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This paper examines the hypothesis that Waun Mawn in West Wales provided the bluestone monoliths that were used at Stonehenge. Some archaeologists believe that the site supports the last remains of a giant stone circle or 'Proto Stonehenge' which was dismantled and transported to Salisbury Plain around 5000 years ago. It was claimed, after three excavation seasons at Waun Mawn in 2017, 2018 and 2021, that there is firm evidence of some standing stones which were later removed or broken up, but it has still not been demonstrated that there ever was a small stone circle here, let alone a 'giant' one. Furthermore, there have been no control studies in the neighbourhood which might demonstrate that the speculative feature has any unique characteristics. There is nothing at Waun Mawn to link this site in any way to Stonehenge, and this is confirmed by recent cited research. No evidence has been brought forward in support of the claim that 'this was one of the great religious and political centres of Neolithic Britain'. It is concluded that at Waun Mawn and elsewhere in West Wales there has been substantial 'interpretative inflation' driven by the desire to demonstrate a Stonehenge connection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The nature and extent of past indigenous transformations in the Amazon basin is an actively debated topic, and one that has important implications for both conservation policy and the cultural heritage of its indigenous and traditional populations. The use of charcoal and phytoliths to measure past human impacts in non-lacustrine settings has become especially influential in this debate but has also generated disagreement among scholars regarding the possible limits of these proxies for detecting ancient land-use. To contribute empirical data to this issue, our paper presents the first attempt to study charcoal and phytolith signals from areas of modern indigenous land-use, in the Xingu Indigenous Territory, southern Amazonia. Our findings show that, while charcoal and early successional herb phytoliths are good indicators of land-use intensity, certain types of land-use leave subtler traces in the phytolith record that can hinder their detection. We demonstrate how using finer sampling resolution and comparing local proxy data on their own terms are necessary steps in order to identify trends in human land-use across time and space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first millennium AD was a transformative period when many of the medieval kingdoms of Europe began to take shape, but despite recent advances in palaeoecological and archaeological research there remains a shortage of interdisciplinary collaborative research targeting this period. For some regions we know relatively little about the societies who lived during this formative period. This current investigation focusses on an early medieval elite centre near to Rhynie in NE Scotland; an important power-centre during the fourth–seventh centuries AD as evidenced by a remarkable series of Class I Pictish symbol stones, fortified enclosures at Cairn more, Tap o' Noth and the Craw-Stane, as well as high status metal-working and a range of continental imports from the Craw-Stane enclosure. However, by the end of the seventh century AD, elite focus appears to have shifted elsewhere with the Craw-Stane and Cairn More enclosures all being abandoned. By combining paleoenvironmental analysis with available historical and archaeological archives this paper provides new insights into societal change during the first Millennium AD, with focus on the economic, social and environmental impacts caused by the rise and subsequent abandonment of elite nodes of power. A calibrated age of AD 260–415, near the base of the core, coincides with the earliest dates for the Craw-Stane complex and pre-dates the construction of the nearby Cairn More enclosure. The results provide a rare snapshot of the Late Roman Iron Age to Medieval environment of Northeast Scotland. This centre appears to have been supported by a rich agricultural landscape, with evidence of pastoral and arable farming, and potential metal working. One of the most significant findings of this study has revealed that despite abandonment of these elite enclosed sites by the seventh century AD, people continued to utilise the surrounding landscape and available resources right through until modern times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The period from the late third millennium BC to the start of the first millennium AD witnesses the first steps towards food globalization in which a significant number of important crops and animals, independently domesticated within China, India, Africa and West Asia, traversed Central Asia greatly increasing Eurasian agricultural diversity. This paper utilizes an archaeobotanical database (AsCAD), to explore evidence for these crop translocations along southern and northern routes of interaction between east and west. To begin, crop translocations from the Near East across India and Central Asia are examined for wheat (Triticum aestivum) and barley (Hordeum vulgare) from the eighth to the second millennia BC when they reach China. The case of pulses and flax (Linum usitatissimum) that only complete this journey in Han times (206 BC–AD 220), often never fully adopted, is also addressed. The discussion then turns to the Chinese millets, Panicum miliaceum and Setaria italica, peaches (Amygdalus persica) and apricots (Armeniaca vulgaris), tracing their movement from the fifth millennium to the second millennium BC when the Panicum miliaceum reaches Europe and Setaria italica Northern India, with peaches and apricots present in Kashmir and Swat. Finally, the translocation of japonica rice from China to India that gave rise to indica rice is considered, possibly dating to the second millennium BC. The routes these crops travelled include those to the north via the Inner Asia Mountain Corridor, across Middle Asia, where there is good evidence for wheat, barley and the Chinese millets. The case for japonica rice, apricots and peaches is less clear, and the northern route is contrasted with that through northeast India, Tibet and west China. Not all these journeys were synchronous, and this paper highlights the selective long-distance transport of crops as an alternative to demic-diffusion of farmers with a defined crop package. