Environmentally transformative human use of land accelerated with the emergence of agriculture, but the extent, trajectory, and implications of these early changes are not well understood. An empirical global assessment of land use from 10,000 BP to 1850 CE reveals a planet largely transformed by hunter-gatherers, farmers and pastoralists by 3,000 years ago, significantly earlier than land-use reconstructions commonly used by Earth scientists. Synthesis of knowledge contributed by over 250 archaeologists highlighted gaps in archaeological expertise and data quality, which peaked at 2000 BP and in traditionally studied and wealthier regions. Archaeological reconstruction of global land-use history illuminates the deep roots of Earth's transformation and challenges the emerging Anthropocene paradigm that large-scale anthropogenic global environmental change is mostly a recent phenomenon.One Sentence Summary: A map of synthesized archaeological knowledge on land use reveals a planet largely transformed by hunter-gatherers, farmers and pastoralists by 3,000 years ago.

The most archaeologically visible dimension of the Classic Maya Collapse is the abandonment of monumental royal courts. Yet, in some cases, non-elite populations lived for centuries in and around Classic Maya centers without rulers. Processes of abandonment among Classic Maya commoners are detectable and reflect their own ritual and social practices divorced from the ritual performances undertaken by the ruling elite. We study the abandonment context and chronology of three domestic groups from the Contreras Valley, an agricultural community located on the outskirts of the Classic Maya center ofMinanha, Belize. There, several artifact assemblages were deposited at the time of abandonment, representing termination rituals. This study goes beyond the ideological dimension of termination rituals to examine how these ceremonies helped reshape the identity of social groups who were about to abandon their home. We explore how the last inhabitants of a mostly abandoned landscape lived through this process of gradual depopulation. Moreover, we evaluate potential explanations for the archaeological processes behind the occurrence or non-occurrence of termination rituals in different domestic groups.

Objectives: There remain many idiosyncrasies among the values calculated for varying dental topography metrics arising from differences in software preferences among research groups.The aim of this work is to compare and provide potential conversion formulae for dental topography metrics calculated using differing software platforms. Methods: Three software packages: ArcGIS, Surfer Manipulator, and molaR were used to calculate orientation patch count rotated (OPCR), Dirichlet normal energy (DNE), occlusal relief (OR), slope (m), and angularity (a) on platyrrhine second upper molars. Values derived from the various software packages were compared for distributional consistency and correlation. Where appropriate, formulae for conversion between like measures calculated on different software platforms were developed.Results: When compared with the same measurement across software, OPCR, OR, and slope were all highly correlated. However, only OR demonstrated distributional consistency (i.e., nearly consistent mean, median, max, and min). Slope and OPCR were both higher when calculated by molaR as compared to Surfer Manipulator and ArcGIS calculations, conversion formulae are provided for these measures. DNE is only weakly correlated with angularity; but is correlated with orientation patch count across taxa. Discussion:We explore why there is variation in the dental topography values calculated among the various software packages. The conversion formulae provided in this work will make possible direct comparisons among studies conducted across multiple research groups.

Lidar has been revolutionary to the understanding of ancient Maya anthropogenic landscapes. This is no more apparent than in western Belize, where the scale and resolution of these images have identified vast networks of agricultural terrace systems, revealing their true extent and density. This paper moves beyond the initial identification of terrace distribution to use lidar imagery in combination with digital elevation models (DEM) and hydrological mapping programs (Arc Hydro) to explore the drainage catchments associated with agricultural terraces at the ancient Maya site Waybil, a minor center within the Minanha polity in the North Vaca Plateau. We specifically address how the builders of these relic agricultural features worked with the natural topography to manipulate and create more effective catchments and drainage routes. Results from hydrological modeling describe how terraces created smaller drainage catchments by increasing lower levels of flow accumulation and redirecting routes laterally across the topography. Over a decade of research within this sub-region provides the necessary survey, excavations, and chronological datasets to accurately assess the efficacy of the combined methods for relic terrace drainage analysis.

