New Views on Intensification through the Perspective of Ecological Archaeology

The approach of ecological archaeology---with its power to look at long-term human, cultural, and natural processes---is integral to understanding the prospects of sustainable intensification. It provides essential views of both the prospects of sustainability and the perils of degradation based on the understanding of intensification as a coupled human and natural system with a spectrum of linkages to environmental conditions and changes, food production, demography, and sociopolitical complexity that are demonstrated across archaeological records.