Uganda | Ecology of the past

**MAPPING ANCIENT AFRICA QUATERNARY INTERNATIONAL SPECIAL ISSUE ARTICLE** #2

Ivory, S.J., MacDougal, E., Mason, A., Pereboom, E., Garelick, S., Ficken, K., Wooller, M.J., Nakileza, B. & Russell, J. (2024) Highland forest dynamics across equatorial East Africa during the end of the African humid period. Quaternary International. DOI: 10.1016/j.quaint.2024.10.007

Detecting the presence, and impact, of peoples past impact in ecosystems and landscapes in the tropics is a challenging because the traces that they leave behind are few and disentangling them from ‘natural’ (non-human related) variability is a challenge. As an Associate Editor for Vegetation History & Archaeobotany (VHAA) I enjoy handling manuscripts that think about these issues and explore the role of humans in tropical landscapes. Two recent papers published in VHAA touched on this subject (one of which I “communicated” as an editor).

Bodin et al. (2020) studied charcoal recovered from soil at sites with a gradient of archaeological evidence for past human activity in French Guiana.
Goethals & Verschuren (2019) explored the relationship between the amount of dung fungi found in lake sediments and the herbivore populations living around the lakes.

Ecology of the past

Highland forest dynamics across equatorial East Africa during the end ofthe African humid period

**MAPPING ANCIENT AFRICA QUATERNARY INTERNATIONAL SPECIAL ISSUE ARTICLE** #2

Detecting past peoples in the tropics

MAPPING ANCIENT AFRICA QUATERNARY INTERNATIONAL SPECIAL ISSUE ARTICLE #2

**MAPPING ANCIENT AFRICA QUATERNARY INTERNATIONAL SPECIAL ISSUE ARTICLE** #2