This paper presents the results of pollen, diatom, charcoal, and sediment analyses from Lake Bol’shoye Zavetnoye, situated between the Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga on the Karelian Isthmus, north-western Russia. The main goal is to contribute to the discussion of Neolithic land use in north-eastern Europe. The article aims to answer questions related to Stone Age hunter-gatherer economy, ecology

To improve the accuracy of historical cropland data, we reconstructed cropland cover in the northern China’s farming–pastoral zone during the Liao dynasty using historical literature and settlement relics. We first reconstructed the total cropland area using historical household data based on the cropland area per household. Next, we allocated the cropland area into 5′ grid cells weighted by settlement

Monte Castelo, an archeological shell mound located on the southwestern periphery of the Amazon basin, is an artificial forest island occupied from the Middle to late-Holocene, and it contains one of the longest, continuous sequences of human occupation anywhere in the basin. Analysis of fish remains investigates fluctuations in the fish communities that are markers of changes in the paleoenvironment

Located in the central Eurasia, the Tibetan Plateau (TP) is a key area for the spread of culture, technology, and species. However, the Plateau’s role in the prehistoric food globalization has been underestimated due to the lack of archeological materials. The Qugong site was the only scientifically excavated site in the central TP up to now. It is the earliest and among the most important prehistoric

The introduction of wheat into China between ~4500 and 4000 cal. a BP is thought to have restructured the ancient Chinese agricultural system and contributed to the formation and development of Chinese civilization. However, the spatial variation in agricultural development before and after the introduction of exotic crops across the Yellow River valley has not yet been discussed in detail. Here, we

The tropical forests of the Philippine Archipelago are some of the most threatened in the 21st century. Among the most prominent threats are the introduction of new plant and animal species, as well as new forms of land management (e.g. plantations), that have accompanied industrial expansion. Such threats have a potentially long-term history and prehistory in the Philippines, not just as a consequence

Exploring ancient socio-economic adaptation is a basic issue of human-environment interaction. Xinjiang in northwest China is a region of high geographic diversity. Past human adaptations to this arid marginal area is a current focus of research interest but still lacks in-depth study. This article presents data from the Wupu Cemetery, located in the extremely arid Hami Basin in the eastern Tianshan

Coastal wetlands provided a favorable settling site for Neolithic people because of their highly exploitable biomass, but were vulnerable to marine hazards such as coastal flooding. The Chinese Hemudu culture persisted for ~2000 years (7200–5300 cal. year BP) in the Ningbo coastal lowland of East China. This study explores the Hemudu people’s survival strategy using sedimentological and chronological

We test a recent prediction that stable carbon isotope ratios from UK oaks will display age-trends of more than 4‰ per century by measuring >5400 carbon isotope ratios from the late-wood alpha-cellulose of individual rings from 18 modern oak trees and 50 building timbers spanning the 9th–21st centuries. After a very short (c.5 years) juvenile phase with slightly elevated values, the number of series

Transcontinental exchange emerged and intensified in northern China since the late fifth millennium BP (Before present), especially in the arc, which was the core area of the eastern part of the trans-Eurasian exchange during the Late Neolithic and the Bronze Age. In the arc, the exchange profoundly affected the human subsistence strategy and human-environment relationship. Relative to the crop patterns

This paper presents the results of multiproxy research (pollen, charcoal, plant macrofossil and testate amoebae) on the biogenic deposits core from Gorodetsky Moch, an ombrotrophic peatland in western Russia (Western Dvina Lakeland). We reconstructed the impact of disturbance on peatland development in the last 300 years by using chronology of the records based on 14C and 210Pb data set. The multiproxy

In this study, we assess how representative a single charcoal record from a peat profile in small bogs (1.5–2 ha in area) is for the reconstruction of Holocene fire history. We use high-resolution macrocharcoal (>250 μm) analysis of continuous series of 2 cm3 samples from two small bogs in southern Sweden. We compare (1) duplicate charcoal records from the same core, (2) duplicate charcoal records

