Ethnoarchaeology and archaeology of rainfed cultivation in arid to hyper-arid lands of North Africa

Rainfed cultivation in drylands, especially arid and hyper-arid lands, is often considered to play a minor role in human livelihood. Understanding the long-term development of this practice will augment knowledge of past land use strategies to inform models of land cover and climate change. Drawing upon the results of an ethnoarchaeological study, this paper presents a review of non-irrigated agricultural practices in the absence of anthropogenic water-harvesting structures, in arid and hyper-arid lands of North Africa. A proposal on how to identify the presence and extent of these practices in the past in world’s drylands at large is ultimately presented.DU was funded by the Italian Ministry for Foreign affairs (MAE-DGSP VI). RAINDROPS has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (ERC-Stg-2017) under grant agreement No 759800. Additional funding for fieldwork of AZ is from the University of Milano. This work is also part of the PAGES LandCover6k effort and the INQUA International Focus Group HoLa (Holocene Global Landuse). CL, SB and MM are members of CaSEs, an “Excellence Research Group” of the Catalan Agency for Research (AGAUR SGR-1417 and SGR-0212)