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a comparative study of land use and demographic development in northern and southern Greece from the Neolithic to the Byzantine period. Results from summed probability densities (SPD) of archaeological radiocarbon dates and settlement numbers derived from archaeological site surveys are combined with results from cluster-based analysis of published pollen core assemblages to offer an integrated view of human pressure on the Greek landscape through time. We demonstrate that SPDs offer a useful approach to outline differences between regions and a useful complement to archaeological site surveys, evaluated here especially for the onset of the Neolithic and for the Final Neolithic (FN)/Early Bronze Age (EBA) transition. Pollen analysis highlight differences in vegetation between the two sub-regions, but also several parallel changes. The comparison of land cover dynamics between two sub-regions of Greece further demonstrates the significance of the bioclimatic conditions of core locations and that apparent oppositions between regions may in fact be two sides of the same coin in terms of socio-ecological trajectories. We also assess the balance between anthropogenic and climate-related impacts on vegetation and suggest that climatic variability was as an important factor for vegetation regrowth. Finally, our evidence suggests that the impact of humans on land cover is amplified from the Late Bronze Age (LBA) onwards as more extensive herding and agricultural practices are introduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a special issue on The Changing Face of the Mediterranean: Land Cover, Demography, and Environmental Change, which brings together up-to-date regional or thematic perspectives on major long-term trends in Mediterranean human–environment relations. Particularly, important insights are provided by palynology to reconstruct past vegetation and land cover, and archaeology to establish long-term demographic trends, but with further significant input from palaeoclimatology, palaeofire research and geomorphology. Here, we introduce the rationale behind this pan-Mediterranean research initiative, outline its major sources of evidence and method, and describe how individual submissions work to complement one another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores long-term trends in human population and vegetation change in the Levant from the early to the late Holocene in order to assess when and how human impact has shaped the region's landscapes over the millennia. To do so, we employed multiple proxies and compared archaeological, pollen and palaeoclimate data within a multi-scalar approach in order to assess how Holocene landscape dynamics change at different geographical scales. We based our analysis on 14 fossil pollen sequences and applied a hierarchical agglomerative clustering and community classification in order to define groups of vegetation types (e.g. grassland, wetland, woodland, etc.). Human impact on the landscape has been assessed by the analysis of pollen indicator groups. Archaeological settlement data and Summed Probability Distribution (SPD) of radiocarbon dates have been used to reconstruct long-term demographic trends. In this study, for the first time, the evolution of the human population is estimated statistically and compared with environmental proxies for assessing the interplay of biotic and abiotic factors in shaping the Holocene landscapes in the Levant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In discussions of human-environmental dynamics and climate change, treatments of water usually focus on the problem of drought. Monsoon environments constitute a different set of parameters for landscape interactions because of seasonal episodes of water abundance. In this paper, we evaluate the microscale management of routine and anticipated high-water events for the ancient Indian subcontinent, where people used the monsoon cycle to engage in rice farming that in turn supported the growth of cities. Rice production would have encompassed two fluctuating inputs: rural labor, which may have become scarce when villagers left farmlands to become city dwellers; and water, the quantity of which varies dramatically on both a seasonal basis because of the monsoon and on an occasional basis because of tropical cyclones. The abundance of water (even with its risks of overabundance) encompassed numerous logistical challenges but also permitted high productivity within short distances of urban centers. The case study of the ancient city of Sisupalgarh in eastern India illustrates that high levels of productivity per land area enabled city residents to engage in short-distance economies for food production, while maintaining regional contacts through durable-goods trade to mitigate occasional episodes of crop failure in times of major flooding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Identifying evidence for hunter-gatherers in the palaeoenvironmental record is far from simple. Despite decades of research, few studies have demonstrated unambiguous palynological evidence of hunter-gatherers. This paper presents the results of high-resolution palaeoecological analyses of a peat sequence located within the vicinity of the pre-historic Yup’ik village of Nunalleq in southwestern Alaska. The aim of this research was to examine whether there are any discernible palaeoenvironmental impacts associated with the 15th–17th century occupation of the site. Presuming an ephemeral character to any palaeoecological signal, this study selected a sampling location approximately 30 m east of the limit of archaeological remains. Pollen, non-pollen palynomorphs and microscopic charcoal analysis were then used to generate