Microcharcoal in soils and sediments is an ideal proxy for studying fire activity. Phytoliths in soils and sediments record the environmental conditions in which the phytoliths were formed by plants. However, our understanding of the relationships between fire activity, plant communities, and the preservation of microcharcoal and phytoliths in soils and sediments remains limited. In this study, we

High-resolution paleoceanographic reconstruction of surface water properties during the most recent Sapropel event (S1) has been carried out by means of quantitative analyses of planktonic foraminiferal assemblages, planktonic foraminiferal oxygen isotopes (δ18O) and XRF elemental data from a 655 m depth core recovered in the North Ionian Sea. The results show that the S1 interval presents two distinctive

Temporal differences in fossil assemblages of small mammals can generate important insights into associated environmental conditions. Moreover, by including modern assemblages in such comparisons, it may also be possible to identify the effects of recent human colonization on mammal communities and their habitats. To explore potential signals of European colonization in northwestern Patagonia, we compared

The Gansu–Qinghai region lies in the key position for trans-Eurasian cultural exchange, and hence investigations of the history of agricultural development in this region are significant for understanding the spatiotemporal evolution of prehistoric crop dispersal in Eurasia. However, systematic archaeobotanical studies concerning the history of the development of prehistoric agriculture in this area

Shukla et al. explored paleoclimatic signals from a ~8 m thick profile of a moraine-dammed lake in the central Himalaya exposed due to lake burst from a flash flood in 2013. The main objective of their research work is to understand the complex glacial-climate system during late-Holocene. They attempted a novel multi proxy approach for paleoclimate reconstruction but their work suffers from misinterpretation

Ancient China is one of the most important regions for the development of agriculture in human history, contributing the two key crops millet and rice. Meanwhile, it was closely connected to the wider Eurasian network, receiving wheat and barley from the West. Because of the large isotopic differences between C3 and C4 crops, we are able to track their changing importance in different regions of China

In Australia, the drivers of precolonial fire regimes remain contentious, with some advocating an anthropogenic-dominated regime, and others highlighting the importance of climate, climatic variability or alternatively some nexus between climate and human activity. Here, we explore the inter-relationships between fire, humans and vegetation using macroscopic charcoal, archaeology and palynology over

Wildfire is a ubiquitous disturbance agent in subalpine forests in western North America. Lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta var. latifolia), a dominant tree species in these forests, is largely resilient to high-severity fires, but this resilience may be compromised under future scenarios of altered climate and fire activity. We investigated fire occurrence and post-fire vegetation change in a lodgepole

The Late Antique Little Ice Age, spanning the period from 536 CE to roughly 560 CE, saw temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere drop by a degree C in less than a decade. This rapid cooling is thought to have caused widespread famine, epidemic disease, and social disruption. The relationship between cooling and social disruption is examined here using a set of high-resolution climate and historical

The first aim of this corrigendum is to point out and correct calculation errors on solar depression angle and azimuth angle in Bertolin and Domínguez-Castro (2020a, 2020b). The second aim is to recognize that these calculations are correct in Dalin (2020). The third aim is to analyze the chances of Antonio Colla to observe the noctilucent cloud (NLC) taking into account the correct calculations of

Charcoal analysis, applied in sediment facies analysis of the Pecora river palaeochannel (Tyrrhenian southern Tuscany, Italy), detected the occurrence of past fire events in two different fluvial landforms at 800–450 BC and again at AD 650–1300. Taking place in a central Mediterranean district adequately studied through palaeoenvironmental and archaeological research, the investigation determined land

Although lacustrine sedimentary charcoal has long been used to infer paleofires, their quantitative reconstructions require improvements of the calibration of their links with fire regimes (i.e. occurrence, area, and severity) and the taphonomic processes that affect charcoal particles between the production and the deposition in lake sediments. Charcoal particles >150 µm were monitored yearly from

