Book Cover -- Half-Title -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Figures -- Tables -- Contributors -- Foreword -- Preface -- Part I INTRODUCTION -- 1 Living at the margin: themes in the archaeology of drylands -- 2 The dynamic climatology of drylands -- Part II SOUTHWEST AND CENTRAL ASIA -- 3 The decline of desert agriculture: a view from the classical period Negev -- 4 Farmers, herders and miners in the Wadi Faynan, southern Jordan: a 10,000-year landscape archaeology -- 5 Differing strategies for water supply and farming in the Syrian Black Desert -- 6 Irrigation agriculture in Central Asia: a long-term perspective from Turkmenistan -- Part III SAHARA AND SAHEL -- 7 Conquests and land degradation in the eastern Maghreb during classical antiquity and the Middle Ages -- 8 Success, longevity and failure of arid-land agriculture: Romano-Libyan floodwater farming in the Tripolitanian pre-desert -- 9 Twelve thousand years of human adaptation in Fezzan (Libyan Sahara) -- 10 Farming and famine: subsistence strategies in Highland Ethiopia -- Part IV EASTERN AND SOUTHERN AFRICA -- 11 Engaruka: farming by irrigation in Maasailand c.AD 1400-1700 -- 12 The agricultural landscape of the Nyanga area of Zimbabwe -- 13 Fifteenth-century agropastoral responses to a disequilibrial ecosystem in southeastern Botswana -- 14 Islands of intensive agriculture in African drylands: towards an explanatory framework -- Part V NORTH AND CENTRAL AMERICA -- 15 Prehistoric agriculture and anthropogenic ecology of the North American Southwest -- 16 The role of maguey in the Mesoamerican tierra fría: ethnographic, historic and archaeological perspectives -- Part VI EUROPE -- 17 Traditional irrigation systems in dryland Switzerland -- 18 Desertification, land degradation and land abandonment in the Rhône valley, France -- Index.