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All Outputs (65)

Persistence as Sustainability?: Exploring Urban Longevity in South-West Asia and Egypt (2025)
Journal Article
Lawrence, D., Hinojosa-Balino, I., & Chelazzi, F. (2025). Persistence as Sustainability?: Exploring Urban Longevity in South-West Asia and Egypt. Journal of urban archaeology, 11, 85-97. https://doi.org/10.1484/j.jua.5.150269

The concept of settlement persistence, the duration of occupation of a settlement, has gained traction in archaeology as a way of articulating analyses of past societies in relation to sustainability science. Here we compare the durations of large se... Read More about Persistence as Sustainability?: Exploring Urban Longevity in South-West Asia and Egypt.

Understanding the Form and Timing of Damage to Archaeological Sites During the Syrian Conflict by Combining Evidence From Remote Sensing With Ground Observation (2025)
Journal Article
Almohamad, A., Hopper, K., Deadman, W., Lawrence, D., & Philip, G. (online). Understanding the Form and Timing of Damage to Archaeological Sites During the Syrian Conflict by Combining Evidence From Remote Sensing With Ground Observation. Archaeological Prospection, https://doi.org/10.1002/arp.1997

Satellite remote sensing is used widely to monitor damage to archaeological sites in conflict areas, including in Syria. On-the-ground assessments have been fewer in number, and the degree to which remote sensing assessments reflect what is happening... Read More about Understanding the Form and Timing of Damage to Archaeological Sites During the Syrian Conflict by Combining Evidence From Remote Sensing With Ground Observation.

Canal Mounds as Archives for Human-Environment Interactions in the South Caucasus during Late Antiquity (2025)
Journal Article
Snape, L. M., Ricci, A., Bailiff, I. K., Lawrence, D. E., Aliyev, T., & Helwing, B. (online). Canal Mounds as Archives for Human-Environment Interactions in the South Caucasus during Late Antiquity. Journal of Field Archaeology, https://doi.org/10.1080/00934690.2025.2493438

The physical remains of a surviving large-scale canal system found in the landscape of the Mil Steppe in southwestern Azerbaijan were studied by examining a section of canal situated along the Govurarx canal near Ören Qala. Excavation revealed a comp... Read More about Canal Mounds as Archives for Human-Environment Interactions in the South Caucasus during Late Antiquity.

Assessing grand narratives of economic inequality across time (2025)
Journal Article
Feinman, G. M., Cervantes Quequezana, G., Green, A., Lawrence, D., Munson, J., Ortman, S., Petrie, C., Thompson, A., & Nicholas, L. M. (2025). Assessing grand narratives of economic inequality across time. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 122(16), Article e2400698121. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2400698121

Inequality is a central focus of contemporary scholarship. How did it reach its current extent? Is inequality a natural consequence of modernization, scalar growth, and/or Malthusian forces? Or, were increases in degrees of economic inequality less l... Read More about Assessing grand narratives of economic inequality across time.

Economic inequality is fueled by population scale, land-limited production, and settlement hierarchies across the archaeological record (2025)
Journal Article
Kohler, T. A., Bogaard, A., Ortman, S. G., Crema, E. R., Chirikure, S., Cruz, P., Green, A., Kerig, T., McCoy, M. D., Munson, J., Petrie, C., Thompson, A. E., Birch, J., Cervantes Quequezana, G., Feinman, G. M., Fochesato, M., Gronenborn, D., Hamerow, H., Jin, G., Lawrence, D., …Pailes, M. (2025). Economic inequality is fueled by population scale, land-limited production, and settlement hierarchies across the archaeological record. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 122(16), https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2400691122

Housing inequality and settlement persistence are associated across the archaeological record (2025)
Journal Article
Lawrence, D., Bogaard, A., Cervantes Quequezana, G., Chelazzi, F., Feinman, G. M., Green, A. S., Hamerow, H., Munson, J., Ortman, S. G., & Thompson, A. E. (2025). Housing inequality and settlement persistence are associated across the archaeological record. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 122(16), Article e2400696122. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2400696122

Definitions of sustainability commonly stress both systemic continuity and equality over time. However, the degree to which these two sides of sustainability might be related has not been systematically investigated. Recent theoretical and methodolog... Read More about Housing inequality and settlement persistence are associated across the archaeological record.

