Integrating human dimensions of Arctic palaeoenvironmental science: SEAD – the strategic environmental archaeology database

Environmental change has a human dimension, and has had so for at least the last 10 000 years. The prehistoric impact of people on the Arctic landscape has occasionally left visible traces, such as house and field structures. More often than not, however, the only evidence available is at the microscopic or geochemical level, such as fossil insect and seed assemblages or changes in the physical and chemical properties of soils and sediments. These records are the subject of SEAD, a multidisciplinary database and software project currently underway at Umeå University, Sweden, which aims to create an online database and set of tools for investigating these traces, as part of an international research infrastructure for palaeoecology and environmental archaeology.