Archeology and the Anthropocene

A proposal to officially name a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, based on the pervasive human domination of earth's ecosystems, is being seriously considered, with a proposed beginning date of AD 1800. An arbitrary date for the defining the Anthropocene may be inevitable, but human domination of our planet is the result of a long process of cultural and ecological changes that spans millennia. The archeological study of human impacts to earth's ecosystems provides multiple lines of evidence to understand this process. Considering broad “hard rock” and stratigraphically recognizable evidence for major floral and faunal changes worldwide, we argue that the Anthropocene began roughly 10,000 years ago, after anatomically modern humans spread beyond Africa and Eurasia to Australia and the Americas, then domesticated a variety of plant and animal species. These developments set in motion a cumulative process of human population growth, landscape modification, and environmental changes visible in Holocene soil, pollen, faunal, and other records around the world.