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Studies of ancient Mesopotamian cities have long focused on their institutions. Here, instead, the authors draw on recent investigations at the third-millennium BC site of Lagash (modern Tell al-Hiba, Iraq) to explore urban density, economy and sustainability at one of the largest ancient urban centres of the region. Drawing on excavation, environmental and remote-sensing data, the authors adopt a multi-scalar approach, revealing dense urban occupation, with subdivision into distinct walled quarters, as well as evidence for multiple foci of intensive industrial production and the exploitation of a rich mosaic of surrounding micro-environments. The study emphasises how a combination of new field data and alternative research directions offers novel insights into early urbanism.

Satellite imagery and UAV (drone) photos taken at Lagash (modern Tell al-Hiba) after rainstorms and at times of elevated soil moisture show dense near-surface architecture that dates mostly to the Early Dynastic III period (c. 2600–2350 BCE) and covers several hundred hectares. Archaeological knowledge of Mesopotamian urban structure has mostly been limited to isolated excavated neighbourhoods, such as at third millennium BCE Tutub (Khafajah) or Eshnunna (Tell Asmar), and early second millennium BCE Ur (Tell al-Muqayyar). The morphology of Tell al-Hiba and the quality of the imagery sets create a unique situation that enables the reconstruction and comparison of neighbourhoods across almost the whole of the city of Lagash. Mapping of near-surface architectural remains, streets, and water features reveals a discontinuous city located within a watery, possibly marshy environment.

Over the past 25 years, CORONA satellite imagery has become an integral part of archaeological research, especially for arid, sparsely vegetated regions such as the Middle East. Since 2020, a new archive of satellite imagery gathered by the US spy satellite programme that succeeded CORONA—HEXAGON—has become widely available for download via the United States Geological Survey. This photographic archive has enormous potential for archaeological research. Here, the authors seek to lower the barriers to accessing and using this imagery by detailing the background, technical specifications and history of the HEXAGON archive. Four case studies illustrate the benefits and limitations of HEXAGON imagery for archaeological and historical research in the Middle East and beyond.

The Problem Balancing work and life can be difficult. In a new world of work amidst COVID-19, balancing work and life has become even more challenging. Employees are struggling to adjust their work-life obligations while maintaining performance expectations. Providing employee support to reduce stress and minimize adverse effects on performance outcomes requires employer action. The Solution HRD interventions are recommended as organizational support mechanisms. These interventions are designed to reduce stress produced by work life conflict, particularly during stressful organizational events. Through organizational support, employees are offered the opportunity to increase individual performance. The Stakeholders HRD and HRM professionals, scholars, organizational planners, organizational leaders and managers, and all others who have a vested interest in employee well-being.

The Problem Employee leave amidst the Coronavirus pandemic brings about key questions regarding organizational support and development. Current corporate and public policies are written into employee handbooks where they are lauded as supportive economic, social, and sustainable policies for helping people (i.e., workers) achieve humane needs, but are proving to be lacking for truly providing support in the most troubling times. The Solution The field of Human Resource Management (HRM) and Human Resource Development (HRD) provide unique perspectives on developmental, performance-enhancing, and supportive structures for organizations to thrive. This Issue examines methods for creating truly supportive policies amidst the fallout of the global pandemic not only supports organizational longevity but demonstrates how valued employees truly are within the organization while meeting the labor demands of the market. The Stakeholders This Special Issue reflects the strong correlation of work-life balance with HRD researchers, administrators and practitioners alike who recognize the value of employee leave and effective policy implementation.

New fieldwork at Ur has begun to investigate urban scale, city organization, and the environment of the city's hinterland. Analysis of new sources of declassified aerial and satellite imagery from the 1950s and 1960s, recent unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) photos, and a systematic surface collection show that Ur may have expanded to between 120–500 hectares in size during its later periods of habitation, far larger than the sixty hectare maximum size previously estimated. Traces of buried architecture visible in the UAV photos and topographic models generated from UAV photos allow for the generation of hypotheses about the city plan of Ur during the Late Larsa/Old Babylonian and Neo Babylonian periods. Relict watercourses mapped in the vicinity of the main mound indicate how the city might have been supplied with water in some periods. Alongside this site-based work, historical aerial and satellite imagery provide an updated picture of ancient hydrology, environment, and settlement patterns around Ur.

