expansion and contraction of settlement in Bronze Age Messenia (ca. 3100–1050 BCE) using the ideal free distribution (IFD). We rank potential settlement locations on the landscape using environmental and cultural variables, including watershed size, which is a proxy for fresh water availability, net primary productivity, and the distance to the location of the Palace of Nestor at Pylos, a central site of political importance throughout most of the Bronze Age. The settlement chronology for the region is derived from an existing database of survey data and conforms to the predictions of the IFD. The highest-ranked habitats were settled first and the population expanded to lower-ranked habitats as population density increased. The data also conforms to the IFD prediction that important political centers should follow the same pattern, expanding from higher- to lower-ranked habitats. This model helps to provide an understanding of the effects of the unique environmental and cultural landscape of the region on settlement prior to the rise of the major Mycenaean centers in mainland Greece. The application of the IFD to a sociopolitically complex case demonstrates its broad potential for understanding historical trajectories in settlement patterns throughout the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The archaeology of climate change must. • Improve chronological controls on archaeological and environmental data; • Downscale climate data to local and microlocal effects in high-resolution studies; • Generate multi-proxy archaeological data analyses, avoiding single variable reporting in favor of multiple sources of precisely dated archaeological evidence; • Engage with up-to-date high-quality theory on social vulnerability and human responses to climate and environmental change; • Specify the threats, magnitude, and predictability of climate impacts in the context of traditional environmental knowledge; and. • Look at change before, during and after the climate impact. In 2004, the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology published Julie Field's "Environmental and climatic considerations: a hypothesis for conflict and the emergence of social complexity in Fijian prehistory", where she combined climate and environmental data to investigate the relationship between social patterns of change in the context of variability. Field tackled a complex issue: how societies respond to climate and environmental change that could cause unpredictable impacts on subsistence and settlement systems. Much progress has been made towards the understanding of human adaptations or responses to climate change since that paper was published. Here I reflect on the issues put forth by Field and consider how archaeology can engage with other interdisciplinary sciences and contribute to the understanding of human responses to environmental change. Two topics are emphasized: climate and environmental change, and social behavior in the context of that change. When attempting to identify how climate change affects a society, it is necessary to downscale climate to the specific location in consideration (space) during the time-period during which the relevant society lived (time) and in the context of their past experiences of climate (traditional knowledge). We face an unprecedented climate crisis and archaeology can contribute to the identification of solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A multiproxy-approach is key to understanding regional demography. • Demography and mobility changed throughout the Mesolithic. • Possibly triggered by environmental and climate events. • The Middle Mesolithic is characterized by increased mobility and a population shift. • The Late Mesolithic testifies a reduction in population and mobility. This paper explores the impact of environmental, e.g. sea level rise, and climatic events, e.g. abrupt cooling events, on Mesolithic populations (ca. 11,350 to 6600 cal BP) living in the western Scheldt basin of Belgium and Northern France. The Mesolithic in this study-area has been extensively studied during the last few decades, leading to an extensive database of radiocarbon dates (n = 418), sites (n = 157) and excavated loci (n = 145). A multi-proxy analysis of this database reveals important changes both chronologically and geographically, which are interpreted in terms of population dynamics and changing mobility and land-use. The results suggest a population peak and high residential mobility in the Early Mesolithic, followed by a population shift and increased intra-basin mobility in the Middle Mesolithic, possibly triggered by the rapid inundation of the North Sea basin. The situation during the Late Mesolithic remains less clear but a possible reduction in the mobility seems likely. Currently there is little evidence supporting a causal link between these diachronic changes in human behavior and the 9.3 and 8.2 ka cooling events. Most of the observed changes seem more in response to long-term climatic and environmental changes during the Early and Middle Holocene, hinting at considerable resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We review the state of research on human-environment interaction in Holocene China. • We demonstrate the benefits of a multidisciplinary, regionally focused approach. • We conclude datasets must be local and specific, and integrate data on multiple scales. • China is large, well-documented, and critical for understanding social-natural systems. This paper reviews recent archaeological research on human-environment interaction in the Holocene, taking continental China as its geographic focus. As China is large, geographically diverse, and exceptionally archaeologically and historically well-documented, research here provides critical insight into the functioning of social-natural systems. Based on a broad review of the field as well as recent advances and discoveries, the authors reflect on research themes including climate change and adaptive systems theory, spatial and temporal scale, anthropogenic environmental change, risk management and resilience, and integration of subdisciplines. These converge on three overarching conclusions. First, datasets relevant to climate change and ancient human-environment interaction must be as local and specific as possible, as the timing of environmental change differs locally, and the human response is highly dependent on local social and technological conditions. Second, the field still needs more robust theoretical frameworks for analyzing complex social-natural systems, and especially for integrating data on multiple scales. Third, for this work to contribute meaningfully to contemporary climate change research, effective communication of research findings to the public and to scientists in other disciplines should be incorporated into publication plans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Technological and behavioural developments in Europe at 400,000 years ago. • Model of landscape and resources shaping development of localised material culture. • Model of population movement triggered by shifts in climate or environment. • Estimates of social group and territory size for Middle Pleistocene Europe. Identification of cultural groups is rare in the early Palaeolithic due to site formation processes including taphonomy and the effect of raw material and site function. This paper reviews a critical period in Europe at about 400 ka (MIS 11) when we may be able to identify such groups. This period, sees more sustained occupation and evidence of new technologies, including bone and wooden tools, hunting and fire-use. Importantly, brain size had begun to approach modern capacity. The fine-tuned record from Britain enables correlation of sites and new models of human behaviour to be developed. Millennial-scale changes in material culture can now be recognised, which can be interpreted as brief incursions by different cultural groups into Britain from mainland Europe. We suggest that population movement was primarily driven by changes in climate and environment. We further propose that variation in material culture is a reflection of local resources and landscape and that during stable environment localised expressions of culture emerge. This can be applied to Europe, where it is suggested that a complex mosaic of small-scale cultural groupings can be identified, some with and some without handaxes, but underpinned by a common set of technologies and behaviours. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]