Environmental Archaeology: Reconstructing Historical Landscapes in Long-Inhabited Estuarine Areas
A special issue of Heritage (ISSN 2571-9408). This special issue belongs to the section "Archaeological Heritage".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 October 2025 | Viewed by 136
Special Issue Editors
Interests: geoarchaeology; coastal geology; environmental evolution; sedimentology
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
We are pleased to invite you to submit research contributions to this Special Issue entitled “Environmental Archaeology: Reconstructing Historical Landscapes in Long-Inhabited Estuarine Areas”.
Estuaries are boundary spaces where land meets the sea providing shelter, space, and abundant natural resources for human populations. Estuaries also offer access to and ensure connectivity between rivers and seas, enabling a wide range of social and economic activities. Due to these circumstances and the general attraction of the sea to humans, estuarine areas have been inhabited since prehistoric times, often becoming centres of population concentration characterised by fast urban growth. Over time, the human presence in estuarine-adjacent areas has led to natural and artificial modifications of the landscape and coastal margins, resulting in changes in environmental conditions, vegetation cover, and promoting the advance, regression, or disappearance of marginal areas; namely, beaches, dunes, marshes, or low subtidal environments.
In turn, estuarine basins are sediment sinks for materials transported downstream by the hydrographic network, materials moving landward from the sea due to the action of tides and littoral drift, and materials generated by anthropogenic activities, such as urban runoff and agricultural and industrial waste. For these reasons, the sedimentary infilling of estuaries around the world provides important records of past natural and anthropogenic changes.
The aim of this Special Issue is to gather together papers (original research articles and review papers) that provide insights into the morphological, sedimentological, and environmental changes in estuarine areas through time, particularly those located near long-established cities and subjected to anthropogenic pressures over long periods of time.
This Special Issue welcomes manuscripts related to, but not limited to:
- The environmental evolution of estuarine areas during the Holocene, shaped by both natural processes and anthropogenic influences;
- Morphological, sedimentological, and environmental changes along estuarine margins during historical periods;
- Changes in emersed and subaquatic landscapes driven by human occupation and land use.
We look forward to receiving your original research articles and reviews.
Dr. Ana Maria Costa
Prof. Dr. Maria da Conceição Freitas
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Heritage is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- environmental evolution
- geoarchaeology
- environmental proxies
- sedimentology
- sedimentary records
- estuarine cities
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