Quaternary Environmental Change in Southern Africa Physical and Human Dimensions

Ongoing climate change necessitates advances in our understanding of the interrelationships between climate, landscape-shaping processes and human activity over long time periods, especially in areas that are already climatically stressed. This volume presents new ideas on macroscale landscape evolution; mountain, fluvial and aeolian processes; and environments in southern Africa, a key region in the story of human evolution during the last two million years. Interdisciplinary in scope, it brings together an international team of experts to synthesise the latest research and understanding of landscape-human relationships in this region. It incorporates results from the emerging fields of geoarchaeology and cultural landscapes and utilises the latest data and analytical techniques. A key reference for researchers studying hominid evolution, geoarchaeology and environmental change, it provides a benchmark study of southern African landscape evolution during the Quaternary. It will also appeal to professionals and policymakers with interests in future human-landscape evolution in southern Africa.

List of contributors; 1. The context of Quaternary environmental change in southern Africa Jasper Knight and Stefan W. Grab; 2. A brief geological history of southern Africa Steve McCourt; 3. A continental-scale perspective on landscape evolution in southern Africa during the Cenozoic Jasper Knight and Stefan W. Grab; 4. Hominin origins and evolution during the Neogene Jason L. Heaton; 5. Hominin evolution during the Quaternary Kristian J. Carlson and Sarah Edlund; 6. Quaternary environmental change on the southern African coastal plain John S. Compton; 7. Dating the southern African landscape Stephan Woodborne; 8. Glacial and periglacial geomorphology Stefan W. Grab and Jasper Knight; 9. Colluvial deposits and slope instability Greg A. Botha, Arnaud J. A. M. Temme and Rebekah G. Singh; 10. Desert dune environments David S. G. Thomas; 11. Changes in fluvial systems during the Quaternary Stephen Tooth; 12. Wetlands in southern Africa William N. Ellery, Suzanne E. Grenfell, Michael C. Grenfell, Rebecca Powell, Donovan C. Kotze, Philip M. Marren and Jasper Knight; 13. Sandy coasts Hayley C. Cawthra and Mark D. Bateman; 14. Environmental change during the Pleistocene and Holocene: estuaries and lagoons of southern Africa Ander M. de Lecea, Andrew N. Green and J. Andrew G. Cooper; 15. Soils and duricrusts Jürgen Runge; 16. Karstic systems Karin Holmgren and Paul Shaw; 17. Terrestrial ecosystem changes in the late Quaternary Michael E. Meadows and Lynne J. Quick; 18. Faunal evidence for mid- and late Quaternary environmental change in southern Africa James S. Brink; 19. Pollen, charcoal and plant macrofossil evidence of Neogene and Quaternary environments in southern Africa Marion K. Bamford, Frank H. Neumann and Louis Scott; 20. Minerogenic microfossil records of Quaternary environmental change in southern Africa Jennifer M. Fitchett, Jasper Knight and Stefan W. Grab; 21. Development of the archaeological record in southern Africa during the Earlier Stone Age Kathleen Kuman; 22. Development of the archaeological record during the Middle Stone Age of South Africa Sarah Wurz; 23. Later Stone Age hunter-gatherers and herders Peter Mitchell; 24. Southernmost Africans, archaeology and the environment during the Holocene Maria H. Schoeman; 25. Landscape-climate-human relations in the Quaternary of southern Africa Jasper Knight, Dominic Stratford and Stefan W. Grab; Index.

Jasper Knight is a professor of physical geography at the University of the Witwatersrand. He is a geoscientist with research interests in geomorphology and sediment system responses to climate change during the late Pleistocene and Holocene, specifically on glaciers, rivers, coasts and mountains, in Europe, USA, Australasia and southern Africa.
Stefan W. Grab is also a professor of physical geography at the University of the Witwatersrand. He is a geomorphologist with a research focus on cold region and mountain geomorphology, Quaternary environmental change in southern Africa and quantifying climate change during recent and historical times.