Anthropocene 4 (2013) 116121

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Anthropocene
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ancene

Looking forward, looking back: Humans, anthropogenic change,

and the Anthropocene
Todd J. Braje a,*, Jon M. Erlandson b
a
b

San Diego State University, Department of Anthropology, San Diego, CA 92182-6040, United States
Museum of Natural and Cultural History and Department of Anthropology, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403-1224, United States

A R T I C L E I N F O

A B S T R A C T

Article history:
Received 10 June 2013
Received in revised form 7 March 2014
Accepted 20 May 2014
Available online 29 May 2014

As acceptance of the Anthropocene grows among scientists and the public, decisions must be made on
whether and how to dene this geologic epoch. Designating a starting point for the Anthropocene may be
less important than understanding the cultural processes that contributed to human domination of
Earths natural systems. Just as climate changes and their consequences often occur over centuries,
millennia, or more, archaeological records show that humans have been active agents of environmental
change for thousands of years. Their effects, often dramatic and cumulative, have grown from local, to
regional, and now global phenomena. We discuss ve options for dening the Anthropocene, most of
which recognize a deeper history of widespread and measurable effects of human activities on the
Earths surcial biological and physical systems. A primary goal of debating and dening the
Anthropocene should be to educate the public about the effects humans have had on natural systems for
millennia, the compounding nature of such impacts, and the pressing need to reverse current trends.
2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords:
Anthropocene
Archaeological perspectives
Human impacts

Introduction
The proposal to formally designate an Anthropocene Epoch has
become a hot issue over the last several years, championed or
contested by the public, media, and scientists. The response has
been powerful enough to garner the cover story on the May 26,
2011, edition of The Economist, numerous articles in top-tier
academic journals such as Science (e.g., Balter, 2013; Cooper et al.,
2012), Nature (e.g., Crutzen, 2002, 2010; Jones, 2011), and
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (e.g., Beerling
et al., 2011; Smol et al., 2005), and the founding of this journal
dedicated to the topic. The designation of an Anthropocene could
be a milestone in the geological and social sciences, an idea that has
been building for 140 years since Italian geologist Antonio
Stoppani rst proposed an anthropozoic era in AD 1873 (see
Crutzen, 2002; Goudie, 2000: 45).
With a world population of more than 7.2 billion, it is difcult to
argue that we are not currently living in an age of humans. The
acceleration of CO2, CH4, and N2O in atmospheric records (Crutzen
and Steffen, 2003), the explosion in global human populations

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 619 594 4175; fax: +1 619 594 1150.
E-mail addresses: tbraje@mail.sdsu.edu (T.J. Braje),
jerland@uoregon.edu (J.M. Erlandson).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ancene.2014.05.002
2213-3054/ 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

(McNeill, 2000), anthropogenic land surface clearance (Ellis, 2011;

Ellis et al., 2013; Vitousek et al., 1997), the crisis of our worlds oceans
from overshing, ocean acidication, and pollution (Jackson et al.,
2001; Pauly et al., 1998), the appearance of radio-nucleotides from
atomic detonations (Crutzen and Steffen, 2003), and much more all
provide ample evidence that human alterations of Earths natural
systems have become pervasive and ubiquitous.
The major point of contention, at least among the geoscientists, has been the starting date for the Anthropocene (for an
alternate view see Crist, 2013). Most have proposed to either
divide the Holocene already the shortest geologic epoch
beginning just 11,700 calendar years ago into a smaller
temporal unit or do away with it altogether (Doughtry et al.,
2010; see Foley et al., 2014 for a brief summary). For some, the
compression of the Holocene follows a sensible trend because
more recent data on global climatic patterns and stratigraphic
records are of higher resolution, but others consider such short
geologic epochs to be out of synch with geological timelines
(Jones, 2011). In our view, the Holocene has always been
something of an anomaly, one of several interglacial cycles
within the Pleistocene, none of the earlier examples of which
warranted similar designations (Smith and Zeder, 2014), if not for
the actions of humans (Erlandson, 2014).
After the submission of a proposal to formally designate the
Anthropocene by the Stratigraphy Commission of the Geological

