Environmental uncertainty, climate change, and ecological crisis loom large in the present and permeate scenarios of potential futures. To understand these predicaments and prepare for potentially catastrophic scenarios, there have been repeated calls to explore the diverse human–climate relations of human societies in the past. The archeological record offers rich datasets on human–environment articulations reflected in artifacts, ecofacts, and their relational entanglements. Much of these human–environment conjugations are, in the absence of written records, only accessible archeologically, yet that discipline has played little role in the “environmental turn” of the humanities or the climate change debate. In an effort to articulate archeological research traditions with these concerns, we frame the notion of the paleoenvironmental humanities (pEH): a deep‐time training ground for current ideas and theories on the interrelationship of human behavior, climate, and environmental change. The key objective of the pEH is to offer a rejoinder between ecological reductionism and the adoption of full‐scale environmental relativism, opening up new interpretive and comparative terrain for the examination of human–climate relations. We probe the potential of this perspective by drawing on insights from Pleistocene archeology. The long‐term temporalities of the Pleistocene, we argue, promote alternative imaginaries of the human–climate nexus and draw attention to similarly long‐term futures. We end our proposal with a reflection on the responsibility of archeological practitioners to balance hopeful narratives of human adaptability with those of societal collapse, countering the emergent linkage between climate skepticism and right‐wing nationalism, and to bring such issues to public attention.

中文翻译：

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古环境人文：撰写深厚的环境历史的挑战和前景

在当前的环境中以及潜在的未来情况中，环境的不确定性，气候变化和生态危机的影响越来越大。为了了解这些困境并为可能的灾难性情况做准备，过去曾多次呼吁探索人类社会之间多样化的人与气候的关系。考古记录提供了丰富的关于人类-环境清晰度的数据集，这些数据反映在人工制品，生态事实及其相关的纠缠中。在没有书面记录的情况下，这些人类与环境的变迁大部分只能从考古学上获得，但是该学科在人文科学的“环境转向”或气候变化辩论中起着很小的作用。为了阐明这些关注的考古研究传统，我们提出了古环境人文（pEH）的概念：这是有关人类行为，气候和环境变化之间相互关系的最新思想和理论的深入培训基地。pEH的主要目标是在生态还原主义与全面环境相对主义的采用之间重新结合，为研究人与气候之间的关系开辟新的解释和比较领域。我们利用更新世考古学的见解来探究这种观点的潜力。我们认为，更新世的长期时间性促进了人类与气候之间联系的替代性假想，并提请人们注意类似的长期未来。