Although human-induced changes to the global environment and natural biotic resources, collectively labeled “global change” and the “biodiversity crisis,” have accelerated with industrialization over the past 300 years, such changes have a much longer history. Particularly since the rise of agriculturally based societies and associated population expansion during the early Holocene, humans have had cumulative and often irreversible impacts on natural landscapes and biotic resources worldwide. Archaeologists, often working closely with natural scientists in interdisciplinary projects, have accumulated a large body of empirical evidence documenting such changes as deforestation, spread of savannahs, increased rates of erosion, permanent rearrangements of landscapes for agriculture, resource depression and depletion (and in many cases, extinction) in prehistory. In some areas and time periods …