a highly resolved (contiguous 1 cm) environmental history for the site. The results are striking and indicate that the activities of prehistoric Yup’ik hunter-gatherers at Nunalleq did leave a clear material trace in the palaeoenvironmental record. Through the application of high-resolution Pb210 and C14 dating and Bayesian modelling, these impacts were found to be concurrent with the occupation of the archaeological site. These findings suggest that not only can circumpolar hunter-gatherers leave a material palaeoenvironmental trace but that these traces may be used to accurately date such site activity in lieu of excavation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the impacts of Neolithic Period (c. 5000–3200 cal. BP) and Iron Age (c. 3200–2300 cal. BP) occupation and land use on the geomorphology of residual hills that punctuate an expansive planation surface in central Karnataka, South India. Analyses of archaeological survey data, soil and regolith profiles, remotely sensed metrics of hill morphology and distributions of soil and sediment, and paleoecological data indicate that cultural land use altered the morphology of these features and the distribution of soils on them, and consequently impacted the processes by which they continued to develop. Statistical regression models indicate that archaeological evidence for ancient land use is a significant explanatory variable for the proportion of remaining soil cover and exposed residual rock on the sampled hills. Moreover, multivariate regression models explaining soil removal on the hills are effective when including archaeological proxies for ancient land use along with other geomorphological variables. The combined effects of intensified agro-pastoral land use, vegetation changes, and variations in climatic humidity during the mid-Holocene to late Holocene appear to have facilitated erosional conditions that outpaced subsurface weathering. These findings imply that the refinement of models for the development of residual hills in South India, where early paradigms for explaining the evolution of such landforms were formalized, should consider the effects of Holocene land use where applicable. The findings also suggest that recent efforts to understand the unique ecology of these landforms should account for historical human land use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the framework of a regional research project on wetlands as cultural heritage sites, an attempt was made to examine the natural and anthropogenic causes driving the vegetation dynamics and exploitation of a small mountain wetland. To assess its potential use as an archive of the landscape history, an environmental archaeology approach was used: palaeoenvironmental data from traditional pollen sampling by coring were matched with stratigraphic information from an excavation area of several square metres, and plant micro- and macroremain analyses (e.g. pollen assemblages, micro- and macrocharcoal, morphological and dendrochronological features of waterlogged tree trunks) were compared in order to evaluate them as effects of different environmental factors and to pinpoint these factors. In this paper, the focus is set mainly on the results originating from pollen analyses of a core drilled in the peat-bog, a few metres from the stratigraphic excavation. The start of peat deposition, sometimes coinciding with human activity, was dated around 10,000 cal. BP. The impact on the vegetation surrounding the site is clearly recorded in the pollen assemblages only from the Roman period (2010–1820 cal. BP) even though a long history of human presence is archaeologically documented in the area since the Palaeolithic. Since that time, the abrupt decline of fir favoured the final spread of beech which, in turn, in the Middle Ages (1180–790 cal. BP) leaves space to grassland exploitable for pasture and for agro-silvi-pastoral activities. This site has proven to be of great importance for the Holocene history of the silver fir. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The melting of the Scandinavian Ice-Sheet in the early Holocene allowed humans to populate the northernmost parts of Europe. Recent excavations of archaeological sites on the riverbank, floodplain and kame terraces of the River Rena, southeast Norway have defined periods of human occupation in riverside environments, which became ice-free during the last deglaciation. In this paper, we extend the scope of previous archaeological work by examining the sedimentology and chronology of five riverside sedimentary sequences along the River Rena. Our aims were to reconstruct the Holocene evolution of part of the river, and determine whether changes in Holocene settlement patterns might be linked to changes in river evolution and/or climate. Results show: (1) widespread draining of the kame terraces of the River Rena occurred shortly before the first consistent human settlement in the area began c. 8 ka BP; (2) human settlement was maintained until the present day, except during a period of previously undocumented abandonment between c. 4 and 3 ka BP, associated with a sustained period of high river discharge. We link the establishment of first undisputable settlement to reduced water levels as glaciers retreated upstream during a 'warmer' phase of the early Holocene, shortly after the 8.2 ka climatic downturn event. The most recent abandonment of the riverbank settlements 4-3 ka BP occurred during the last phase of glacier advance in the River Rena region, which has been linked to the Europe-wide late- Holocene Thermal Decline (Neoglacial) downturn in climate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the coastal lowlands of Mozambique, an expansion of savannas at the cost of forests has been attributed to anthropogenic influence. There are few investigations that have studied vegetation dynamics over the long term. Pollen analysis from two sedimentary cores in the Chibuene area, 7 km south of Vilanculos presented in this paper show that the coastal area 1600 years ago consisted of a mosaic of forests, Miombo woodlands and