Early to Mid-Holocene land use transitions in South Asia: A new archaeological synthesis of potential human impacts

While it is clear that current human impact on the earth system is unprecedented in scope and scale, much less is known about the long-term histories of human land use and their effects on vegetation, carbon cycling, and other factors relevant to climate change. Current debates over the possible importance of human activities since the mid second millennium CE cannot be effectively resolved without evidence-based reconstructions of past land use and its consequences. The goal of the PAGES LandCover 6K working group is to reconstruct human land use and land cover over the past 12,000 years. In this paper, we present the first large-scale synthesis of archaeological evidence for human land use in South Asia at 12 and 6kya, a critical period for the transition to agriculture, arguably one of the land use transitions most consequential in terms of human impact on the Earth system. Perhaps the most important narrative we can pick out is that while there are some shifts in land use across these time windows, hunter-gatherer-fisher-foraging remained the dominant land use, and within this there was a mosaic of strategies exploiting diverse and complex landscapes and ecologies. This is not necessarily a new conclusion-it is not new to state that South Asia is comprised of many niches, but demonstrating the deep time history of how people have adapted to these and adapted them is an important step for modelling the impacts of human populations and thinking about their footprints in a longue-durée perspective. Despite the new development of food production between the early and mid-Holocene by overall area foraging life ways continued as the dominant land use practice into the 6kya time window. The development of agriculture and food production was not unimportant-it is the beginning of a land use that eventually comes to dominate the sub-continent, but at 6kya agriculture was restricted to specific contexts. Across 12kya to 6kya and different land uses, the use of mosaic ecologies, diverse strategies and the importance of water as a resource stand out as shared themes.

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Journal
PLoS ONE
Published
2025-02-12
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0313409
Citations
5
Primary Topic
Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
56.73

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article

Early to Mid-Holocene land use transitions in South Asia: A new archaeological synthesis of potential human impacts

Nicki J. Whitehouse, Ravi Korisettar, Tasleem Alam Abro, V. Selvakumar et al.
5 citations
PLoS ONE
Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology
56.73
article

Early to Mid-Holocene land use transitions in South Asia: A new archaeological synthesis of potential human impacts

Nicki J. Whitehouse, Ravi Korisettar, Tasleem Alam Abro, V. Selvakumar, Manjil Hazarika, Smriti Haricharan, Alex Hill, Marco Madella, Óscar Parque, Michael Spate, Anne Casile, Cameron A. Petrie, Amin Chandio, P. Ajithprasad, Carla Lancelotti, Manoj Trivedi, G. M. Veesar, Shanti Pappu, Emily Hammer, J.L. Bates, Keith D. Morrison, Akhilesh Kumar, Swadhin Sen, Krishnamurthy Anupama, Kalyan Kumar Gangopadhyay, S. Chatterjee, Rathnasiri Premathilake, V. K. Vinayak
article en
5 citations

Abstract

While it is clear that current human impact on the earth system is unprecedented in scope and scale, much less is known about the long-term histories of human land use and their effects on vegetation, carbon cycling, and other factors relevant to climate change. Current debates over the possible importance of human activities since the mid second millennium CE cannot be effectively resolved without evidence-based reconstructions of past land use and its consequences. The goal of the PAGES LandCover 6K working group is to reconstruct human land use and land cover over the past 12,000 years. In this paper, we present the first large-scale synthesis of archaeological evidence for human land use in South Asia at 12 and 6kya, a critical period for the transition to agriculture, arguably one of the land use transitions most consequential in terms of human impact on the Earth system. Perhaps the most important narrative we can pick out is that while there are some shifts in land use across these time windows, hunter-gatherer-fisher-foraging remained the dominant land use, and within this there was a mosaic of strategies exploiting diverse and complex landscapes and ecologies. This is not necessarily a new conclusion-it is not new to state that South Asia is comprised of many niches, but demonstrating the deep time history of how people have adapted to these and adapted them is an important step for modelling the impacts of human populations and thinking about their footprints in a longue-durée perspective. Despite the new development of food production between the early and mid-Holocene by overall area foraging life ways continued as the dominant land use practice into the 6kya time window. The development of agriculture and food production was not unimportant-it is the beginning of a land use that eventually comes to dominate the sub-continent, but at 6kya agriculture was restricted to specific contexts. Across 12kya to 6kya and different land uses, the use of mosaic ecologies, diverse strategies and the importance of water as a resource stand out as shared themes.

PLoS ONEVol. 20(2)
University of Calcutta (IN), Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda (IN), University of Delhi (IN), Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats (ES), Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology Delhi (IN), Tamil University (IN), Seoul National University (KR), University of Kelaniya (LK), Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IN), Universitat Pompeu Fabra (ES), University of the Witwatersrand (ZA), La Trobe University (AU), National Institute of Advanced Studies (IN), University of Cambridge (GB), Cotton University (IN), SRM University (IN), Sharma Centre for Heritage Education India (IN), Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (FR), Krea University, Shah Abdul Latif University (PK), Jahangirnagar University (BD), University of Glasgow (GB), University of Pennsylvania (US), French Institute of Pondicherry (IN)
University of Pennsylvania, Past Global Changes, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Akademie der Naturwissenschaften, Samsung, HORIZON EUROPE European Research Council
Zero hunger
Openalex Percentile: Top 0%
Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology
56.73
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