Quantifying sedimentary charcoal content by estimation of volume from two-dimensional images is a relatively new and little-used method, but has the potential to improve the accuracy of fire histories. It requires a power transformation of area data, and multiplication by a coefficient to account for particle shape. The latter step has been routinely overlooked, or considered unnecessary, with volume

Recent collecting and taxonomic studies of dung beetles of the genus Geotrupes Latreille (Coleoptera: Geotrupidae) in the mountains of Oaxaca have evidenced the existence of a vicariant speciation pattern, where one species occupies the northern mountain system and the other one the southern mountain range. A study of this possible vicariant speciation mechanism is presented using a paleobiogeographic

The Hulun Buir sandy land in northern China is located at the northern limit region of the East Asian summer monsoon (EASM) and is therefore sensitive to the extension of the front of the rainfall belt. Here we report an n-alkane and compound-specific carbon isotope record from the Holocene sediments of Lake Yiheshariwusu in the middle of the Hulun Buir sandy land. The sediments contain a suite of

This study presents three records of environmental change during the late-Holocene from wetlands across Bentinck Island in the South Wellesley Islands, northern Australia. Radiometric dating provided ages for sediment cores with the longest chronology spanning the last 1250 cal. yr BP. Palynological results show the diverse mangrove community transitioned to woodland- and wetland-dominated vegetation

Arctic neoglaciation following the Holocene Thermal Maximum is an important feature of late-Holocene climate. We investigated this phenomenon using a transient 6000-year simulation with the CESM-CAM5 climate model driven by orbital forcing, greenhouse gas concentrations, and a land use reconstruction. During the first three millennia analyzed here (6–3 ka), mean Arctic snow depth increases, despite

The eastern Mediterranean marine ecosystem is undergoing massive modification due to biological invasions, overfishing, habitat deterioration, and climate warming. Our ability to quantify these changes is severely hindered by the lack of an appropriate baseline; most ecological datasets date back a few decades only and show already strong signatures of impact. Surficial death assemblages (DAs) offer

The end of the Holocene Humid Period was characterized by the massive collapse of forest ecosystems in central Africa. Was this large-scale environmental crisis dated between 3300 and 2500 years BP at the origin of the present-day wooded-grassland/forest mosaic of central Cameroon? Here we present carbon isotope data on soil organic matter collected from 29 sites from this area, including the Grassfield

Tipping points can be defined as critical ecosystem thresholds that start self-enforced dynamics pushing systems into new stable states. Many lake ecosystems of arid Central Asia are sensitive to hydrological changes as they are located at the intersection of the influence of the dry Siberian Anticyclone and the relatively humid mid-latitude Westerlies, and their sediment records can be used to study

Pleistocene Park is a protected area located near the Arctic Circle in the Eastern part of Russia. It was established by Sergey Zimov and his team in order to perform an experiment on the restoration of the environment that existed there during the Pleistocene period. It was expected that low-productivity boreal habitats would be replaced by highly-productive grasslands resembling African savanna.

Questions regarding population stability among animals and plants are fundamental to population ecology, yet this has not been a topic studied by archeologists focusing on prehistoric human populations. This is an important knowledge gap. The fluctuation of human populations over decades to centuries – population instability – may constrain the expansion of human economies. A first step toward describing

In the eastern United States, existing paleo-reconstructions in fluvial environments consist primarily of site-specific investigations of climate and human impacts on riverine processes. This paper presents the first meta-analysis of fluvial reconstructions focused on regional watersheds of the eastern United States, including the Lower Mississippi, Tennessee, South Atlantic–Gulf Coast, Ohio, Mid-Atlantic

We studied the transformation of a middle-to-late Holocene forested ecosystem using the highly indicative remains of land snails. The study areas were sandstone landscapes of northern Bohemia (Czech Republic) that provide extremely rich terrestrial fossil records. As far as we know, nowhere else in the world does such a type of sedimentary environment provide Holocene records of snail shells. Currently