T.J. Braje, J.M. Erlandson / Anthropocene 4 (2013) 116121

Society of London (Zalasiewicz et al., 2008), an Anthropocene

Working Group was created to evaluate its merits. Posted on the
Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphys 2009 Working Group
on the Anthropocene webpage, the outline of activities detailed
that the group was to be:
ideally. . .composed of Earth scientists with worldwide representation and familiar with deep time stratigraphy history
(Cenozoic and older), with Quaternary (including Holocene)
stratigraphy, and with relevant aspects of contemporary
environmental change (including its projection by modeling
into the future). It should critically compare the current degree
and rate of environmental change, caused by anthropogenic
processes, with the environmental perturbations of the geological past. Factors to be considered here include the suggested preindustrial modication of climate by early human agrarian
activity (Outline of Working Group Activities, 2009).
This 22-person working group is dominated by geoscientists
and paleoclimatologists, but included an environmental historian
and a journalist. Despite the specic call to deal with the
environmental impacts of pre-industrial societies, archaeologists
trained to investigate the complex dynamics of humanenvironmental interactions and evaluate when humans rst signicantly
shaped local, regional, and global climatic regimes, were not
included. As a result of our symposium at the April 2013 Society for
American Archaeology annual meetings in Honolulu, however,
archaeologist Bruce Smith was added to the working group. Since
designations of geologic timescales and a potential Anthropocene
boundary, determined by physical stratigraphic markers (Global
Stratigraphic Section and Point, often called a golden spike) or a
numerical age (Global Standard Stratigraphic Age), are the domain
of geoscientists, perhaps this is not surprising. What makes this
designation different from all previous geologic time markers is
that it is directly tied to human inuences. Logically, therefore, it
should involve collaboration with archaeologists, anthropologists,
and other social scientists.

117

Archaeological perspectives on the Anthropocene

The papers in this special issue are the result of discussions,
debates, and dialogue from a 2013 Society for American
Archaeology symposium centred around archaeological perspectives on the Anthropocene. We brought together a diverse group of
archaeologists to explore how and when humans began to have
signicant and measurable impacts on Earths ecosystems (Fig. 1).
In this special issue, the symposium participants explored the
processes that contributed to a human domination of the Earth
that has unfolded over millennia.
This special issue demonstrates that archaeologists have much
to offer in dening the Anthropocene and understanding the
complex cultural and ecological processes that have contributed to
it. Just as natural climatic changes and their consequences often
occur over centuries or millennia, humans have actively shaped
terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems for millennia. Their effects,
often dramatic, are cumulative and compounding. While archaeologists work at local or regional scales, the activities of a global
community of humans, taken together, can result in human action
that is planetary in scope. Human induced extinctions, the creation
of shell middens, agricultural elds, and other anthropic soils,
constructions of mines, harbours, canals, and earthworks, the
diversion of rivers and lling of estuaries, the transportation of
plants, animals, and raw materials, and more all began thousands
of years ago (Fig. 2). Taken together, anthropogenic changes at a
global scale began well before the Industrial Revolution.
Since the Anthropocene is explicitly dened by the effects of
human activity on natural ecosystems, it is worth considering that
hominins have been part of those natural landscapes for several
million years. This includes our own omnivorous species, Homo
sapiens sapiens, a keystone predator, broad-based herbivore, and
active shaper of ecosystems and landscapes for millennia. Whether
people are dened as part of the natural world or not, the
appearance of anatomically modern humans (AMH) and their
rapid spread around the world from Africa to Eurasia, Australia,

Fig. 1. Timeline illustrating a variety of signicant cultural events, which have had clear and lasting impacts on Earths ecosystems.

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T.J. Braje, J.M. Erlandson / Anthropocene 4 (2013) 116121

Fig. 2. Photographs depicting the impacts of ancient humans on Earths ecosystems: (A) a woolly mammoth, which was driven to extinction, likely in part by humans, during
the Late Pleistocene; (B) ruins of the ancient city of Tikal, where Mayan farmers slashed and burned vast sections of native forest to support growing populations and a statelevel socio-political system; (C) terraced agricultural elds in Sa Pa, Vietnam; (D) the Roman Colosseum remains a landmark of the rst city to reach one million residents
more than 2000 years ago.

