Surficial Processes and Pleistocene Archaeology: Context, Landscape Evolution and Climate Change

Surficial processes inferred from Pleistocene sedimentary sequences can provide a record of events leading to archaeological site formation as well as landscape evolution. In northeastern Africa, Palaeolithic artifacts are found within sedimentary deposits that seem to reflect suficial processes linked to changing climate and environmental settings. These include Acheulian, Middle Palaeolithic, and Late Palaeolithic occurrences in the Western Desert and Nile Valley of Egypt, and their site-specific sedimentary contexts. In the western interior region of North America, records of landscape evolution dating to the last glacial-interglacial transition and the Pleistocene-Holocene boundary can be related to settings contemporaneous with the late Pleistocene human populations. Stratigraphic sequences provide evidence that can be utilised to examine the relationships between human adaptations, surficial processes, and landscape evolution