One of the more intractable problems that archaeobiologists struggle with is how to characterise ancient subsistence systems when the plant and animal remains that we study are incommensurate in so many ways. Three examples from the upper Euphrates and Iran illustrate how changes in plant remains are associated with changes in animal exploitation. Two of them consider the agropastoral continuum...

Drylands cover 41% of the terrestrial surface and support > 36% of the world’s population. However, the magnitude of dryland degradation is unknown at regional and global spatial scales and at 15–30-yr temporal scales. Historical archives of > 30 yr of Landsat satellite imagery exist and allow local to global monitoring and assessment of a landscape’s natural resources in response to climatic e...

Coenurosis due to Taenia multiceps has emerged as a major concern small ruminant-owning communities in northern Tanzania. Although high incidence of disease been reported, gaps still remain our knowledge the problem across different agro-ecological settings. The study aimed determine prevalence coenurosis ruminants and taeniid infection dogs identify risk factors for infection. Questionnaire su...

Over the last decades, global changes have altered the structure and properties of natural and semi-natural mountain grasslands. Those changes have contributed to grassland loss mainly through colonization by woody species at low elevations, and increases in biomass and greenness at high elevations. Nevertheless, the interactions between agropastoral components; i.e., ecological (grassland, env...

Brazil has presided over the most comprehensive agrarian reform frontier colonization program on Earth, in which ~1.2 million settlers have been translocated by successive governments since the 1970's, mostly into forested hinterlands of Brazilian Amazonia. These settlements encompass 5.3% of this ~5 million km2 region, but have contributed with 13.5% of all land conversion into agropastoral la...

The classification of kin into structured groups is a diverse phenomenon which is ubiquitous in human culture. For populations which are organized into large agropastoral groupings of sedentary residence but not governed within the context of a centralised state, such as our study sample of 83 historical Bantu-speaking groups of sub-Saharan Africa, cultural kinship norms guide all aspects of ev...