Bronze and Iron Age fortresses in South Caucasia have long been interpreted as evidence for the region's first territorial polities with complex bureaucracies, but it has only been through recent intensive survey and examination of settlements beside fortresses that archaeologists have developed a better understanding of the inhabitants of fortress-polities and their landscapes. Near-surface geophysical prospection near two hillforts overlooking the Arpacay river valley, Naxcivan Autonomous Republic, Azerbaijan, evaluated previously published hypotheses about Bronze and Iron Age fortresses. These two forts, Oglanqala, a 12-hectare hilltop fortress inhabited in the Iron Age, and Qizqala 1, a 2-hectare fort with Middle Bronze Age and Iron Age pottery, were previously documented through survey and excavations as part of the Naxcivan Archaeological Project (NAP). Ground-penetrating radar (GPR) and magnetic gradiometry surveys focused on areas of potential significance identified in the NAP. Magnetic gradiometry survey in the plain between Oglanqala and Qizqala located a fortification wall segment that connects to previously recorded surface features argued to date to the Middle Iron Age; the path of this wall lends support to the hypothesis that it enclosed least 324 ha surrounding Oglanqala and Qizqala and limited access to a narrow mountain pass and fertile lands in the river valley. Geophysical prospection at a settlement site on a bedrock shelf near Qizqala 1 suggests that architectural remains are preserved within part of the large enclosure. Geophysical prospection elsewhere in the alluvial plain did not reveal evidence for preserved architecture within or outside of the hypothesized enclosure, though this could be a result of soil conditions. Magnetic gradiometry of a Middle Bronze Age kurgan field outside of the enclosure identified the potential locations of burials that were not identified during surface survey. New sources of historical satellite imagery aided interpretation of geophysics results from highly-disturbed alluvial areas.

