Late Quaternary Climate Change And Human Adaptation In Arid China

Due to political pressures, prior to the 1990s little was known about the nature of human foraging adaptations in the deserts, grasslands, and mountains of north western China during the last glacial period. Even less was known about the transition to agriculture that followed. Now open to foreign visitation, there is now an increasing understanding of the foraging strategies which led both to the development of millet agriculture and to the utilization of the extreme environments of the Tibetan Plateau. This text explores the transition from the foraging societies of the Late Paleolithic to the emergence of settled farming societies and the emergent pastoralism of the middle Neolithic striving to help answer the diverse and numerous questions of this critical transitional period. * Examines the transition from foraging societies of the Late Paleolithic to the emergence of settled farming societies and the emergent pastoralism of the middle Neolithic * Explores explanatory models for the links between climate change and cultural change that may have influenced the development of millet agriculture * Reviews the relationship between climate change and population expansions and contraditions during the late Quaternary

This handbook examines human responses to climatic and environmental changes in the past,and their impacts on disease patterns, nutritional status, migration, and interpersonal violence. Bioarchaeology—the study of archaeological human skeletons—provides direct evidence of the human experience of past climate and environmental changes and serves as an important complement to paleoclimate, historical, and archaeological approaches to changes we may expect with global warming. Comprising 27 chapters from experts across a broad range of time periods and geographical regions, this book addresses hypotheses about how climate and environmental changes impact human health and well-being, factors that promote resilience, and circumstances that make migration or interpersonal violence a more likely outcome. The volume highlights the potential relevance of bioarchaeological analysis to contemporary challenges by organizing the chapters into a framework outlined by the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals for 2030. Planning for a warmer world requires knowledge about humans as biological organisms with a deep connection to Earth's ecosystems balanced by an appreciation of how historical and socio-cultural circumstances, socioeconomic inequality, degrees of urbanization, community mobility, and social institutions play a role in shaping long-term outcomes for human communities. Containing a wealth of nuanced perspectives about human-environmental relations, book is key reading for students of environmental archaeology, bioarchaeology, and the history of disease. By providing a longer view of contemporary challenges, it may also interest readers in public health, public policy, and planning.

This collection of essays brings together several different evolutionary perspectives to demonstrate how lithic technological systems are a byproduct of human behavior. The essays cover a range of topics, including human behavioral ecology, cultural transmission, phylogenetic analysis, macroevolution, and various applications of evolutionary ecology.

Ostracod crustaceans, common microfossils in marine and freshwater sedimentary records, supply evidence of past climatic conditions via indicator species, transfer function and mutual climatic range approaches as well as the trace element and stable isotope geochemistry of their shells. As methods of using ostracods as Quaternary palaeoclimate proxies have developed, so too has a critical awareness of their complexities, potential and limitations. This book combines up-to-date reviews (covering previous work and summarising the state of the art) with presentations of new, cutting-edge science (data and interpretations as well as methodological developments) to form a major reference work that will constitute a durable bench-mark in the science of Ostracoda and Quaternary climate change. In-depth and focused treatment of palaeoclimate applications Provides durable benchmark and guide for all future work on ostracods Presents new, cutting-edge science

Agrobiodiversity provides most of our food through our interaction with crops and domestic animals. Future global food security is firmly anchored in sound, science-based management of agrobiodiversity. This book presents key concepts of agrobiodiversity management, critically reviewing important current and emerging issues including agricultural development, crop introduction, practical diversity in farming systems, impact of modern crop varieties and GM crops, conservation, climate change, food sovereignty and policies. It also addresses claims and misinformation in the subject based on soun.

Migration is a widespread human activity dating back to the origin of our species. Advances in genetic sequencing have greatly increased our ability to track prehistoric and historic population movements and allowed migration to be described both as a biological and socioeconomic process. Presenting the latest research, Causes and Consequences of Human Migration provides an evolutionary perspective on human migration past and present. Crawford and Campbell have brought together leading thinkers who provide examples from different world regions, using historical, demographic and genetic methodologies, and integrating archaeological, genetic and historical evidence to reconstruct large-scale population movements in each region. Other chapters discuss established questions such as the Basque origins and the Caribbean slave trade. More recent evidence on migration in ancient and present day Mexico is also presented. Pitched at a graduate audience, this book will appeal to anyone with an interest in human population movements.

Adopting an ecological approach to archaeology this book discusses the relationships between people and environments against a backdrop of climate change.

This third edition of Reconstructing Quaternary Environments has been completely revised and updated to provide a new account of the history and scale of environmental changes during the Quaternary. The evidence is extremely diverse ranging from landforms and sediments to fossil assemblages and geochemical data, and includes new data from terrestrial, marine and ice-core records. Dating methods are described and evaluated, while the principles and practices of Quaternary stratigraphy are also discussed. The volume concludes with a new chapter which considers some of the key questions about the nature, causes and consequences of global climatic and environmental change over a range of temporal scales. This synthesis builds on the methods and approaches described earlier in the book to show how a number of exciting ideas that have emerged over the last two decades are providing new insights into the operation of the global earth-ocean-atmosphere system, and are now central to many areas of contemporary Quaternary research. This comprehensive and dynamic textbook is richly illustrated throughout with full-colour figures and photographs. The book will be of interest to undergraduates, postgraduates and professionals in Earth Science, Environmental Science, Physical Geography, Geology, Botany, Zoology, Ecology, Archaeology and Anthropology