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.

These annual review essays focus on what we as archaeologists are doing year by year. Many themes continue on from review to review, waxing and waning, not unlike the bell curves of a traditional pottery seriation.Each year, themes are highlighted and presented in varied ways according to the orientation and aims of the reviewer. All do a masterful job of curating the vast range of what archaeologists were, in each annual period, currently producing. My review follows in the footsteps of its predecessors, summarizing an array of new and exciting research, and describing how agendas presented in 2017 cluster around sets of related questions and aims. It will also look at the growing literature that asks, in one way or another, fundamental questions about what archaeology really is and why we pursue it. In this time when the value of academic pursuits and scientific perspectives are being highly scrutinized in politics and popular culture, archaeologists are faced with the uncomfortable question of "What is it, really, that we should be doing?" [archaeology, current issues, public archaeology, digital archaeology] RESUMEN Estos ensayos de revisión anual se enfocan en lo que como arqueólogos estamos haciendo año tras año. Muchos temas continúan de revisión en revisión, creciendo o menguando, no muy diferente de las curvas en forma de campana de la seriación de la cerámica tradicional. Cada año, temas son enfatizados y presentados de varias maneras de acuerdo a la orientación y metas del crítico. Todos hacen un trabajo magistral de organizar un rango vasto de lo que los arqueólogos estaban, en cada período anual, realmente produciendo. Mi revisión sigue los pasos de sus predecesores, resumiendo una colección de nueva y emocionante investigación, y describiendo cómo las agendas presentadas en el 2017 se agrupan alrededor de juegos de cuestiones y metas relacionadas.También examina la creciente literatura que pregunta, de una manera u otra, cuestiones fundamentales acerca de lo que la arqueología realmente es y por qué nos dedicamos a ella. En este tiempo cuando el valor de los empeños académicos y las perspectivas científicas están siendo altamente escrutados en política y cultura popular, los arqueólogos se enfrentan a la pregunta incomoda de "¿Qué es lo que realmente deberíamos estar haciendo?"[arqueología, cuestiones actuales, arqueología pública, arqueología digital] ARCHAEOLOGICAL FRAGMENTATION?While the theme of what such a diverse discipline should be subtly undergirds much of the literature, a number of 2017 articles, each in a very different way, directly address the very nature of what archaeology is and why we practice it. In the Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, Assaf Nativ (2017, 55) asks us to reconsider our notions of the

The contributors argue that the paths and causes of societal declines are generally complex and that despite pressures of population and environmental degradation, societies demonstrate considerable resilience.

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