Snowpack in the Sierra Nevada Mountains accounts for around one-third of California’s water supply. Melting snow provides water into dry summer months characteristic of the region’s Mediterranean climate. As climate changes, understanding patterns of snowpack, snowmelt, and biological response is critical in this region of agricultural, recreational, and ecological value. Here we investigated the relationships

The mountainous inland of northern Calabria (Southern Italy) is known for its sparse prehistoric human occupation. Nevertheless, a thorough multidisciplinary approach of field walking, geophysical survey and invasive research led to the discovery of a major archaeological archive. This archive concerns a rich multi-phased dump, spanning about 3000 years (Late Neolithic to Late Imperial Roman Age) and

Human activities in the historical period were determined by the natural environment and social characteristics. The Zuojiang Huashan Rock Art Cultural Landscape in Guangxi is the most important World Heritage for prehistorical culture in southwestern China. However, knowledge about the natural environment and associated historic human–climate interactions during the period of cliff painting creation

Sea-level rise (SLR) is one of the most pervasive consequences of global warming, and the Cuban Archipelago is threatened by current and future SLR. In order to support adaptation plans, it is essential to have reliable information about sea-level change during the last decades at the local scale, particularly in the most vulnerable regions. Here, we use sedimentary records to evaluate coastal accretion

Ground stone technology for processing starchy plant foods has its origins in the late Pleistocene, with subsequent intensification and transformation of this technology coinciding with the global emergence of agriculture in the early Holocene. On the island of New Guinea, agriculture first emerges in the highland Wahgi Valley, potentially from c. 9 kya, and clearly evident by 6.5 kya. Approximately

This paper presents an original palaeoparasitological study performed on samples from a sedimentary core in a peat bog (Asi Gonia, White Mountains, Crete, Greece). The aim of the study is to test the preservation and concentration of parasitic remains in peat sediments, to discuss animal presence around the site throughout the record, and to compare the results with other biomarkers of environmental

We present the first systematic evaluation of the relationship between the archaeological and palaeoclimatic record from north-western India during the past millennium, from the urban site of Chandravati. The rarity of Medieval sites, systematic excavations and multi-disciplinary work in the subcontinent obscure the impact of two distinct climate anomalies − the ‘Medieval Warm Period’ (‘MWP’, 740 − 1150

Increase in rainfall during the early Holocene has been reported from different regions of Indian subcontinent, although the magnitude shows spatial variability with lower change in higher rainfall regions and vice versa. While the early-Holocene rainfall records are available from lowland areas of the Indian sub-continent, the record is poorly documented from the high-altitude Central Himalayan region

Recent archeobotanical work has shed light on prehistoric food globalization across the Eurasian landmass; however, much less research has focused on the foodways of the historical cities and settlements found throughout Central Asia on various portions of the ‘Silk Road’. Here, we present archeobotanical and isotopic results from recent excavations at Shichengzi, a Han dynasty (202 BC–AD 220) military

Natural disturbance processes such as volcanic eruptions, fire and human activities are important vegetation drivers in north Patagonia. Here, we tested the impact of volcanic ash fall and fire on vegetation composition analysing two sediment records, Lake Avutarda and Lake Bruja, located in the forest-steppe transition at 40°S. In addition, our analysis provides the first account on the history of

Carpenter’s Gap 1 is a large rockshelter located within the Kimberley region of northwestern Australia. The site provides valuable archives of late Quaternary palaeoecological information within an area known for a lack of deposits preserving long-term continuous botanical records. Previous studies of the macrobotanic, phytolith and wood charcoal records from Carpenter’s Gap 1 are in general agreement

In this article, we examined the indicative value of a relationship between two non-pollen palynomorphs (NPPs), fungal HdV-10, related to the presence of Calluna vulgaris, and HdV-31A, which is testate amoeba – Archerella flavum. Both are frequently present on slides designated for pollen analysis, prepared from Sphagnum peat. We analysed three profiles from three extensive ombrotrophic peatlands in

