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Martin Bell, Michael J. C. Walker.
Late Quaternary Environmental Change: physical and human perspectives: 1st edn.
Longman. 1992

The changes that have occurred in the landscape of the northern temperate zone over the course of the last 20,000 years have been dramatic. The climate shift from a regime of arctic severity to one of relative warmth that began around 15,000 years ago led to the virtual disappearance of the great continental ice sheets, and to the replacement of barren tundra by mixed woodland over large areas of Europe and North America. Global sea levels rose by over 100m, while a combination of climatic and vegetational changes affected a whole range of other landscape processes including fluvial activity, weathering rates and pedogenesis. This period of natural environmental change is also marked by major human social changes, the transition from hunter-gatherer communities to sedentary agriculturalism being accompanied by increasing technological sophistication which culminated in the industrial revolution of the eighteenth century. Over the past five millennia in particular, human influence has become as important as natural agencies in determining the direction and nature of landscape change.

Late Quaternary Environmental Change focuses on both natural and anthropogenically-induced changes that have occurred in the landscape of the temperate zone during the closing stages of the last glacial and over the course of the present interglacial. It begins by studying the evidence for environmental change, followed by a discussion of the patterns and causes of both long-term and short-term climatic change, and the effects of climatic change on the biotic and abiotic components of the landscape. The human dimension is explored through an examination of the impact of environmental change on people, the effects of people on the landscape and the increasing influence of human activity on climate. This section of the book adopts an ecological approach to archaeology in which the interactive relationships between people and the environment are discussed against a background of climatic change.

This broad-ranging text is unique among the literature available in that it reflects both the spatial and temporal interactions between the people, environment and climate of the recent geological past. Examples are taken from a wide range of sources in the earth and archaeological sciences. The text has been written in a style that is detailed yet highly readable and there are copious illustrations throughout.

Late Quaternary Environmental Change will be essential reading for students in a number of disciplines including archaeology, environmental science, geography, geology and history and will prove to be a useful addition to the bookshelves of professional archaeologists.

Martin Bell.
Making One's Way in the World: the footprints and trackways of prehistoric people.
Oxbow. 2020

People experience landscapes by walking on what are often ancient routeways. This book aims to satisfy curiosity concerning the origins of these paths and hollow ways and to explain their origins as key parts of living landscapes. The focus is on the British Isles but extensive evidence from North America and North-west Europe also provides case studies and new approaches. The scope is multi-scalar from the individual footprint to the long-distance path. A wide range of forms of evidence is employed, including the effects on vegetation of movement by people and animals, footprints made by both, routeways suggested by alignments of prehistoric monuments including barrows, and wetland trackways. Trackways revealed by extensive excavations of later prehistoric landscapes can be dated by spatial relationships and a range of scientific methods is explored.. Some routes are shown to have survived over millennia creating landscape structures which influence the activities of subsequent generations. Others show radical changes in the axes, or mode, of communication, testimony to times of upheaval and social change. Riverine and maritime connectivity appears to explain much of the growing evidence for interregional and international connectivity in many prehistoric periods. Wetland and terrestrial evidence both indicate that patterns of seasonal transhumance were more widespread from the middle Bronze Age into the Iron Age than generally supposed. A case study from south-east England indicates that systems of droveways, generally supposed to be of medieval origin, have prehistoric origins. Learning to appreciate the time, depth and significance of early trackways will encourage their preservation, providing continuing corridors of connectivity to the benefit of both wildlife and walkers.