Millennial Landscape Change in Jordan: Geoarchaeology and Cultural Ecology

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Half-title
Title
Copyright
Contents
Figures and Tables
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. The Nature of Geoarchaeology
	The nature of geoarchaeology and its practitioners
	The three major traditions in geoarchaeology
	The field and its status in the scientific realm
	Practice, training, and the rapidly evolving subfields
2. Theoretical and Methodological Foundations
	Introduction
	Theory in geoarchaeology
	The geoarchaeological method
	Geoarchaeological models of inquiry and interpretation
	Reconstructing and reproducing the past
	The explanation of a complex and chaotic world
	Concluding remarks
3. The Geoarchaeological Record: Concept and Contexts
	An epistemological background
	An all-inclusive geoarchaeological record
	The interpretation of the record
4. The Geoarchaeological Record: Interpretation Issues
	Visualizing time, causality, and context
	Causality in natural and cultural transform processes
	Time-transgressive phenomena in the record
	Archaeological visibility, invisibility, and absence
	The virtues of off-site geoarchaeology
	Legacy effects, relicts, and palimpsests
	Modern analogs, reference analogs, and modern references
	Sampling and interpretation of the record
	Correlation and its issues
5. The Human-Environmental Tradition in Geoarchaeology
	Introduction
	The ecological paradigm
	The ecological context in geoarchaeology
	Geoarchaeology since Archaeology as Human Ecology
	Global climate change and the rise of the Anthropocene
	Perspectives on the human and non-human worlds
	Geoarchaeology and environmental history
6. Geoarchaeology and Human Evolution
	Introduction
	Geology, climate changes, and biogeography
	Geoarchaeology in paleoanthropological research
	Contexts and issues
	Case 6.1: Context and scale in the Olduvai hominin record
7. Geoarchaeology and the Anthropization of the World
	Introduction
	The proto-anthropic period as a “gray zone”
	Geoarchaeology and the pre- and proto-anthropic periods
	Case 7.1: Between paleoontological and archaeological sites: Geoarchaeological issues in Pre-Clovis mammoth localities
	Case 7.2: The geoarchaeology of early Australian human environments at Lake Mungo
8. The Geoarchaeology of Hunter-Gatherer Landscapes
	Introduction
	Hunter-gatherer societies and their environmental contexts
	Geoarchaeological approaches to hunter-gatherer landscapes
	Case 8.1: Epipaleolithic hunter-gatherers of the Eastern Levant: Sites, settings, and landscapes in a rapidly changing environment
	Case 8.2: The geoarchaeology of the Archaic period in the Great Plains of North America
9. The Record of Early Agriculture and its Diffusion
	Introduction
	Agricultural beginnings: Contextual models
	Neolithic impacts on the environment at different scales
	Geoarchaeological contexts and research strategies
	Case 9.1: Geoarchaeology of two Near Eastern Neolithic settlements: Ain Ghazal and Ain Abu-Nukhaila, and the first agricultural environmental crisis
	Case 9.2: The arrival of pastoralism around Lake Ngami: Records from sites and lake sediments
10. Complex Societal-Environmental Systems and the Collapse Phenomenon
	Introduction
	Complex societal-environmental systems
	The collapse phenomenon
	Research contexts
	Case 10.1: Ancient sustainability, risks, management, and centralization in large river basins: Three examples
	Case 10.2: The Classic Maya collapse and the degradation of soils in the Maya lowlands: Geoarchaeological models of landscape transformation
11. The Geoarchaeology of Rural Landscapes
	Introduction
	The rural landscape: Concepts and environmental approaches
	Geoarchaeological strategies in ancient rural contexts
	Case 11.1: The Ancient Greek rural landscape in southwestern Crimea
	Case 11.2: Xaltocan: The geoarchaeology of a complex lacustrine society before Tenochtitlan
12. Human-Environmental Approaches to Soils and Paleosols
	Introduction
	Thematic approaches to paleosols
	Natural and anthropic spectra in soil formation
	Case 12.1: Pastureland, cropland, and other past human activities in the geoarchaeological record below Brussels: A look into urban dark earths
	Case 12.2: The understated human influence on North American prairie soils: The concept of bison paleopastures
13. The Geoarchaeology of Natural Disasters
	Natural disasters in the human-environmental context
	Geoarchaeological approaches to natural disasters
	Contextual levels and issues of interpretation
	Case 13.1: The Xitle Volcano catastrophe and its impact on the Preclassic and Classic environmental contexts in the Basin of Mexico
	Case 13.2: The geoarchaeological record of Hurricane Katrina’s disaster in New Orleans
14. Environmental Crises in the Geoarchaeological Record
	Introduction
	Environmental crises and their relation to societal collapse
	What do environmental crises look like in the geoarchaeological record?
	Case 14.1: The Old World environmental crisis at the end of the Third Millennium BC as seen in the degradation of Levantine flood plains
	Case 14.2: The Dust Bowl in the (future) geoarchaeological record of the Great Plains of North America
15. Native and Colonial Landscapes
	Introduction
	Human-environmental interactions in the context of colonial encounters
	Environmental response and native and non-native legacies in the landscape
	Case 15.1: The Spanish colonial land system on an Aztec landscape: An example from the Basin of Mexico
	Case 15.2: The transformation of the South African landscapes through colonial encounters: A proposal for researching the geoarchaeological record
16. Geoarchaeology and Modern Traditional Societies
	Introduction
	Definition of concepts and research fields
	Ethnogeoarchaeology: Definition and scope
	Case 16.1: Modern and ancient irrigation systems in southern Mexico
17. Geoarchaeology of the Contemporary Past
	Introduction
	The contemporary past defined
	Human-environmental relations as continuous processes
	Towards a geoarchaeology of the contemporary past
	Case 17.1: The legacies of the Soviet period in the geoarchaeological record: The Crimean case
References
Index