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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.

J. John Lowe, Michael J. C. Walker.
Reconstructing Quaternary Environments: 2nd edn.
Longman. 1997

This second edition of Reconstructing Quatemary Environments has been revised and updated to provide a new look at the various forms of evidence that can be used to establish the history and scale of environmental changes during the Quatemary. The evidence is extremely diverse, ranging from landforms and sediments, to fossil assemblages and stable isotope ratios. Dating methods are described and evaluated, and the principles and problems of Quaternary stratigraphy and correlation are also considered.

The volume concludes with a new final chapter which examines the evidence for environmental change in the North Atlantic region during the course of the last 130,000 years. This synthesis not only serves to exemplify the methods and approaches that have been described earlier in the book, but it also introduces a number of exciting new ideas that have emerged during the past decade about the patterns and causes of climatic change, as well as the nature of the environmental responses that these induced.