Geoarchaeological and Paleo-Hydrological Overview of the Central-Western Mediterranean Early Neolithic Human-Environment Interactions

Abstract

Climate change is still a subject of debate for archaeologist-neolithicists. Its exact chronology, internal pattern, variations in space and time, and impacts on sites and ecosystems and on coastal dynamic and river systems have yet to be assessed. Only a strict comparative approach at high chronological resolution will allow us to make progress on the causality of the socio-environmental processes at work during Neolithisation. Post-depositional impacts on the Early Neolithic hidden reserve also remain underestimated, which has led to the perpetuation of terms such as "Macedonian desert"and "archaeological silence"in the literature on the Neolithic. Off-site geoarchaeological and paleoenvironmental approaches provide some answers to these questions and opens up new research perspectives.