the Americas, and hundreds of remote oceanic islands can be

identied in the form of human skeletal remains found in
archaeological sites. The physical presence of AMH around the
world could, in fact, be seen as a denitive and broad-based faunal
marker for the inception of the Anthropocene. It would blur any
denition of the inception of the Anthropocene, however, because
AMH appeared in Africa at least 200,000 years ago, but did not
reach many remote islands until roughly 1000 years ago or less.
Specic human constructed stratigraphic markers of the
Anthropocene also have been proposed as a golden spike.
Through the lens of a hypothetical geologist living a 100 million
years from now, Zalasiewicz (2008) proposed that the buried urban
landscapes and artefacts coinciding with the Industrial Revolution
would designate the Anthropocene. Edgeworth (2013) argued that
signicant human impacts on Earths surface consist of a wider
range of anthropogenic features, including Neolithic tells, plaggen
soils, sediment built up behind early dams, Roman occupation
debris, mediaeval castle earthworks. . .together with later industrial age deposits. Erlandson (2014) points to shell midden soils as
another globally distinctive marker of the Anthropocene, for which
an 800010,000 year old genesis may be most appropriate.
Roosevelt (2014) and others have noted the anthropic terra preta
(dark earth) soils of the Amazon as another pedogenic marker of
widespread human modication of Earths natural ecosystems.
Archaeological evidence for such ancient landscape modications
is also mounting, increasing the pressure on those who claim that
prehistoric peoples had only limited effects on the Earths surface.
Beginning 5001000 years ago, the effects of European
exploration, economic expansion, and globalization also resulted
in the rapid spread of a distinctive group of domesticated animals
(dogs, horses, cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, chickens, etc.) and plants
(wheat, corn, potatoes, rice, etc.), creating a global faunal and oral
horizon that will be unmistakable to future scientists as markers of
the Anthropocene (Lightfoot et al., 2014). This was not a one-way
Eurocentric phenomena, moreover, as the spread of domesticates
moved from the Old World to the New World and vice versa. These
cultural contacts also spread deadly infectious diseases that had

disastrous consequences for human populations and cultures. Such

disease epidemics caused millions of deaths and dramatic cultural
changes worldwide, all in a period of four to ve centuries. Today,
the consequences of this Columbian exchange are clearly evident
in archaeological records worldwide and will continue to be visible
to future archaeologists and geoscientists. If it is decided that the
Holocene should continue to be recognized, such global changes
could also be used as a boundary marker between the end of the
Holocene and the beginning of the Anthropocene.
What the papers in this special issue illustrate is that specic
thresholds, tipping points, or developmental indicators used to
dene the start of the Anthropocene are often directly inuenced
by the research agenda of the author. This is not a case of selfreexivity, but a consequence of the inherent challenges of
dening human domination. Foley et al. (2014) proposed to
dene the beginning of the Anthropocene at AD 1780, but to coin a
new term and unofcial geological period, the Palaeoanthropocene, marking a more nebulous time interval before the Industrial
Revolution when humans transformed local and regional environments with effects that varied across time and space. As a
transitional time period, the Palaeoanthropocene would not
compete as a geologic epoch, but cover the ancient impacts of
humans prior to when the burning of fossil fuels produced a huge
crescendo in anthropogenic effects (Foley et al., 2014). This idea
may have merit as a compromise, if the only thing at stake is the
composition of our geologic timescales.
What is at stake?
One of the most compelling parts of the Anthropocene debate is
the attention it has generated among the media and public. The
International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) working group
will evaluate the proposal to designate the Anthropocene in the
same way used to dene all preceding geological epochs from the
Cambrian onwards on the basis of golden spikes or a date of
inception then make a recommendation that will be ratied or
rejected by the ICS (Gradstein et al., 2004). For most scientists who

