Human Interactions with the Geosphere: The Geoarchaeological Perspective - Special Publication 352

Human impact on our environment is not a new phenomenon. For millennia, humans have been coping with - or provoking - environmental change. We have exploited, extracted, over-used, but also in many cases nurtured, the resources that the geosphere offers. Geoarchaeology studies the traces of human interactions with the geosphere and provides the key to recognizing landscape and environmental change, human impacts and the effects of environmental change on human societies. This collection of papers from around the world includes case studies and broader reviews covering the time period since before modern human beings came into existence up until the present day. To understand ourselves, we need to understand that our world is constantly changing, and that change is dynamic and complex. Geoarchaeology provides an inclusive and long-term view of human-geosphere interactions and serves as a valuable aid to those who try to determine sustainable policies for the future.

Contents:
The role of geoarchaeology in extending our perspective / L. Wilson --
Environmental limitations on agricultural development of the forest zone of the East European Plain (Russian Federation) / O.N. Trapeznikova --
Results of the struggle at ancient Ephesus : natural processes 1, human intervention 0 / J.C. Kraft [and others]. --
Quaternary landscape evolution and human occupation in northwestern Argentina / M.M.S. Vattuone & L. Neder --
Geoarchaeology and the value of multidisciplinary palaeoenvironmental approaches : a case study from the Tehran Plain, Iran / G.K. Gillmore [and others] --
Early Neolithic sands at West Voe, Shetland Islands : implications for human settlement / G.K. Gillmore & N. Melton --
[Delta] ¹³C, [delta] ¹⁸O and deposition rate of tufa in Xiangshui River, SW China : implications for land-cover change caused by climate and human impact during the late Holocene / Z. Liu [and others] --
Holocene land use in western Sicily : a geoarchaeological perspective / C. Heinzel & M. Kolb --
Alluvial stratigraphy and geoarchaeology in the Big Fork River Valley, Minnesota : human response to Late Holocene environmental change / C.L. Hill, G. Rapp, & Z. Jing --
Human-environment interactions in the development of early Chinese civilization / G. Rapp & Z. Jing --
Reconstruction of the fire history in the Siedlungskammer Burgweinting (Bavaria, Germany) in relation to settlement and environmental history / A. Raab [and others] --
Raw material economics in their environmental context: an example from the Middle Palaeolithic of southern France / L. Wilson --
Reassessing Hypsithermal human-environment interaction on the Northern Plains / E.C. Robertson.