The IRAW@Bagan project is aimed at developing an integrated socio-ecological history for residential patterning, agricultural practices, and water management at the classical Burmese (Bama) capital of Bagan, Myanmar (11th to 14th centuries CE). As part of this long-term research program investigations have been initiated in the Tuyin-Thetso uplands, located 11 km southeast of Bagan’s walled and moated epicenter. This mountainous area figures prominently in the chronicles of early Bagan, given that it was one of five places around the city that a royal white elephant carrying a Buddhist tooth-relic kneeled down, prompting King Anawrahta (1044-1077 CE) to build a pagoda (i.e., temple) there. Numerous 13th century religious monuments were subsequently built on the Tuyin Range. Recent explorations in these uplands have drawn attention to an additional feature of historical significance, a rock-cut tank located along the eastern edge of the Thetso-Taung ridge. Referred to by local villagers as Nat Yekan (Spirit Lake), this reservoir appears to have been integral not only to the initial collection and subsequent redistribution of water across the Bagan plain via a series of interconnected canals and reservoirs, but also, through its associated iconographic imagery, it may have been intended to symbolically purify this water, enhancing its fertility prior to its flowing into the city’s peri-urban zone. Hydrological modelling, excavations, and both iconographic and epigraphic analysis are used to build a multilayered understanding of Nat Yekan’s economic, political, religious, and ideological significance during Bagan’s classical era.IRAW Bagan စီမံကိန္◌းသည္ ၁၁ရာစ0မွ ၁၄ရာစ0အ4တင္◌း စ789ငန: ္◌းကားခ့ေဲ ◌သာ◌ျမ@Aာတိ0႔၏ ပ0ဂံႏ◌ိ◌0ငGံေ◌တာ◌္4တင္ ဘက္ေ◌ပါင္◌းစံ◌0ေ◌ပါင္◌းစည္◌းထားေ◌သာ လLမႈေ◌ဂဟ သမင0ိ ္◌းေ◌ၾကာင္◌း◌ျဖစ္ေ◌သာ လLေ◌နထ0ိငႈA ပံ◌စ0 ံ၊ စ0ိကး8် ေိ ◌ဳ ရး ေဓလစ့ ႐0ိကA်ား◌ႏ◌ွင္◌ ့ ေ◌ရအရင◌္ းအျမစသV ံ◌0◌းခ်မႈမ်ားအား ◌ျပ@Wည္ေ◌ဖာ◌္ထ0တXန ္အဓိကရY7Xယ8ါသည္။ အဆိ0ပါ ေ◌ရရွည္ သ0ေ◌တသန စီမံကိန္◌း ေ◌လ့လာေ◌ရးအားဗဟ0ိအခ်ကV ခ်ာ◌ျဖစ္ေ◌သာ ပ0ဂံၿမိေဳ႕ဟာင္◌း၏ ေအရွေ႕တာငက` ္ ၁၁ကီလ0ိမီတာေ◌ဝး4ကာေ◌သာ တ0ရင္ ◌ႏ◌ွင◌္ ့ သကbိcးေ◌တာင္ ဧရိယာမွ စတငWcပ္ေ◌ဆာငပeဲ ့ ါသည္။ေ၎တာငgန္◌းဧရိယာသည္ ပ0ဂံရာဇဝ9ငgင္ ေအနာ◌္ရထာမင္◌းႀကီး (၁၀၄၄-၁၀၇၇ AD)အဓိဠာန္◌ျပဳ၍ လႊတW ိcက္ေ◌သာ ဗ0ဒၶျမYတbယ္ေ◌တာ◌ ္ တင္ေ◌ဆာငqည္◌ ့ဆင္◌ျဖဴေ◌တာ◌္ကိန္◌းဝပXာ ငါးေ◌နရာ4တင္ တစecအပါအဝင္◌ျဖစqည္◌ ့ထငာX းs ေအရးပါသည◌္ ့ ေ◌နရာလဲ ◌ျဖစ8ါသည္။ မ်ားြစာေ◌သာ ၁၃ရာစ0 ပ0ဂံေ◌ခတ္သာသနကိ ေအဆာကVအံ◌0 မ်ားလည္◌း တ0ရင္ေ◌တာင္ေ◌ၾကာ တစ္ေ◌လ်ာက္တည္ေ◌ဆာက:ား ၾကသည္။ အဆိ0ပါေ◌တာငgန္◌း4တင္ လေကgလာ စLးစမ္◌းရွာေ◌ြဖမႈသ7Wည္◌း သမ0ိင္◌းတ@vိcးအရ သာသနကိ ေအဆာကVအံ◌0မ်ား ကဲ့သ0ိ႔ေအရးပါေ◌သာသကbိcးေ◌တာင္၏ ေအရွ႕ဖကV ြစန္◌း4တင္ တ7Xိေs◌သာ ေ◌က်က္ေ◌ရက@ာV းအထLး◌ျပဳေ◌လ့လာ◌ျခင္◌း◌ျဖစqည္။ ေ◌ဒသခံ wxာသLwxာသားမ်ားက ေ၎က်ာက္ေ◌ရက@Vားနတ္ေ◌ရက@yc ေ◌ခၚဆိ0မႈအရ ေ၎ေရလွာင{@|ကီးသည္ ကနဦး ေ◌ရစ0ေ◌ဆာင္◌းသိ0ေ◌လွာင~ပီးေ◌နာက္ ပ0ဂံ4လင္◌ျပင္ တစ္ေ◌လ်ာကXိ s ေ◌ေရလွာင@{ ာ်A းတLးေ◌◌ျမာင္◌းမ်ားႏ◌ွင◌္ ့ ဆကqယ္၍ ေ◌xျပ@Wည ္ ◌ျဖန္ေ႔ေဝပးယံ◌0သာ မကဘ ဲ4ထင္◌းထ0ထားေ◌သာ ႐0ပWံ◌0◌း႐0ပ္◌ႂ4ကမ်ားသ7Wည္◌း ကန္ေ◌ရအား ဒ0မဂၤလသန္႔ရွင္◌းစငက‚ ယAႈေသဘာေ◌ဆာင္၍ ◌ျဖန္ေ႔ဝျခင္◌း◌ျဖင္◌ ့ ပ0ဂံၿမိ႕ဳအနးီ တဝ0ိက္၎ကန္ေ◌ရရာရွိရာ ေ◌နရာေ◌ဒသမ်ား သာယာစ78င ္ ြဖံ႔ၿဖိးေဳ ◌အာင ္ ◌ျပဳလ0ပမbီ ံထားသ7ycမွတƒ „ရပါသည္။ ဂႏ◌ဝၲ ငc8 ဂံ ေ◌ခတV 4တင္◌း ထငာX းs ခ့ေဲ ◌သာ နတ္ေ◌ရကန္◌ႏ◌ွင္◌ ့ပတqတ†က္◌ႏြ◌ယ္ေ◌ေနသာ စီးြပားေ◌ရး၊ ◌ႏ◌ိ◌0ငGံေ◌ရး၊ ဘာသာေ◌ရးစသည္◌ေ့ သဘာတရားေ◌ရးရာ အဆင◌္ ဆ့ င္◌အ့ ား နားလည္ေ◌စရန္ေ◌ရအရင္◌းအျမစVသံ◌0◌းခ်သိပၸံပညာ၊ ေ◌ရွးေ◌ဟာင္◌းသ0ေ◌တသန တLးေ◌ဖာ◌္မႈ◌ႏ◌ွင္◌အ့ တL ႐0ပWံ◌◌0 း႐0ပ◌္ ေႂ 4ကလ့လာမႈ ◌ႏ◌ွင္◌ ့ ေ◌က်ာကbာ စိစစ္ေ◌4တ႕ရွိခ်ကA်ားအားအသံ◌0◌း◌ျပဳ ေ◌လ့လာ တင္◌ျပ4သားပါမည္။