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Dryland regions are particularly challenging for human survival over the course of deep time. This is true for institutionally complex communities as well as small-scale societies that have existed in semi-arid regions throughout the Holocene. This paper examines some of the successful strategies employed by small-scale mobile communities which enhanced their ability to thrive in drylands over the course of thousands of years. Small-scale societies living in drylands must rely on the transmission of Traditional Ecological Knowledge across generations. Some of this knowledge relates to the availability and use of wetlands and other more ephemeral water sources, the exploitation of a diverse range of resources, and the potential for natural storage of food resources as a buffer against regularly occurring drought years in these regions. We compare this understanding with our environmental archeological findings at the Mid-Holocene site of Zaraa Uul in the eastern Gobi Desert of Mongolia. At the site of Zaraa Uul, we show how hunter-gatherer groups returned to a campsite near the edge of a wetland environment over the course of at least two phases during the Mid-Holocene. Here they took advantage of a greater diversity of animal species and plants, including small-grained-grasses and sedges, which could enhance their caloric intake and increase the potential for storable commodities which could be collected as needed from their natural habitat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As mega-fires have swept the North American West in recent decades, studies of past fire events have gained academic interest. Deep-time perspectives are necessary to better understand the periodicity of fire events and to identify basic drivers of frequent fire episodes through time, including potential anthropogenic fire use. Our study contributes to the growing field of archeological fire ecology in the Southwest with an examination of a high-resolution geobotanical dataset for Holocene fire regimes as indicated within sediments from an alluvial section from Tesuque Creek in northern New Mexico. Using phytolith, geochemical, and sedimentological data, we reconstruct indices for burn cycle seasonality and destabilization of riparian vegetation communities that suggest potential anthropogenic land use and possible patterns distinguishing human burning from lightning ignitions. Through this study, we consider the potential role of hunter-gatherer behavior in producing fire landscapes as part of their strategies for managing risks in the fragile environments of the Middle-Late Holocene in northern New Mexico. We suggest that combining geo and botanical datasets from alluvial sections with archeological evidence will allow researchers to fine-tune the resolution of local climate sequences and their environmental impacts on small landscape scales. When such small-scale studies can be aggregated, they may further contribute to testing models of regional patch-burning, either natural or anthropogenic. We further posit that human relationships with fire in the past should be considered as collaborative efforts with lightning-ignited burns, to manage the risks associated with both too much and too little fire in fragile dryland ecosystems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study we present new evidence from phytolith studies for the presence of Sabal sp. (likely minor), an allochthonous plant, around Tesuque Creek in northern New Mexico during the early part of the Late Holocene, in the vicinity of known Late Archaic hunter-gatherer communities using the area at that time. We analyzed phytoliths from sediments taken from an alluvial section on the east side of Tesuque Creek dating to c. 3600–2400 cal. BP. The phytoliths demonstrated a change over time from a succulent dominated landscape to a shrubby one, with the later introduction of high densities of palmetto phytoliths associated with marshy deposits and adjacent burn levels. This evidence suggests a more diverse resource landscape available to local hunter-gatherer groups than previously understood, and may have implications for the early management of microenvironments, plant communities. This evidence demonstrates the value of phytolith analysis from alluvial sections for understanding human land and plant use practices over time. Our study provides a new perspective on what resources and land use areas were available for Archaic peoples inhabiting the area, and how they may have experimented with managing lesser known types of wild plant resources before the establishment of the triad of crops from Mesoamerica. This opens up new avenues for understanding the landscapes, land use practices, and environmental impacts of pre-agricultural communities in the northern Rio Grande and in other semi-arid environments worldwide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmentally-based archaeological research at Zaraa Uul, including zooarchaeology, phytolith analysis, and radiocarbon dating, is the first of its kind in Mongolia and presents critical new insight on the relationship between periods of occupational intensity and climatic amelioration from the earliest anatomically modern humans to the adoption of pastoralism. The palaeoenvironmental and faunal record of Zaraa Uul show that Early-Middle Holocene hydrology and species distributions were distinct from all other periods of human