In March 1990 a symposium on human impacts on the landscape of the eastern Mediterranean and the Near East was held at the Biologisch-Archaeologisch Instituut of the State University of Groningen, Netherlands. The symposium was organized by INQUA and the Biologisch-Archaeologisch Instituut, the latter of which has a long and distinguished history of research on this specific topic. This book contains revised and expanded versions of papers presented at this symposium, including two additional works. There are 28 chapters organized into four sections: Man-environment interactions (Ch. 1-4), GeomorphologyISedimentology (Ch. 5-15), Zoology (Ch. 16-17), and Botany (Ch. 18-28). Camera-ready copy for the book was provided by the editors, who did an excellent job, although a few of the figures are difficult to read because of poor reproduction quality. The book is not the superior quality usually produced by A. A. Balkema.
This is an excellent book and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the archaeology or Quaternary paleoenvironments and paleoecology of the Mediterranean, Near East, and adjacent areas. The value of the book lies primarily with its wealth of new data and timely reviews of important regions or topics, for example, Ch. 19 on the pollen record of the eastern Mediterranean by Bottema and Woldring. The geoarchaeologist without a vested interest in the specific theme of the book will, however, find some