T.J. Braje, J.M. Erlandson / Anthropocene 4 (2013) 116121

consult deep historical data, their research agenda, results, and

interpretations will be affected minimally or not at all. The
designation of the Anthropocene, however, has the potential to
inuence public opinions and policies related to critical issues such
as climate change, extinctions, modern humanenvironmental
interactions, population growth, and sustainability.
One of the growing theoretical and methodological trends in
archaeology over the last decade is towards a historical ecological
approach, an interdisciplinary eld that focuses on documenting
long-term relationships between natural environments and
humans (Crumley, 1994). Historical ecologists view the formation
of modern ecosystems as the result of lengthy processes of natural
environmental change and human inuence (see Balee and
Erikson, 2006; Jackson et al., 2001). Archaeological datasets (i.e.,
faunal and oral remains, artifacts, chronometric dates, geochemistry, and stratigraphic analysis) provide deep time perspectives
(spanning decades, centuries, and millennia) on the evolution of
ecosystems, the place of people within them, and the effects
(positive and negative) humans have had on such ecosystems
through time (e.g., Balee and Erikson, 2006; Braje and Rick, 2013;
Lotze and Worm, 2009; Rick and Erlandson, 2008; Rick and
Lockwood, 2013; Swetnam et al., 1999).
Historical ecological data also have an applied component that
can provide important insights on the relative abundances of
ora and fauna, changes in biogeography, alterations in
foodwebs, landscape evolution, and much more. One of the
signicant advantages of utilizing a historical ecological
approach to the study of physical and biological environments
is that it provides a historic dimension that helps answer the
question How did we get where we are today? (e.g., Lepofsky,
2009; Redman, 1999; Swetnam et al., 1999). Understanding
environmental change over multiple chronological and spatial
scales is essential to assessing the condition of current
ecosystems and understanding how and why healthy or damaged
ecosystems have evolved to their current states. Only with such
long-term data can we develop baselines and protocols for future
policy and effective actions in environmental management,
conservation, and restoration.
The designation of an Anthropocene Epoch at the dawn of the
Industrial Revolution, AD 1950 (Barnosky, 2013), or any other very
recent date may reinforce the faulty premise that pre-industrial
humans lived in harmony with nature. The study of human
impacts on the environment is vast and extends back to at least the
19th century. Over the last several decades, however, it has
become increasingly apparent that ancient human populations
signicantly inuenced local and regional environments, including
impacts to a wide array of plant and animal communities (e.g.,
Grayson, 2001; Redman, 1999; Rick and Erlandson, 2008).
Whether prehistoric peoples acted as the original conservationists
(see Alcorn, 1993) or with no regard for preservation and
sustainability (see Kay and Simmons, 2002; Smith and Wishnie,
2000) or some combination of the two (Erlandson and Rick, 2010)
is still hotly contested. One thing the papers in this issue clearly
illustrate, however, is that as Europeans expanded around the
globe, the landscapes, plant and animal species, and ecosystems
they encountered had already been shaped and altered by humans
for millennia.
There is a growing recognition of these facts among a broad
array of scientists, as attested to by the serious consideration
being given to dening an Anthropocene epoch or an earlier and
transitional Palaeoanthropocene. If the Anthropocene concept is
accepted, as we believe it should be, its real power may lie in its
potential to shape public opinion and policy. The Anthropocene
can help provide powerful scientic legitimacy among the public
for anthropogenic climate change and environmental degradation and act as a call for increased conservation efforts and global

119

awareness. Austin and Holbrook (2012: 61) argued much the

same in a recent issue of The Geological Society of America Today:
The most important assertion unfolding among these groups is
that Anthropocene creates public awareness and formalizes the
concept of human-induced environmental change. Although
we acknowledge a distinct allure for the term Anthropocene
and recognize merit in the concept, pop culture does not have
an interest in the stratigraphic implications of this debate. If
there is an underlying desire to make social comment about the
implications of human-induced environmental change, Anthropocene clearly is effective. However, being provocative may
have greater implications in pop culture than to serious
scientic research.
The use of the Anthropocene as a public communication tool
should not, we believe, be seen as a negative. In many ways, this is
its most important attribute. The scientic community can nd
countless examples of our inability to effectively communicate,
explain, and package important scientic ideas to the public and
the packaging of contrarian views by naysayers and pseudoscientists often seems to have greater impact. For geologists and
biologists, the Intelligent Design debates might be the best
example (see Behe, 2001; Gilbert, 2003); for archaeologists and
anthropologists, the ancient astronauts phenomenon (see von
Daniken, 1999; Wilson, 1972) may be most prominent. The
esoteric debate over stratigraphic nomenclature (Austin and
Holbrook, 2012: 61), then, may be less important than the message
it conveys to our global community and the future of human
environmental interactions.
It is critical for scientists to consider how their designation of an
Anthropocene starting point will be interpreted by the public, and
to some degree, by other scientists. A post-Industrial Revolution
starting date may suggest, to the uninitiated at least, that
everything that came before was natural. Restoration ecology
and conservation biology, then, may not need to consider the
deeper history of human impacts that predate the start of the
Anthropocene. This would be a giant step backward at a critical
time, one that ignores decades of work and progress by ecologists,
geologists, paleobiologists, environmental historians, archaeologists, and many other scientists who have demonstrated the vast
array of pre-industrial human impacts on local, regional, and global
environments. Now that the shifting baselines concept has been
widely accepted (Pauly, 1995; Jackson et al., 2011) and is being
translated into public policy, we should not risk going backwards.
Historical data are crucial to future management, conservation,
and restoration efforts.
Options for an Anthropocene
Ultimately, as the papers in this volume demonstrate, the
denition of an Anthropocene epoch marked by the human
domination of Earths ecosystems should explicitly recognize the
deep historical processes that contributed to such domination.
There is little question that a variety of geological and archaeological evidence will clearly illustrate that domination to future
scientists. If the value of historical records now seems obvious,
dening a starting date for the Anthropocene is a trickier business,
depending on the specic criteria (e.g., atmospheric composition,
faunal and oral changes, geochemical records, or specic marker
fossils such as AMH and domesticated dogs, cattle, horses, sheep,
pigs) utilized. Although we favour a starting date of 10,000 cal BP
and the merging of the Anthropocene and Holocene, any inception
date is bound to be at least somewhat arbitrary. Consequently, a
beginning date of AD 1950 or AD 2000 could be acceptable if the
long process that led to human domination of the Earth is explicitly
recognized.

