Geoarchaeology is the archaeological subfield that focuses on archaeological information retrieval and problem solving utilizing the methods of geological investigation. Archaeological recovery and analysis are already geoarchaeological in the most fundamental sense because buried remains are contained within and removed from an essentially geological context. Yet geoarchaeological research goes beyond this simple relationship and attempts to build collaborative links between specialists in archaeology and the earth sciences to produce new knowledge about past human behavior using the technical information and methods of the geosciences.

The principal goals of geoarchaeology lie in understanding the relationships between humans and their environment. These goals include (1) how cultures adjust to their ecosystem through time, (2) what earth science factors were related to the evolutionary emergence of humankind, and (3) which methodological tools involving analysis of sediments and landforms, documentation and explanation of change in buried materials, and measurement of time will allow access to new aspects of the past.

This encyclopedia defines terms, introduces problems, describes techniques, and discusses theory and strategy, all in a format designed to make specialized details accessible to the public as well as practitioners. It covers subjects in environmental archaeology, dating, materials analysis, and paleoecology, all of which represent different sources of specialist knowledge that must be shared in order to reconstruct, analyze, and explain the record of the human past. It will not specifically cover sites, civilizations, and ancient cultures, etc., that are better described in other encyclopedias of world archaeology.

The Editor
Allan S. Gilbert is Professor of Anthropology at Fordham University in the Bronx, New York. He holds a B.A. from Rutgers University, and his M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. were earned at Columbia University. His areas of research interest include the Near East (late prehistory and early historic periods) as well as the Middle Atlantic region of the U.S. (historical archaeology). His specializations are in archaeozoology of the Near East and geoarchaeology, especially mineralogy and compositional analysis of pottery and building materials. Publications have covered a range of subjects, including ancient pastoralism, faunal quantification, skeletal microanatomy, brick geochemistry, and two co-edited volumes on the marine geology and geoarchaeology of the Black Sea basin.

About the Editor:

Allan S. Gilbert is Professor of Anthropology at Fordham University in the Bronx, New York. He holds a B.A. from Rutgers University, and his M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. were earned at Columbia University. His areas of research interest include the Near East (late prehistory and early historic periods) as well as the Middle Atlantic region of the U.S. (historical archaeology). His specializations are in archaeozoology of the Near East and geoarchaeology, especially mineralogy and compositional analysis of pottery and building materials. Publications have covered a range of subjects, including ancient pastoralism, faunal quantification, skeletal microanatomy, brick geochemistry, and two co-edited volumes on the marine geology and geoarchaeology of the Black Sea basin.

About the Associate Editors:

Paul Goldberg is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Archaeology, Boston University. He obtained his B.A. in geology from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in geology from The University of Michigan. He is currently Professorial Research Professor in the Centre for Archaeological Science at the University of Wollongong, and member of the Center for Archaeological Science at the University of Tübingen. His research interests focus on the application of micromorphology to the study of landscapes, soils, and site formation processes at archaeological sites. Most of his research is in the Old World, particularly cave sediments from China, France, Germany, Spain, Israel, and most recently Flores.

Vance T. Holliday is a Professor of Anthropology and Geosciences at the University of Arizona. He has a B.A. in Anthropology (with Honors) from the University of Texas at Austin, an MA in Museum Science (with Soil Science minor) from Texas Tech University, and a PhD in Geological Sciences from the University of Colorado. His research and teaching deals with geoarchaeology, the peopling of the New World, Quaternary geology, and soil geomorphology. Most of his field work has focused on the Great Plains and Southwest of North America, but also includes southwestern Russia. He is Director of the Argonaut Archaeological Research Fund, which is devoted to research on the Paleoindian archaeology and geoarchaeology of the Southwest.

Rolfe D. Mandel is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the University of Kansas, and Senior Scientist and Executive Director of the Odyssey Geoarchaeology Research Program at the Kansas Geological Survey in Lawrence, Kansas. He holds a B.A. from the University of Texas at Austin, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Kansas. From 1999-2004, he served as Editor-in-Chief of Geoarchaeology: An International Journal. His research spans a wide range of topics including geoarchaeology, paleopedology, late-Quaternary landscape evolution, and paleoenvironmental reconstruction. He has spent most of career working with archaeologists in the midcontinent of North America and the eastern Mediterranean, and during the past 15 years he has focused on the use of geoscientific methods to search for the earliest evidence of humans in the Central Great Plains and Midwest.

Robert S. Sternberg is Professor of Geosciences at Franklin & Marshall College, a small liberal arts college in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He holds a B.S. from Cornell University in engineering physics, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Arizona in geophysics. His research applies magnetic methods to archaeology: archaeomagnetic secular variation and dating; magnetic prospection, and magnetic properties of obsidian. He has been associated for many years with the Society for Archaeological Sciences, currently as the General Secretary.