Environmental archaeology

[4] Environmental archaeology is commonly divided into three sub-fields: Environmental archaeology often involves studying plant and animal remains in order to investigate which plant and animal species were present at the time of prehistoric habitations, and how past societies managed them.

While specialist sub-fields, for example bioarchaeology or geomorphology, are defined by the materials they study, the term "environmental" is used as a general template in order to denote a general field of scientific inquiry that is applicable across time periods and geographical regions studied by archaeology as a whole.

[11] Apart from visual observation, computer programming and satellite imaging are often employed to reconstruct past landscapes or architecture.

The field is multidisciplinary, and environmental archaeologists, as well as palaeoecologists, work side by side with archaeologists and anthropologists specialising in material culture studies in order to achieve a more holistic understanding of past human livelihood and people-environment interactions, especially how climatic stress affected humans and forced them to adapt.

This gave rise to middle range theory and the major questions asked by environmental archaeology in the 20th and 21st centuries.

The samples typically sought after are human and faunal remains, pollen and spores, wood and charcoal, insects, and even isotopes[20].

[12] Climate records are able to be reconstructed through paleoclimatology proxies, which can provide information on temperatures, precipitation, vegetation, and other climate-dependent conditions.

Together these components (along with methods from other fields) are combined to fully understand a past society's lifestyle and interactions with their environment.

[24] Past aspects of land use, food production, tool use, and occupation patterns can all be established and the knowledge applied to current and future human-environment interactions.

[26] Although the Yucatán Peninsula was found to have extreme drought at the time Mayan society collapsed, many other factors contributed to their demise.

Deforestation, overpopulation, and manipulating wetlands are only a few theories as to why the Maya civilization collapsed, but all of these worked in tandem to negatively impact the environment.

[27] From a sustainability perspective, studying how the Mayans impacted the environment allows researchers to see how these changes have permanently affected the landscape and subsequent populations living in the area.