In the 12,000 years preceding the Industrial Revolution, human activities led to significant changes in land cover, plant and animal distributions, surface hydrology, and biochemical cycles. Earth system models suggest that this anthropogenic land cover change influenced regional and global climate. However, the representation of past land use in earth system models is currently oversimplified. As a result, there are large uncertainties in the current understanding of the past and current state of the earth system. In order to improve representation of the variety and scale of impacts that past land use had on the earth system, a global effort is underway to aggregate and synthesize archaeological and historical evidence of land use systems. Here we present a simple, hierarchical classification of land use systems designed to be used with archaeological and historical data at a global scale and a schema of codes that identify land use practices common to a range of systems, both implemented in a geospatial database. The classification scheme and database resulted from an extensive process of consultation with researchers worldwide. Our scheme is designed to deliver consistent, empirically robust data for the improvement of land use models, while simultaneously allowing for a comparative, detailed mapping of land use relevant to the needs of historical scholars. To illustrate the benefits of the classification scheme and methods for mapping historical land use, we apply it to Mesopotamia and Arabia at 6 kya (c. 4000 BCE). The scheme will be used to describe land use by the Past Global Changes (PAGES) LandCover6k working group, an international project comprised of archaeologists, historians, geographers, paleoecologists, and modelers. Beyond this, the scheme has a wide utility for creating a common language between research and policy communities, linking archaeologists with climate modelers, biodiversity conservation workers and initiatives. Fil: Morrison, Kathleen D.. University of Pennsylvania; Estados Unidos Fil: Hammer, Emily. University of Pennsylvania; Estados Unidos Fil: Boles, Oliver. University of Pennsylvania; Estados Unidos Fil: Madella, Marco. University of the Witwatersrand; Sudáfrica. Universitat Pompeu Fabra; España Fil: Whitehouse, Nicola. University of Glasgow; Reino Unido Fil: Gaillard, Marie-Jose. Linnaeus University; Suecia Fil: Bates, Jennifer. University of Pennsylvania; Estados Unidos Fil: Linden, Marc Vander. Bournemouth University; Sudáfrica Fil: Merlo, Stefania. University of the Witwatersrand; Sudáfrica Fil: Yao, Alice. University of Chicago; Estados Unidos Fil: Popova, Laura. Arizona State University; Estados Unidos Fil: Hill, Austin Chad. University of Pennsylvania; Estados Unidos Fil: Antolin, Ferran. Universiat Basel; Suiza Fil: Bauer, Andrew. University of Stanford; Estados Unidos Fil: Biagetti, Stefano. University of the Witwatersrand; Sudáfrica. Universitat Pompeu Fabra; España Fil: Bishop, Rosie R.. University of Stavanger; Noruega Fil: Buckland, Phillip. Universidad de Umea; Suecia Fil: Cruz, Pablo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Salta. Unidad Ejecutora en Ciencias Sociales Regionales y Humanidades. Universidad Nacional de Jujuy. Unidad Ejecutora en Ciencias Sociales Regionales y Humanidades; Argentina Fil: Dreslerová, Dagmar. Institute Of Archaeology Of The Academy Of Sciences Of The Czech Republic; Hungría Fil: Dusseldorp, Gerrit. Leiden University; Países Bajos Fil: Ellis, Erle C.. University of Maryland; Estados Unidos. University Of Johannesburg; Sudáfrica Fil: Filipovich, Ruben Eduardo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Salta. Instituto de Bio y Geociencias del NOA. Universidad Nacional de Salta. Facultad de Ciencias Naturales. Museo de Ciencias Naturales. Instituto de Bio y Geociencias del NOA; Argentina Fil: Foster, Thomas. University of Tulsa; Estados Unidos Fil: Hannaford, Matthew J.. Lincoln University.; Nueva Zelanda Fil: Harrison, Sandy P.. University of Reading; Reino Unido Fil: Hazarika, Manjil. Cotton University; India Fil: Herold, Hajnalka. University of Exeter; Reino Unido Fil: Hilpert, Johanna. Universitat zu Köln; Alemania Fil: Kaplan, Jed O.. The University Of Hong Kong; Hong Kong Fil: Kay, Andrea. Max Planck Institute For The Science Of Human History; Alemania Fil: Goldewijk, Kees Klein. Utrecht University; Países Bajos Fil: Kolár, Jan. Masaryk University; República Checa Fil: Kyazike, Elizabeth. Kyambogo University; Uganda Fil: Laabs, Julian. University of Bern; Suiza Fil: Lancelotti, Carla. Universitat Pompeu Fabra; España Fil: Lane, Paul. University of the Witwatersrand; Sudáfrica. University of Cambridge; Estados Unidos Fil: Lawrence, Dan. University of Durham; Reino Unido Fil: Lewis, Krista. University of Arkansas; Estados Unidos Fil: Lombardo, Umberto. University of Bern; Suiza Fil: Lucarini, Giulio. Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche; Italia. University of Naples; Italia Fil: Arroyo Kalin, Manuel. Colegio Universitario de Londres; Reino Unido Fil: Marchant, Rob. University of York; Reino Unido Fil: Mayle, Francis. University of Reading; Reino Unido Fil: McClatchie, Meriel. University College; Irlanda Fil: McLeester, Madeleine. Dartmouth College; Estados Unidos Fil: Mooney, Scott. Unsw Sydney; Australia Fil: Moskal-Del Hoyo, Magdalena. Wladyslaw Szafer Institute Of Botany Of The Polish Academy Of Sciences; Polonia Fil: Navarrete, Vanessa. Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona; España Fil: Ndiema, Emmanuel. National Museums Of Kenya; Kenia Fil: Neves, Eduardo Góes. Universidade de Sao Paulo; Brasil Fil: Nowak, Marek. Jagiellonian University; Polonia Fil: Out, Welmoed A.. Moesgaard Museum; Dinamarca Fil: Petrie, Cameron. Universitat Pompeu Fabra; España. University of Cambridge; Estados Unidos Fil: Phelps, Leanne N.. Royal Botanic Gardens; Reino Unido. University of Edinburgh; Reino Unido Fil: Szakonyi, Zsolt. Eötvös University; Hungría Fil: Rostain, Stéphen. Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique; Francia Fil: Russell, Thembi. University of the Witwatersrand; Sudáfrica Fil: Sluyter, Andrew. Louisiana State University; Estados Unidos Fil: Styring, Amy K.. University of Oxford; Reino Unido Fil: Tamanaha, Eduardo. The Mamirauá Sustainable Development Institute; Brasil Fil: Thomas, Evert. The Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT; Perú Fil: Veerasamy, Selvakumar. Tamil University; India Fil: Welton, Lynn. University of the Witwatersrand; Sudáfrica Fil: Zanon, Marco. Institute of Pre- and Protohistoric Archaeology; Alemania

Recently declassified photographs taken by U2 spy planes in the 1950s and 1960s provide an important new source of historical aerial imagery useful for Eurasian archaeology. Like other sources of historical imagery, U2 photos provide a window into the past, before modern agriculture and development destroyed many archaeological sites. U2 imagery is older and in many cases higher resolution than CORONA spy satellite imagery, the other major source of historical imagery for Eurasia, and thus can expand the range of archaeological sites and features that can be studied from an aerial perspective. However, there are significant barriers to finding and retrieving U2 imagery of particular locales, and archaeologists have thus not yet widely used it. In this article, we aim to reduce these barriers by describing the U2 photo dataset and how to access it. We also provide the first spatial index of U2 photos for the Middle East. A brief discussion of archaeological case studies drawn from U2 imagery illustrates its merits and limitations. These case studies include investigations of prehistoric mass-kill hunting traps in eastern Jordan, irrigation systems of the first millennium BC Neo-Assyrian Empire in northern Iraq, and twentieth-century marsh communities in southern Iraq.

