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"The Rural Landscapes of Archaic Cyprus: An Archaeology of Environmental and Social Change" by Catherine Kearns is a valuable and original contribution to landscape studies and the archaeology of complex societies in the eastern Mediterranean. The book explores the interactions between different social groups, land use practices, climate, and ecology in the development of rural life in Iron Age Cyprus. Kearns argues that rural landscapes emerged as new political institutions and inequalities formed, independent of urban centers. The book provides a nuanced approach to climate and social change and is relevant to archaeological survey and landscape studies in the Near East. [Extracted from the article]

The Small Cycladic Islands Project (SCIP) is a diachronic archaeological survey of numerous small, uninhabited islands in the Cycladic archipelago. There is a rich history of archaeological survey and comparative island archaeology in the Aegean. SCIP narrows the size of an individual island survey, and at the same time expands the conceptual and comparative scope by surveying multiple islands with the same set of methods and in the context of the same project. All target islands are currently uninhabited, and many probably never sustained any habitation. We know from other cases, however, that such places were used for a variety of purposes in the past, including as goat islands, cemeteries, stopovers, and pirate hideaways. In its initial field season in 2019, SCIP carried out comprehensive surveys of 10 islets in the vicinity of Paros. This comparative program of research provides new insights concerning various types of human activities—habitation and non-habitation, diachronic and incidental—that took place in marginal island environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on Jack L. Davis and Elizabeth Schofield on connection between Crete and the Cycladic islands as there seems to have been a general consensus that there was a targeted link between these two regions, beginning in the mature stage of the MBA and lasting until LM IB/II when new protagonists, from the Greek mainland, slowly took over from the Cretans.

This article explores the methods and outcomes of "The Archaeology of College Hill" (AoCH), a hands-on fieldwork course at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island. The first half of this paper recounts the results of a three-year research program (2012–2014) on the Quiet Green of the university's campus. This work identified a material assemblage associated with the school's first official President's House and uncovered evidence for over two centuries of student life. The second half of this article addresses our pedagogical methods, including elements of replicable course design and feedback from a qualitative survey on students' impressions of the class. By situating this project within wider dialogues on the role of fieldwork in undergraduate teaching, we demonstrate the ways in which practical, on-campus projects like AoCH can reach a more diverse body of students, increase enrollments in other archaeology courses, and develop a more engaged, de-centered pedagogy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In three field seasons, between 2010 and 2012, the Brown University Petra Archaeological Project (BUPAP) conducted a diachronic archaeological survey of the northern hinterland of Petra, Jordan. While regional reconnaissance has a long history in Jordan, it has rarely been conducted with the "intensive" methodologies today characteristic of projects elsewhere, most proximately in the Mediterranean. Such an approach is ideally suited for the territory north of Petra, the setting for a wide-ranging variety of human activity from the Lower Paleolithic to the present. The survey component of BUPAP, the Petra Area and Wadi Silaysil Survey (or PAWS), covered some 1,000 ha (10 km²), most of which was traversed by closely spaced (10 m) fieldwalking in 1,321 individual survey units. In the course of this work, PAWS recorded patterns in the distribution of tens of thousands of artifacts. In addition, more than 1,000 individual archaeological features were identified and documented; geophysical survey was conducted in several areas; and test excavations were carried out in 10 locations of particular interest. This article provides an overview of the PAWS survey and related activity--discussing motivations, methods, and results--and touches on key issues concerning the long-term human history of the study area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Few studies have aimed to reconstruct landscape change in the area of Eretria (South Central Euboea, Greece) during the last 6000years. The aim of this paper is to partially fill in this gap by examining the interaction between Mid- to Late Holocene shoreline evolution and human occupation, which is documented in the area from the Late Neolithic to the Late Roman period (with discontinuities). Evidence of shoreline displacements is derived from the study of five boreholes (maximum depth of 5.25m below the surface) drilled in the lowlands of Eretria. Based on sedimentological analyses and micro/macrofaunal identifications, different facies have been identified in the cores and which reveal typical features of deltaic progradation with marine, lagoonal, fluvio-deltaic and fluvial environments. In addition, a chronostratigraphy has been obtained based on 20 AMS 14C radiocarbon dates performed on samples of plant remains and marine/lagoonal shells found in situ. The main sequences of landscape reconstruction in the plain of Eretria can be summarized as follows: a marine environment predominated from ca. 4000 to 3200cal.BC and a gradual transition to shallow marine conditions is observed ca. 3200–3000cal.BC due to the general context of deltaic progradation west of the ancient city. Subsequently, from ca. 3000 to 2000cal.BC, a lagoon occupied the area in the vicinity of the Temple of Apollo and the settlement's development was restricted to several fluvio-deltaic levees, thus severely limiting human activities in the plain. From ca. 2000 to 800cal.BC, a phase of shallow marine presence prevailed and constrained settlement on higher ground, forcing abandonment of the major part of the plain. Finally, since the eighth century BC, the sea has regressed southward and created the modern landscape. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]