Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 March 2014
This special issue focuses on the interactions between Quaternary Geology and Archaeology and results from the INQUA-NL Symposium: ‘Late Quaternary Climate Change: a Human Perspective’ held on April 14th 2009, KNAW Trippenhuis, Amsterdam. The symposium was attended by over 125 scientists and students with interest in the fields of Quaternary Geology and Archaeology. The symposium was organized for the INQUA Netherlands commission (INQUA-NL) by Wim Hoek, Faculty of Geosciences, Utrecht University (UU), Henry Hooghiemstra, Faculty of Science, University of Amsterdam (UvA), and Jos Deeben, National Service for Cultural Heritage (RCE). The INQUA Netherlands commission (INQUA-NL) is the Netherlands' national representation in INQUA, the International Union for Quaternary Research (see further www.geo.uu.nl/inqua-nl).
The Netherlands is a country made by humans, but before the large-scale impact of humans that formed the typical Dutch landscape, people inhabited our area and needed to be able to deal with natural disasters like climate change, river floods or sea-level change. In the field of archaeology, there is increasingly more space to include the environmental changes that partly determined the behaviour of prehistoric communities. The interactions between quaternary geology and archaeology are not only restricted to provide stratigraphical information during archaeological prospection or on exposures during excavations. Quaternary geology is increasingly applied to gain insight in the landscape development and environmental setting where people have lived in the past. Above this, predictive models can be improved by the interaction of archaeological and geological/palaeogeographical research (see also Deeben et al., 2010).