Here, we report genome-wide data analyses from 110 ancient Near Eastern individuals spanning the Late Neolithic to Late Bronze Age, a period characterized by intense interregional interactions for the Near East. We find that 6th millennium BCE populations of North/Central Anatolia and the Southern Caucasus shared mixed ancestry on a genetic cline that formed during the Neolithic between Western Anatolia and regions in today’s Southern Caucasus/Zagros. During the Late Chalcolithic and/or the Early Bronze Age, more than half of the Northern Levantine gene pool was replaced, while in the rest of Anatolia and the Southern Caucasus, we document genetic continuity with only transient gene flow. Additionally, we reveal a genetically distinct individual within the Late Bronze Age Northern Levant. Overall, our study uncovers multiple scales of population dynamics through time, from extensive admixture during the Neolithic period to long-distance mobility within the globalized societies of the Late Bronze Age. Video Abstract - Introduction - Results -- Sample Corpus and Data Compilation -- The Late Neolithic/Early Chalcolithic Genetic Structure in Anatolia, Northern Levant, and Caucasian Lowlands -- Neolithic Admixture and a Common Genetic Profile of Chalcolithic and Bronze Age Groups -- Admixture Modeling of the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age Groups -- Genetic Turnover in the Bronze Age Northern Levant -- Evidence for Individual Mobility in Alalakh - Discussion -- Genetic Homogenization across Anatolia and the Southern Caucasus prior to the Bronze Age -- Population and Territorial State Dynamics in the Northern Levant -- Conclusions STAR★Methods

In this paper, we present a history of pastoralism in the ancient Near East from the Neolithic through the Bronze Age. We describe the accretional development of pastoral technologies over eight millennia, including the productive breeding of domestic sheep, goats, and cattle in the early Neolithic and the subsequent domestication of animals used primarily for labor—donkeys, horses, and finally camels—as well as the first appearance of husbandry strategies such as penning, foddering, pasturing, young male culling, and dairy production. Despite frequent references in the literature to prehistoric pastoral nomads, pastoralism in Southwest Asia was strongly associated with sedentary communities that practiced intensive plant cultivation and was largely local in nature. There is very little evidence in prehistoric and early historic Southwest Asia to support the notion of a “dimorphic society” characterized by separate and specialized agriculturists and mobile pastoralists. Although mobile herders were present in the steppe regions of Syria by the early second millennium BC, mobile pastoralism was the exception rather than the rule at that time; its “identification” in the archaeological record frequently derives from the application of anachronistic ethnographic analogy. We conclude that pastoralism was a diverse, flexible, and dynamic adaptation in the ancient Near East and call for a reinvigorated and empirically based archaeology of pastoralism in Southwest Asia.

This study examines a college of business at a regional university, according to High Impact Practices on the National Survey of Student Engagement as compared to student engagement at the regional university as a whole. Seven years of data across five High Impact Practices for both the college of business as well as its greater regional university were examined using a two-proportion z-test. The study concluded that the college of business was more stable than the greater university across four of the High Impact Practices. This study reveals that a college of business may function as an independent entity from its greater university concerning High Impact Practice participation which may be contextualized by the accreditation process. Specifically, the unique attributes of programmatic accreditation, as opposed to the institutional accreditation that all colleges and programs within a university must satisfy, may change behaviors related to student engagement.

Remote survey using high-resolution satellite images allows archaeologists to study ancient landscapes in regions made inaccessible by ongoing conflict as well as in regions located between zones o...

Students in today’s college classroom are diverse in age and work, leadership, and life experiences; hence, students transitioning into adulthood may understand and relate core leadership knowledge to their own experiences differently than mature adults. As such, we call upon andragogy, a theory of adult learning, to inform our approach to teaching leadership. We employ andragogy and its six assumptions (the learners’ self-concept, the role of experience, readiness to learn, orientation to learning, motivation, and the need to know) as a guiding framework for the selection and development of leadership instructional tools, thus creating an individualized learning experience for emerging and full-fledged adults that bridges the leadership theory and practice gap. We offer examples of leadership instructional tools that align with andragogical assumptions and provide suggestions for scaling these assignments and activities to address students’ learning needs at different stages of adulthood.

