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This book is based on the papers accepted for presentation during the 3rd Springer Conference of the Arabian Journal of Geosciences (CAJG-3). The book is of interest to all researchers in the fields of geomorphology, sedimentology, and geochemistry. Papers in the field of geomorphology deal with topics related to fault slip and incision rates, soil science, landslides and debris flows, coastal processes, and geoarcheology and geoheritage. Papers in the field of sedimentology cover research studies in stratigraphy and environmental, tectonic, and diagenetic processes, together with studies focusing on the evolutionary, biostratigraphic, and paleo-environmental significance of paleontology. This section also contains papers on marine geosciences, from molecular proxies related to climate to geophysical surveys. The third set of papers focuses on studies related to geochemistry that are focused on sedimentary geochemistry and mineralogical characterization, magmatic and metamorphic processes and products, and the origin and exploration of mineral deposits. This book resumes the current situation related to the abovementioned topics mainly in the Mediterranean realm and its surroundings. The book is of interest to all researchers, practitioners, and students in the fields of geomorphology, sedimentology, and geochemistry.

Qanats are ubiquitous, yet unseen, and a clever way to create streams where none exist in nature. For 3,000 years, they have made life possible in impossible places and still sustain life and livelihoods in many countries today. After 30 years of field research, Dale Lightfoot provides the first comprehensive study of the qanat and sheds new light on their unique locations and distribution, their origins and history, their ecology, current status and use. Qanats are remarkably engineered underground aqueducts, using gravity to bring water to villages and towns where reliable flowing surface water is scarce or absent. Although an ancient technology, more than 46,000 of them still flow around the world today, with their sustainable nature making them a focus of renewed interest. Richly illustrated with images and a series of original maps, this is the most complete record to date of the locations and distribution of qanats worldwide, including examples from the Middle East, North Africa, Europe, Central Asia, China, India, Mexico and South America.

Rock Art Studies: News of the World VI, like the previous editions in the series, covers rock art research and management all over the world over a five-year period, in this case, the years 2015 to 2019 inclusive. The current volume once again shows the wide variety of approaches that have been taken in different parts of the world and reflects the expansion and diversification of perspectives and research questions. One constant has been the impact of new techniques of recording rock art. This is especially evident in the realm of computer enhancement of the frequently faded and weathered rock imagery. As has been the case in past volumes, this collection of papers includes all of the latest discoveries, including in areas hitherto not known to contain rock art. While relatively little has happened in some areas, a great deal has occurred in others. Rock art studies continue to go through a period of intense scientific and technological development, but at the same time – due to the problems of preservation and vandalism – it is crucial to educate local people and the young about the importance of this fragile heritage.

Author John Chiapuris lived in Morocco for sixteen months while doing fieldwork with the Ait Ayash, a Berber-speaking community of irrigation agriculturalists occupying the Ansegmir Valley in the High Moulouya plain. In the first part of this study, Chiapuris explains the ethnohistorial background and sociopolitical organization of the Ait Ayash. In the second section, he focuses on the regional setting and the changes initiated by the French Protectorate in 1912. In the third, he analyzes domestic production, household organization, and marriage patterns in the contemporary period.

Bringing together archaeological, paleoenvironmental, paleontological and genetic data, this book makes a first attempt to reconstruct African population histories from out species'evolution to the Holocene. Africa during Marine Isotope Stages (MIS) 6 to 2 (~190-12,000 years ago) witnessed the biological development and behavioral florescence of our species. Modern human population dynamics, which involved multiple population expansions, dispersals, contractions and extinctions, played a central role in our species'evolutionary trajectory. So far, the demographic processes – modern human population sizes, distributions and movements – that occurred within Africa during this critical period have been consistently under-addressed. The authors of this volume aim at (1) examining the impact of this glacial-interglacial- glacial cycle on human group sizes, movements and distributions throughout Africa; (2) investigating the macro- and micro-evolutionary processes underpinning our species'anatomical and behavioral evolution; and (3) setting an agenda whereby Africa can benefit from, and eventually contribute to, the increasingly sophisticated theoretical and methodological palaeodemographic frameworks developed on other continents.

Over the last decade, Africa has taken a central position in the search for the timing and mechanisms leading to modern human origins, and the rich archaeological and human paleontological record of North Africa is critical to this search. In this volume, we bring together new research into the archaeology, human paleontology, chronology, and environmental context of modern human origins in North Africa. The result is a volume that better integrates the North African record into the modern human origins debate and at the same time highlights the research questions that are currently the focus of continued work in the area.​

The Upper Pleistocene era encompassed a period of dramatic cultural developments in the south-eastern Mediterranean basin. This book highlights and synthesizes the latest research and current scientific debate on the archaeology of this time period in North Africa and the Near East. Recent archaeological research in North Africa has meant this region now plays a decisive role in scientific debate. After decades of neglect, the archaeological record from North Africa has now been seen to parallel in significance that of the Near East. This book offers an opportunity to observe the Afro-Asian side of the Mediterranean basin as an uninterrupted land, as it was for its Upper Pleistocene inhabitants. Areas of focus include the Out-of-Africa movement of anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens) into the Levant and the transition from the Middle Palaeolithic/Middle Stone Age to the Upper Palaeolithic/Later Stone Age, during which a change of lifestyle took place, based on plant cultivation and animal husbandry. These topics are of crucial interest to anyone studying human evolution, prehistoric archaeology, anthropology, and palaeo-environmental studies. This volume brings together data as well as perspectives from various scholars, often separated by their areas of interest and location. This volume is complementary to The Mediterranean from 50,000 to 25,000 BP: Turning Points and New Directions edited by M. Camps and C. Szmidt (Oxbow Books, 2009).

This work is an enquiry into the nature of tribalism in Morocco and its historical relationship to the central government. Employing the Air Ndhir as an example, this study attempts to establish a model for the traditional sociopolitical organization of a semi-nomadic Berber tribe of the Middle Atlas and examine the dynamics of the makhzan-tribal symbiosis during the latter half of the 19th century.