The Asian summer monsoon and the mid-latitude Westerlies are major atmospheric circulation systems which influence the climate of the Tibetan Plateau (TP), and hence the water resources, ecology, and socioeconomic well-being of the region. The interplay between the monsoon and the Westerlies has been investigated on glacial–interglacial, millennial, and decadal scales. However, due to the scarcity

This article is a brief introduction to the Special Issue on Holocene Dust Dynamics, which brings together recent research on a key aspect of the Earth’s changing climate through its effects on radiative balance, cloud cover and biogeochemical cycles. The aim of the Special Issue is to contribute to a better understanding of the role of dust aerosols by analysing the evolution and climatic impact of

Land-use change in the form of extensive Pinus plantations is currently altering the natural vegetation cover at the forest–steppe ecotone in northern Patagonia. Providing recommendations for conservation efforts, with respect to this recent and earlier land-use changes, requires a longer time perspective. Using pollen analysis, we investigated to what degree the colonization of the area by Euro-American

Modern riverine systems are products of complex interactions of drainage basins with fluvial processes, tectonic activities, and climatic fluctuations (e.g. sea-level change) during the Quaternary (Blum and Törnqvist, 2000; Mertes and Dunne, 2007). Most of these processes and interactions in major riverine systems have resulted in the formation of modern deltas during the Holocene. The morphology of

Lina myr, a drained and cultivated area of fenland in central-eastern Gotland, is an area of archeological significance with a complex history of shoreline displacement. Archeological excavations have indicated that people have been active in the local area since the Mesolithic period (Lund, 1996; Österholm, 1989; Seving, 1986; Wallin, 2010; Welinder, 1975) and during the Neolithic period (Hallström

Self-organizing maps provide a powerful, non-linear technique of dimensionality reduction that can be used to identify clusters with similar attributes. Here, they were constructed from a 1000-year-long gridded palaeoclimatic dataset, namely the Old World Drought Atlas, to detect regions of homogeneous hydroclimatic variability across the European continent. A classification scheme of 10 regions was

We are grateful and want to thank Dr. Peter Dalin for his critical comments on our paper. Thanks to them, we have revisited all the data, and the calculus of the article and we have found, as Dr. Dalin pointed out, a mistake in the calculation of the solar depression angle. Nevertheless, this error does not invalidate the possibility that the Antonio Colla observed a noctilucent cloud the evening of

Between 2004 and 2008, a wealth of ancient agriculture-related finds was uncovered during a survey throughout the loess plains of the Beer Sheva Valley region, in the arid northern Negev, Israel. The survey was conducted under the framework of an archeological study, aimed at assessing the similarities and dissimilarities of the valley’s ancient agricultural systems to those of the Negev Highlands

In the present critical review, my aim is to address serious calculation mistakes made by the authors. I do not want to review their interpretation of a given observation on 18 June 1840 made by Antonio Colla, who was a professor of Astronomy and Meteorology at the University of Parma. There is no sense interpreting Colla’s observation since the basic astronomical calculations have been made incorrectly

Recent environmental archeological evidence has started to throw light on both the timing and processes of human colonization of the Tibetan Plateau (TP). Yarlung Tsangpo (YT) valley, a very important region of the southern TP for occupation, is home to not only modern Tibetans but also their ancestors. However, a lack of suitable sedimentary strata has limited the establishment of a secure chronology

Primary production on the Western Indus continental shelf has been linked to the large quantities of nutrients delivered to the shelf by the Indus River. Multiple geochemical tracers and biomarker records, including stable isotopes (δ13C and δ15N), total organic carbon (TOC), total nitrogen (TN), molar carbon/nitrogen (C/N) ratio, the branched and isoprenoid tetraether (BIT) index, and glycerol dialkyl

The earliest part of the Holocene, from 11.5k to 7k (k = 1000 years before present), is a critical transition period between the relatively cold last deglaciation and the warm middle Holocene. It is marked by more pronounced seasonality and reduced greenhouse gases (GHGs) than the present state, as well as by the presence of the Laurentide Ice Sheet (LIS) and glacial meltwater perturbation. This paper