occupation. Holocene hunter-gatherers inhabited an ecosystem characterized by extensive marshes, riparian shrub and arboreal vegetation along the hill slopes and drainages. The exploitation of species associated with riparian and wetland settings supports the hypothesis of, but suggests an earlier timing for, oasis-based logistical foraging during the Early-Middle Holocene of arid Northeast Asia. The onset of wetter conditions at 8500 cal BP agrees with other regional studies, but multiple lines of evidence present the first integrated field- and laboratory-based record of human-environment relationships in arid East Asia during the Holocene Climatic Optimum. We compare it to Late Pleistocene climatic amelioration, and highlight specific responses of the hydrological, vegetative and faunal communities to climate change in arid Northeast Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Yellow River catchment of northern China was central to the rise of complex societies from the first Neolithic farmers through to early states and empires. These cultural developments brought with them rising populations and increasing intensity of land-use. This region provides an important record of landscape changes that mark the development of the Anthropocene in China. Geoarchaeological research in the middle reaches of the Yellow River catchment of Henan Province and eastward to the Si River drainage of Shandong Province illustrates human impact on vegetation and hydrological systems dating back at least until the middle Neolithic Yangshao Period in the mid-Holocene, ca. 7000 yr BP. This research provides geomorphological evidence that early human impact began in the Yangshao period with deforestation, soil erosion, and increased alluviation in the upper catchment of the Yiluo River. The increased alluviation allowed small-scale Neolithic farmers to intensify and supplement their production with rice paddy farming. Further east along the Si River of Shandong Province, Neolithic Dawenkou farmers were intensifying production by taking advantage of the already moist floodplains, but had little impact on the surrounding forests and hillslopes. At the beginning of the Zhou Period (ca. 1000 BCE), farmers along the Si River at Qufu began to intensify production by digging canals into the floodplain, and deforestation of the hillslopes led to the beginnings of widespread floods and silty floodplain buildup, culminating in the massive destructive floods of the later Han Period characterized by thick sand beds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climatic fluctuations that occurred in North Africa during the early and middle Holocene had a profound impact on the environment of the region and would have required human populations in the area to adapt their subsistence and economic strategies in equally significant ways. Capsian groups, located in eastern Algeria and southern Tunisia from approximately 10,000 to 6000 cal. BP, were among the last North African foragers at a time when other groups were abandoning food collection to engage in food production in the form of pastoralism. Capsian foragers relied heavily on land snails, but we have little information on their use of plant resources, which can be an important indicator of economic adaptation to environmental change. In this study we use phytolith analyses at the Capsian site of Aïn Misteheyia in eastern Algeria to track the changes in subsistence strategies throughout much of the middle-Holocene climatic transitions. Our results show that Capsian foragers exploited plants such as sedges and small-seeded grasses from wetland microenvironments within their home ranges which allowed them to demonstrate robust and resilient resource procurement strategies, and maintain a foraging lifestyle resistant to major fluctuations in climate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The scale and nature of early cultivation are topics that have received relatively limited attention in research on the origins of agriculture. In Southwest Asia, one the earliest centers of origin worldwide, the transition to food production is commonly portrayed as a macroevolutionary process from hunter-gatherer through to cultivator-forager and farming stages. Climate change, resource intensification, sedentism, rising population densities, and increasing social complexity are widely considered by prehistorians as pivotal to the emergence of protoagricultural village life. In this paper we revisit these narratives that have been influenced by culture-history and social evolution, together forming the dominant theoretical paradigms in the prehistory of Southwest Asia. We propose a complementary contextual approach seeking to reconstruct the historical development of Early Holocene plant-food production and its manifold sociocultural environments by intersecting multiple lines of evidence on the biology of plant domestication, resource management strategies, settlement pattern.;, cultivation and harvesting technologies, food storage, processing and consumption, ritual practices and symbolic behaviors. Furthermore, we propose that early plant-food production in Southwest Asia should be dissociated from ethnographically derived notions of sedentary village life. Plants emerge as important components of community interactions and ritual performances involving suprahousehold groups that were mediated through communal focd consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]