Much attention has been placed on the drivers of vegetation change on the Iberian Peninsula. Whilst climate plays a key role in determining the species pools within different regions and exerts a strong influence on broad vegetation patterning, the role of humans, particularly during prehistory, is less clear. The aim of this paper is to assess the influence of prehistoric population change on shaping vegetation patterns in eastern Iberia and the Balearic Islands between the start of the Neolithic and the late Bronze Age. 3385 radiocarbon dates have been compiled across the study area to provide a palaeodemographic proxy (radiocarbon summed probability distributions: SPD). Modelled trends in palaeodemographics are compared with regional-scale vegetation patterns deduced from analysis of 30 fossil pollen sequences. The pollen sequences have been standardised with count data aggregated into contiguous 200-yr time windows from 11000 cal. yr BP to present. Samples have been classified using cluster analysis to determine the predominant regional land cover types through the Holocene. Regional human impact indices and diversity metrics have been derived for northeast and southeast Spain and the Balearic Islands. The SPDs show characteristic boom-and-bust cycles of population growth and collapse, but there is no clear synchronism between northeast and southeast Spain other than the rise of Neolithic farming. In northeast Iberia patterns 2 of demographic change are strongly linked to changes in vegetation diversity and human impact indicator groups. In the southeast increases in population throughout the Chalcolithic and early Bronze Age result in more open landscapes and increased vegetation diversity. The demographic maximum occurred early in the 3 rd millennium cal. BP on the Balearic Islands and is associated with highest levels of human impact indicator groups. The results demonstrate the importance of population change in shaping the abundance and diversity of taxa within broad climaticallydetermined biomes.
We are becoming increasingly aware of regional data patterning in the archaeological record of Prepalatial Crete, yet a theoretically informed and methodologically systematic study assessing the significance of such differences is still lacking. This article investigates variation through the rich mortuary record of the period and explores the significance of such diversity for our understanding of Prepalatial Crete. A detailed analysis using mortuary data reveals a complex spatial and temporal variation in the record which raises questions about social, political and ideological differences between communities on the island during the early periods of the Early Bronze Age. Prepalatial Crete emerges from this analysis as a complex context resulting from an intricate combination of local and regional histories and trajectories and far from the unified culture that the term 'Minoan' implies.
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