High-resolution satellite imagery has proved to be a powerful tool for calculating the extent of looting at heritage sites in conflict zones around the world. Monitoring damage over time, however, has been largely dependent upon laborious and error-prone manual comparisons of satellite imagery taken at different dates. The semi-automated detection process presented here offers a more expedient and accurate method for monitoring looting activities over time, as evidenced at the site of Ai Khanoum in Afghanistan. It is hoped that this method, which relies upon multispectral imagery and principal component analysis, may be adapted to great effect for use in other areas where heritage loss is of significant concern.

Large mass-kill hunting traps known as desert kites are the badia's most visually striking and long-studied archaeological features. Kites are best understood from a vertical perspective with help ...

The question of whether prehistoric human impacts on land cover (i.e. anthropogenic land cover change due to land use, LULC) were sufficiently large to have a major impact on regional cli-mates is still a matter of debate. Climate model simulations have shown that LULC datasets can have large regional impacts on climate in recent and prehistoric time (1). But there are major differences between the available LULC scenarios/datasets such as HYDE (History Database of the Global En-vironment) and Kaplan’s KK10 (2), and diagnoses of inferred carbon-cycle impacts show that none of the scenarios are realistic (3). The only way to provide a useful assessment of the potential for LULC changes to affect climate in the past, is to provide more realistic LULC data based on palaeovegetation and archaeological evidence to improve the LULC datasets used in climate modelling(4). We use the REVEALS model to reconstruct LC from pollen data at a regional scale, and archaeological data to map LU types and distribution, and estimate per capita LU. The archaeology-based LU maps and per-capita LU estimates are used to improve LULC datasets. Pollen-based REVEALS LC estimates are then used to evaluate/validate the new, improved LULC datasets. These new datasets will be used to implement past land use in palaeoclimate and carbon cycle model simulations. Such simulations are necessary to assess the impact of LULC changes in the past and understand the effect of ecosys-tem management on future climate. We present results from five years of PAGES LandCover6k activities. (1) Strandberg G, Kjellström E, Poska A, Wagner S, Gaillard M-J et al. (2014) Regional climate model sim-ulations for Europe at 6 and 0.2 k BP: sensitivity to changes in anthropogenic deforestation. Clim. Past 10, 661–680.(2) Gaillard M-J, Sugita S, Mazier F et al (2010) Holocene land-cover reconstructions for studies on land cover-climate feedbacks. Clim. Past 6, 483-499.(3) Stocker B, Yud Z, Massae C, Joos F (2017) Holocene peatland and ice-core data constraints on the tim-ing and magnitude of CO2 emissions from past land use. www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/ pnas.1613889114.(4) Harrison S P, Gaillard M-J, Stocker B D, Vander Linden M, Klein Goldewijk K, Boles O, Braconnot P, Dawson A, Fluet-Chouinard E, Kaplan J O, Kastner T, Pausata F S R, Robinson E, Whitehouse N J, Madella M, and Morrison K D (2019) Development and testing of scenarios for implementing Holocene LULC in Earth Sys-tem Model Experiments, Geosci. Model Dev. Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-2019-125, in review, 2019.

Archaeological and historical data show that pastoral systems in Anatolia over the last ten thousand years were characterised by a high degree of variability in degree of mobility, land-use and animal preferences, target products and herd management strategies, and political organisation. Long-distance pastoral nomadism was a historically late development in the region, occurring over the last 1,500 to 1,000 years. Ethnographic analogy currently structures the majority of archaeological conclusions concerning pre-modern pastoralism, but obscures the variability that recent archaeological work brings to light. Multi-disciplinary studies seeking empirical data on ancient pastoralism and mobility are critical for developing a more subtle and accurate picture.

Analysis of spatial and temporal patterns in looting and destruction at archaeological sites using satellite imagery has become a focus of multiple research groups working on cultural heritage in conflict zones, especially in areas controlled by the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. In this paper, we apply similar methods to investigate looting and destruction at archaeological sites in the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, where Taliban-related cultural heritage destruction events have also frequently made international headlines. Using the time depth provided by high-resolution, time-stamped DigitalGlobe satellite and BuckEye aerial images as well as CORONA and other historical satellite images and maps, we quantitatively document spatial and temporal patterns in destruction from looting, agricultural activity, military occupation, urban growth, mining, and other kinds of development at over 1000 previously known archaeological sites across Afghanistan. This analysis indicates that several common narratives about cultural heritage destruction in Afghanistan may require revision. Specifically, we conclude that significant amounts of systematic looting of archaeological sites in Afghanistan already occurred before Taliban-related conflicts, that there has been little increase in systematic looting in Taliban-controlled areas post-2001, and that the most pressing threats to Afghanistan's heritage sites come from development activities, including agricultural expansion, urban growth, and future mining. The analysis demonstrates that the situation in Afghanistan both parallels and contrasts with that seen in the post-Arab-Spring Middle East.