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T.J. Braje, J.M. Erlandson / Anthropocene 4 (2013) 116121

As a lightning rod for galvanizing future environmental

management and a call-to-arms for public involvement in helping
solve our worlds environmental crises, the Anthropocene should
help focus attention on better understanding the deep, complex,
and ongoing history of human impacts on local, regional, and
global scales. Here we offer several options for consideration by the
ICS and the growing and global community of scientists interested
in the denition of an Anthropocene epoch.
1. Follow the suggestion of Smith and Zeder (2014) by merging the
Holocene and Anthropocene into one geologic epoch. The
Holocene is dened relatively arbitrarily, tenuously in our
opinion, as it was not clearly differentiated from previous
interglacial periods within the Pleistocene prior to anthropogenic global warming. There is also only limited evidence of
lasting human impacts on local, regional, or global scales prior to
domestication, agriculture, and the more pervasive niche
construction that began roughly 10,000 years ago. If adopted,
scientists and the public will have to confront the long, complex
processes of humanenvironmental interactions that have
shaped the modern world.
2. Similar to option 1, completely replace the Holocene with the
Anthropocene. The Holocene is a loaded term that may never
have been ofcially recognized if not for the effects of pervasive
human actions and historical events (e.g., the widespread shift
from hunting and gathering to agricultural economies, the rise
of state level societies, pervasive changes in landscapes due to
human manipulation) that coincided with an interglacial period.
The Anthropocene is a more explicit term for a similar concept.
3. Dene the Anthropocene as beginning in AD 1500, approximating
the beginning of the Columbian Exchange (Crosby, 1972, 1986;
Thomas, 1989, 1990), which created vast faunal, oral, ecological,
and cultural changes globally (Lightfoot et al., 2014). This option
has the advantage of having a clear and worldwide paleontological, stratigraphic, and chronological delineation with the rapid
spread of domesticated plants and animals and major ecological
changes around the world, including in many remote islands that
are hotspots of biodiversity. It might also be seen by many as a
reasonable compromise between claims for a very recent or much
more ancient inception for the Anthropocene.
4. Dene the Anthropocene as beginning in AD 2000, when the
effects of humans were rst widely recognized by the
geosciences community (Crutzen, 2002; Crutzen and Steffen,
2003; Vitousek et al., 1997). Such an approach does not dene
when past human societies began to inuence Earth systems,
but focuses on our attempts to better understand and mitigate
the effects of humans on global systems. This would establish
the Anthropocene as a critical area of inquiry, relevant for
academics and the public.
5. Reject the Anthropocene as a formal geological epoch, but retain
it as an informal and purely heuristic device. Since the term will
continue to carry an increasing amount of political baggage in
the court of public opinion, the ICS and GSA could still recognize
the deep historical process of humanenvironmental interactions that have resulted in human domination of the Earth.
When the Anthropocene began would depend on a variety of
shifting baselines, including complex spatial, scalar, and
criteria-specic factors. The Anthropocene began for Hawaiian
terrestrial ora and fauna, for example, a thousand years ago,
when Polynesians rst landed and began dramatically transforming terrestrial ecosystems (see Rick et al., 2014). It
accelerated and intensied in Hawaii, however, after European
contact and the American takeover of the islands.
Of these ve options, we prefer the rst or the second. These
recognize the deep history of widespread human impacts and send

a powerful message to the scientic community and public about

the role humans have played in creating our modern environmental crises. They also are broad-based with clear stratigraphic and
chronological resolution in global environmental records, and
established connections to human-induced changes that seem
appropriate for an Anthropocene epoch.
Ultimately, however the Anthropocene is dened, it is
important to recognize the deep historical processes that underlie
it. Likewise, an important practical goal should be to use the
Anthropocene to educate the public and policy makers about the
effects humans have had on natural systems for millennia, the
compounding nature of these impacts, and the pressing need to
reverse the dangerous trends and trajectories we have created.
Acknowledgements
We thank all the contributors to this volume, the many
anonymous reviewers who helped strengthen the papers in it, and
the editorial staff of Anthropocene Rashika Venkataraman,
Timothy Horscroft, and especially editor Anne Chin for their
help in shepherding the papers and volume through the
submission, review, revision, and production process. We dedicate
the volume to Paul Crutzen, who has done more than anyone to
bring the Anthropocene and human domination of Earths systems
to the attention of both scholars and the general public.
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