grasslands. The data also show that the area supported extensive forests in the past until AD 1400-1600 when the forests declined dramatically. Changing settlement patterns, as suggested from archaeological excavations, cannot be correlated with the forest decline and the charcoal abundance, in the sedimentary cores does not suggest an intensification of farming. Instead the decline of forests appears to be temporally correlated with a prolonged period of repeated dry spells associated with the 'Little Ice Age', which caused a shift in vegetation whereby typical forest species as Trema, Celtis and Moraceae were outcompeted on account of the droughts. This study challenges rooted assumptions about the cause of decline of forests in the coastal region. It also suggests that the forest fragments present on the Mozambique coast today are naturally subject to threat from climatic stress and as such are highly sensitive areas to future climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Archaeological models of regional occupation for culture change in and the arrival of trade goods into, the Gulf Province of Papua New Guinea have largely relied on pioneering research undertaken in the 1970s, prior to the advent of AMS radiocarbon dating and from a time when excavation methods were relatively coarse-grained. These early chronologies were based on bulk radiocarbon samples potentially incorporating materials from multiple periods of occupation, and freshwater shells 'contaminated' by old carbon from regional Miocene limestones necessitating the application of correction factors of uncertain local applicability. This paper revises chronological aspects of pre-European contact history for the mid-Kikori River region of the Gulf Province. It presents a suite of 100 new AMS radiocarbon dates on individual pieces of charcoal, human teeth and a fish bone from 16 sites, in order to re-assess previous chronologies and understandings of the region's history, and to provide a new foundation for future modelling of site and regional land use. Past settlement systems in this region were guided by processes of social interaction and thus need to be interrogated through notions of social landscape in historical perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the late Holocene archaeology of Central Australia. The last 1500 years saw significant changes in the archaeological record in this part of the Australian arid zone, with shifts in settlement pattern, site histories, resource use, tool inventories and rock art. Much of the evidence points to regional population growth, beginning 1500-1000 cal. BP and coinciding with expansion of summer-rainfall grassland and more frequent palaeoflood events. Hunter-gatherer groups appear to have increased their use of marginal or outlying areas as these became seasonally accessible. Responses to the demographic changes, especially in the better-watered ranges, include more extended occupation of existing sites, more processing of acacia and grass seeds, and an increase in territoriality reflected in the greater differentiation of rock art complexes after 1500 cal. BP. The archaeological changes are not scaled commensurately with the modest environmental shifts at this time, indicating that human-environment interactions were not linear. A human-environment threshold may have been breached 1500-1000 years ago, with existing socio-economic or historical factors acting to amplify the effects of small environmental changes. However, it remains difficult to fully characterize the nature of these human-environment interactions, despite the fine-grained archaeological record now available. An unresolved problem for this emerging picture of climatic amelioration and population growth is that Aboriginal settlement in Central Australia was expanding at a time when ENSO-driven variability appears to have been at its highest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper interprets macroscopic charcoal (>250 μm), humification and loss-on-ignition over the last ∼14 200 cal. BP from Goochs Swamp, located to the west of Sydney in the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area. This study aimed to investigate relationships between humans, climate and fire through time, primarily by comparison of these palaeoenvironmental indices with archaeological evidence from the region. Climatic forcing can explain all periods of change in the history of fire at Goochs Swamp: fire activity was variable during the Lateglacial-Holocene transition, low during the relatively stable climate of the early Holocene, and high but variable after the onset of modern El Niño from the mid Holocene. Although the dominant control on fire in this environment during the Holocene appears to be climate, fluctuations in the late Holocene may reflect anthropogenic fire or human responses to climate change. The archaeological record of the Blue Mountains and other parts of the Sydney Basin illustrates that Aboriginal people altered subsistence, resource and land-use patterns in the late Holocene. We propose that these cultural measures were adopted to overcome new risks as the frequency of ENSO events increased, and the natural fire regime and resource reliability changed. These strategies perhaps included a more systematic use of fire. The most parsimonious interpretation of the evidence for changes in fire activity at Goochs Swamp in the light of nearby archaeological evidence is that Aboriginal people used fire within a changing climatic framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Long tree-ring chronologies have been constructed in the Northern Hemisphere for dendroclimatology and palaeoenvironmental studies, radiocarbon calibration and archaeological dating. Numerous tree-ring chronologies have also been built in the Southern Hemisphere, primarily for dendroclimatology, but multimillennial chronologies are rare. Development of long chronologies from the Southern Hemisphere is therefore important to provide a long-term perspective on environmental change at local, regional and global scales. This paper describes the extension