In response to increased international collaboration in archaeological research of the South Caucases, a recent workshop has addressed important issues in applying GIS to the study of heavily modified landscapes in the former Soviet republics of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia.

This article contributes to the literature addressing the needs of increasing student enrollment and retention across university campuses by identifying programs where progress can be made to improve the student retention rate and increase university enrollment. This article derives from a provisional program that began in the fall of 2009 at a 4-year university with respect to a community college partnership. In an effort to obtain information on provisional programs, this article examines the program using student data by researching the program transition rate and transfer rate into the 4-year university, the semester following program completion.

Recent survey work in western Azerbaijan has revealed that hilltop fortresses of the Bronze Age and Iron Age may have been parts of larger walled complexes and could have functioned as the urban centres of small independent polities. On the Şərur Plain long lengths of stone wall link the major fortress Oğlanqala it to its smaller neighbour Qızqala 1, with evidence of a substantial settlement on the lower ground between the two. The southern Caucasus lies beyond the core area of Near Eastern states but these new discoveries suggest that major centres of power arose here, controlling both the fertile plains and strategic trade routes through mountainous terrain.

The results of two seasons of research at Hamriya and Tell Abraq (Sharjah, UAE) by an international team of researchers are presented. The research has revealed extensive evidence for occupation from c. 5000 BC to the recent past adjoining lagoon areas that face the Arabian Gulf. C14 analysis of shells has contributed to understanding the chronology of settlement and also assisted our understanding of species-specific deviation from the global reservoir effect.

The importance of non-sedentary pastoralist groups in the social and political history of Mesopotamia has long been appreciated from the perspective of ancient texts and ethnohistorical sources, but empirical evidence from archaeology has been lacking. In two field seasons, the Hirbemerdon Tepe Survey (HMTS) in Diyarbakir province, southeastern Turkey, has recovered a variety of sites and landscape features associated with pastoral nomadic occupation during the last two millennia and possibly earlier. In doing so, we targeted non-alluvial areas where feature preservation was likely, and employed pedestrian survey methods more typical of Mediterranean fieldwork. If Mesopotamian archaeology is to investigate the landscapes of pastoral nomads, it must incorporate intensive survey methods and expand coverage beyond alluvial environments.

Archaeological and archaeogenetic evidence points to the Pontic–Caspian steppe zone between the Caucasus and the Black Sea as the crucible from which the earliest steppe pastoralist societies arose and spread, ultimately influencing populations from Europe to Inner Asia. However, little is known about their economic foundations and the factors that may have contributed to their extensive mobility. Here, we investigate dietary proteins within the dental calculus proteomes of 45 individuals spanning the Neolithic to Greco-Roman periods in the Pontic–Caspian Steppe and neighbouring South Caucasus, Oka–Volga–Don and East Urals regions. We find that sheep dairying accompanies the earliest forms of Eneolithic pastoralism in the North Caucasus. During the fourth millennium bc, Maykop and early Yamnaya populations also focused dairying exclusively on sheep while reserving cattle for traction and other purposes. We observe a breakdown in livestock specialization and an economic diversification of dairy herds coinciding with aridification during the subsequent late Yamnaya and North Caucasus Culture phases, followed by severe climate deterioration during the Catacomb and Lola periods. The need for additional pastures to support these herds may have driven the heightened mobility of the Middle and Late Bronze Age periods. Following a hiatus of more than 500 years, the North Caucasian steppe was repopulated by Early Iron Age societies with a broad mobile dairy economy, including a new focus on horse milking. Results - North Caucasus. - South Caucasus. - Oka–Volga–Don region. - East Urals region. Discussion - Eneolithic populations practiced dairy pastoralism. - Maykop and Steppe Maykop dairy focused on sheep not cattle. - Dairy livestock diversified during Middle Bronze Age. - Post-Bronze Age adoption of horse milking. - Macroregional perspectives on the spread of dairying. Conclusion Methods - Sampling. - Radiocarbon dating. - Liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry and data analysis.