Kuznets’ tides: An archaeological perspective on the long-term dynamics of sustainable development (2025)
Journal Article
Green, A. S., Feinman, G. M., Thompson, A. E., Cruz, P., Chirikure, S., Kerig, T., Lawrence, D., Petrie, C. A., & Ortman, S. G. (2025). Kuznets’ tides: An archaeological perspective on the long-term dynamics of sustainable development. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 122(16), Article e2400603121. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2400603121

Understanding the relationship between inequality and economic growth is a critical science problem that hinders sustainable development. In 1955, Simon Kuznets hypothesized that rising economic growth raises inequality, which levels off as that grow... Read More about Kuznets’ tides: An archaeological perspective on the long-term dynamics of sustainable development.

War both reduced and increased inequality over the past ten thousand years (2025)
Journal Article
McCoy, M. D., Birch, J., Chirikure, S., Cruz, P., Green, A. S., Gronenborn, D., Lawrence, D., & Roscoe, P. (2025). War both reduced and increased inequality over the past ten thousand years. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 122(16), Article e2400695121. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2400695121

Scholars are divided over the long-term effects that war has had on inequality. Some have argued that conflict grows the gap between rich and poor. Others counter that violence levels out wealth differences. The GINI Project Database is a large globa... Read More about War both reduced and increased inequality over the past ten thousand years.

Labor, land, and the global dynamics of economic inequality (2025)
Journal Article
Bogaard, A., Cruz, P., Fochesato, M., Birch, J., Cervantes Quequezana, G., Chirikure, S., Crema, E. R., Feinman, G. M., Green, A. S., Hamerow, H., Jin, G., Kerig, T., Lawrence, D., McCoy, M. D., Munson, J., Ortman, S. G., Petrie, C. A., & Roscoe, P. (2025). Labor, land, and the global dynamics of economic inequality. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 122(16), https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2400694122

Significance
Land-use systems create “scarcity” and value regimes that shape economic inequality trajectories. Transitions from labor- to land-limited economies occurred in all major world regions and explain a certain amount of variation in wealth... Read More about Labor, land, and the global dynamics of economic inequality.

Assessing neighborhoods, wealth differentials, and perceived inequality in preindustrial societies (2025)
Journal Article
Thompson, A. E., Munson, J., Ortman, S. G., Mejía Ramón, A. G., Feinman, G. M., Cervantes Quequezana, G., Cruz, P., Green, A. S., Lawrence, D., & Roscoe, P. (2025). Assessing neighborhoods, wealth differentials, and perceived inequality in preindustrial societies. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 122(16), Article e2400699121. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2400699121

Humans often live in neighborhoods, nested socio-spatial clusters within settlements of varying size and population density. In today’s cities, neighborhoods are often characterized as relatively homogenous and may exhibit segregation along various s... Read More about Assessing neighborhoods, wealth differentials, and perceived inequality in preindustrial societies.

100 generations of wealth equality after the Neolithic transitions (2025)
Journal Article
Kerig, T., Crema, E. R., Birch, J., Feinman, G. M., Green, A. S., Gronenborn, D., Lawrence, D., Petrie, C. A., Roscoe, P., Thompson, A. E., & Kohler, T. A. (2025). 100 generations of wealth equality after the Neolithic transitions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 122(16), https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2400697122

Significance
Social inequality and productivity have never been greater than they are today, and there is likely a connection between the two. Focusing on 2,000 y before and after the transition to the new production mode that defined the Neolithic,... Read More about 100 generations of wealth equality after the Neolithic transitions.

Assessing quantitative methods in archaeology via simulated datasets: The Archaeoriddle challenge. Concept, project and motivations (2025)
Journal Article
Cortell-Nicolau, A., Carrignon, S., Rodíguez-Palomo, I., Hromada, D., Kahlenberg, R., Mes, A., Priss, D., Yaworsky, P., Zhang, X., Brainerd, L., Lewis, J., Redhouse, D., Simmons, C., Coto-Sarmiento, M., Daems, D., Deb, A., Lawrence, D., O'Brien, M., Riede, F., Rubio-Campillo, X., & Crema, E. (2025). Assessing quantitative methods in archaeology via simulated datasets: The Archaeoriddle challenge. Concept, project and motivations. Journal of Archaeological Science, 177, Article 106179. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2025.106179

Compared to what is found in many other scientific disciplines, archaeological data are typically scarce, biased and fragmented. This, coupled with the fact that archaeologists can rarely test their hypotheses using experimental design, makes archaeo... Read More about Assessing quantitative methods in archaeology via simulated datasets: The Archaeoriddle challenge. Concept, project and motivations.