of the New Zealand Agathis australis (kauri) chronology from AD 911 to 1724 BC. Subfossil (swamp) kauri was collected from 17 swamp sites in the upper North Island. Kauri timbers were also obtained from an early twentieth century house on the University of Auckland campus. Twelve site chronologies and 11 independent tree-sequences were constructed and crossmatched to produce a 3631-yr record, which was calendar dated to 1724 BC–AD 1907 against the modern kauri master chronology. A new long chronology, AGAUc04a, was built by combining the modern kauri data with house timbers and subfossil kauri. This new chronology spans 1724 BC–AD 1998. It is of similar length to chronologies from Tasmania and South America and is the longest tree-ring chronology yet built in New Zealand. The greatest significance of the long kauri chronology lies in its potential as a high–quality palaeoclimate proxy, especially with regard to investigation of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation phenomenon. The chronology also has application to investigation of extreme environmental events, dendroecology, archaeology and radiocarbon calibration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The result of long-term environmental and human interaction is a variety of potential human responses to major natural crises: population aggregation or dispersal, changes in economic strategies and landuse patterns, restructuring of social organization, increase in the incidence of conflict and warfare, and, in some instances, urban abandonment and cultural collapse. In the context of pre-industrial societies, two social processes with the greatest potential impact on the environment and on changing human-environmental interaction are urbanization and the development of diversified, regional-scale production systems such as intensive agriculture, pastoralism and exploitation of maritime resources. This paper employs archaeological and geological data from the Jequetepeque and Zana valleys on the north coast desert of Peru to study: (1) the specific responses of Moche, Chimu and Inca societies (c. AD 250-1553) to major episodes of drought, El Nin~o flooding, and desertification; (2) the social processes of urban-rural relations and economic diversification; and (3) how these processes interacted within the dynamic arid north coast. Our research focuses on changing palaeoenvironmental regimes, agricultural infrastructures and domestic occupations to explore the complex interplay of cultural and natural forces that shaped the variable human responses and the history of urban-rural systems. Understanding the problem of how pre-industrial systems were sustained or failed in the context of interrelated social and environmental crises is an interdisciplinary objective, one that requires the integration of analytical techniques and theoretical frameworks of both the natural and social sciences as delineated in this study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is suggested that Bayesian statistical methods for radiocarbon data interpretation, already widely used in archaeology, also have potential to improve the dating of tephra layers and hence enhance their use for tephrochronology. By re-analysing data from a recently published paper in which the authors sought to identify the calendar date of the eruption of fourteenth-century AD Kaharoa Tephra, a key marker in New Zealand prehistory, it is shown that Bayesian methods can be used to draw together a coherent collection of radiocarbon data, undertake formal outlier detection, and include prior information. Regardless of the calibration curve adopted, the distribution of likely dates for the Kaharoa eruption is multimodal. By including prior information from wiggle-matched dendrochronology, the uncertainty on the estimate of the calendar date is reduced from a range of about 100 years to about 25 years (i.e., 648–623 cal. BP, with modes at 638 and 632 cal. BP). Using sensitivity analysis, however, it is shown that such estimates are affected by the quality and nature of the prior information available. As a result, we urge tephrochronologists to seek fastidiously both high-quality radiocarbon data and reliable stratigraphic sequences that might inform future geochronological model building. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The appearance of agriculture is one of the most striking features of Holocene human history, a feature that has long been studied in an interdisciplinary fashion, bringing archaeology together with plant and animal genetics. This paper reviews new developments in that study, consequent upon recent advances in DNA science. Among these advances is the possibility of complementing modern DNA data with fragmentary evidence of ancient DNA. Following a short account of the historical foundations of this research, studies of plant and animal domesticates based upon variations in protein, modern DNA and ancient DNA are reviewed in turn. The results of these studies are considered against a background of two contrasting models of how agriculture originated and spread, characterized by Blumler (1992) as ‘stimulus-diffusion’ and ‘independent invention’. We argue that existing evidence from DNA supports neither model in its extreme form, favouring instead an intermediate model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his comment on Bleicher (2013) Magny presents a revised version of his score method and reaffirms that it can prove a possible influence of solar activity on Central European lake levels. He also stresses the diagnostic value of archaeological lake site settlements. This paper points at methodological problems that are not yet resolved in the revised version. Since there is great consensus that not only is the the Sun a primary forcing factor in the climate’s system, but also that its effect cannot be expected to be linear for all of the Holocene, the use of the score record is questioned. The proposed relation between archaeological lake site settlements and solar activity is shown to be doubtful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]