Geoarchaeology: The Human-Environmental Approach

Geoarchaeology is traditionally concerned with reconstructing the environmental aspects of past societies using the methods of the earth sciences. Once a purely technical subject, the field has been steadily enriched by scholars from a diversity of disciplines and by the introduction of the human-environmental approach pioneered by Karl Butzer in the late 1970s. Yet much has happened since that time, particularly as the importance of global perspectives on environmental change has emerged.

Carlos Cordova, provides a fully up-to-date account of geoarchaeology that reflects the important changes that have occurred in the past four decades. Its innovative features include accounts of: the development of the human-ecological approach and the impact of technology on this approach; the diversity of disciplines and their contribution to archaeological questions; the frontiers of archaeology in the deep past, particularly the Anthropocene; the geoarchaeology of the contemporary past; the emerging field of ethno-geoarchaeology; and the role of geoarchaeology in global environmental crises and climate change.

The book is unique in featuring a review of the methodological and epistemological aspects of geoarchaeology. The result is a work of outstanding scholarship that will be essential reading for environmental historians, archaeologists, geographers, environmental scientists, and anthropologists.
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