Fuel use in ancient Southwest Asia based on wood charcoal and seed data from fire installations (2025)
Journal Article
Deckers, K., Riehl, S., Karakaya, D., Müller, T., Badreshany, K., Tumolo, V., & Lawrence, D. (2025). Fuel use in ancient Southwest Asia based on wood charcoal and seed data from fire installations. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 62, Article 104999. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2025.104999

This study synthesizes a large dataset of published and new charcoal and seed data from archaeological fire installations in southwest Asia to gain an understanding in regional and temporal variation in fuel use through the last 10,000 years. It cons... Read More about Fuel use in ancient Southwest Asia based on wood charcoal and seed data from fire installations.

Filling the Gaps—Computational Approaches to Incomplete Archaeological Networks (2025)
Journal Article
Priß, D., Wainwright, J., Lawrence, D., Turnbull, L., Prell, C., Karittevlis, C., & Ioannides, A. A. (2025). Filling the Gaps—Computational Approaches to Incomplete Archaeological Networks. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 32(1), Article 19. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-024-09688-z

Networks are increasingly used to describe and analyse complex archaeological data in terms of nodes (archaeological sites or places) and edges (representing relationships or connections between each pair of nodes). Network analysis can then be appli... Read More about Filling the Gaps—Computational Approaches to Incomplete Archaeological Networks.

A multi-proxy reconstruction of anthropogenic land use in southwest Asia at 6 kya: Combining archaeological, ethnographic and environmental datasets (2024)
Journal Article
Welton, L., Hammer, E., Chelazzi, F., de Gruchy, M., Gaastra, J., & Lawrence, D. (2025). A multi-proxy reconstruction of anthropogenic land use in southwest Asia at 6 kya: Combining archaeological, ethnographic and environmental datasets. Quaternary Science Reviews, 349, Article 109142. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2024.109142

Land use and land cover (LULC) changes have important biophysical and biogeochemical effects on climate via a variety of mechanisms. Several climate modelling studies have demonstrated the impact of LULC scenarios on past climate reconstructions. Tes... Read More about A multi-proxy reconstruction of anthropogenic land use in southwest Asia at 6 kya: Combining archaeological, ethnographic and environmental datasets.

Understanding the long-term development of an irrigation network using a sinuosity-based automatic classification of waterways (2024)
Journal Article
Boon, M., Motta, D., Massa, M., Wainwright, J., Lawrence, D., & Ayala, G. (2025). Understanding the long-term development of an irrigation network using a sinuosity-based automatic classification of waterways. Holocene, 35(1), 29-43. https://doi.org/10.1177/09596836241285795

This study investigates the use of planform sinuosity as a metric to produce an automatic classification of waterways in the pre-modern and present-day irrigation networks in the Konya Plain in south-central Türkiye. Results show that such automatic... Read More about Understanding the long-term development of an irrigation network using a sinuosity-based automatic classification of waterways.

A history of olive and grape cultivation in Southwest Asia using charcoal and seed remains (2024)
Journal Article
Deckers, K., Riehl, S., Meadows, J., Tumolo, V., Hinojosa Balino, I., & Lawrence, D. (2024). A history of olive and grape cultivation in Southwest Asia using charcoal and seed remains. PLoS ONE, 19(6), Article e0303578. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0303578

Evaluating archaeobotanical data from over 3.9 million seeds and 124,300 charcoal fragments across 330 archaeological site phases in Southwest Asia, we reconstruct the history of olive and grape cultivation spanning a period of 6,000 years. Combining... Read More about A history of olive and grape cultivation in Southwest Asia using charcoal and seed remains.

Provisioning urbanism: a comparative urban-rural zooarchaeology of ancient Southwest Asia (2024)
Journal Article
Gaastra, J. S., Lawrence, D., & Tumolo, V. (2024). Provisioning urbanism: a comparative urban-rural zooarchaeology of ancient Southwest Asia. Antiquity, 98(398), https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2024.24

Historically, urban centres are seen as consumers that draw in labour and resources from their rural hinterlands. Zooarchaeological studies of key urban sites in Southwest Asia demonstrate the movement of livestock, but the region-wide application of... Read More about Provisioning urbanism: a comparative urban-rural zooarchaeology of ancient Southwest Asia.