Geoarchaeological studies have benefits from new technological developments in remote-sensing technologies that have become an integral and important part of the archeological researches. In particular, structure-from-motion (SfM) photogrammetry is one of the most successful emerging techniques in high-resolution topography (HRT) and provides exceptionally fast, low-cost, and easy three-dimensional ...

Terracing is found widely in the Mediterranean and in other hilly and mountainous regions of the world. Yet while archaeological attention to these ‘mundane’ landscape features has grown, they remain understudied, particularly in Northern Europe. Here, the authors present a multidisciplinary study of terraces in the Breamish Valley, Northumberland. The results date their construction to the Early ...

Terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) provides a means of rapid and highly accurate survey of archaeological excavations and structures at landscape scales, and is particularly valuable for documenting tidal environments. Here, the authors use TLS to record tidal fixed fishing structures and a tide mill within the Léguer Estuary at Le Yaudet, in north-west France. As part of a comprehensive resource-exploitation ...

Loss-on-ignition (LOI) is the most widely used measure of organic matter in lake sediments, a variable related to both climate and land-use change. The main drawback for conventional measurement methods is the processing time and hence high labor costs associated with high-resolution analyses. On the other hand, broad-based near infrared reflectance spectroscopy (NIRS) is a time and cost efficient ...

Andøya on the NW coast of Norway is a key site for understanding the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) in northern Europe. Controversy has arisen concerning the local conditions, especially about the timing and extent of local glacial cover, maximum July temperatures and whether pine and/or spruce could have grown there. We reviewed all existing data and add newly analysed ancient sedimentary DNA ...

The Neolithic and Bronze Age construction and habitation of the Stonehenge Landscape has been extensively explored in previous research. However, little is known about the scale of pre-Neolithic activity and the extent to which the later monumental complex occupied an ‘empty’ landscape. There has been a long-running debate as to whether the monumental archaeology of Stonehenge was created in an ...

Lake settlements, particularly crannogs, pose several contradictions—visible yet inaccessible, widespread yet geographically restricted, persistent yet vulnerable. To further our understanding, we developed the integrated use of palaeolimnological (scanning XRF, pollen, spores, diatoms, chironomids, Cladocera, microcharcoal, biogenic silica, SEM-EDS, stable-isotopes) and biomolecular (faecal ...

Population size has increasingly been taken as the driver of past human environmental impact worldwide, and particularly in the Arctic. However, sedimentary ancient DNA (sedaDNA), pollen and archaeological data show that over the last 12,000 years, paleoeconomy and culture determined human impacts on the terrestrial ecology of Arctic Norway. The large Mortensnes site complex (Ceavccagea ¯dgi, 70◦N) ...

As part of the <i>Changing the Face of the Mediterranean Project</i>, we consider how human pressure and concomitant erosion has affected a range of Mediterranean landscapes between the Neolithic and, in some cases, the post-medieval period. Part of this assessment comprises an investigation of relationships among palaeodemographic data, evidence for vegetation change and some consideration of rapid ...

The effects of climate change on species richness are debated but can be informed by the past. Here, we generated a sedimentary ancient DNA dataset covering 10 lakes and applied novel methods for data harmonization. We assessed the impact of Holocene climate changes and nutrients on terrestrial plant richness in northern Fennoscandia. We find that richness increased steeply during the rapidly warming ...