ORIGINAL ARTICLE Climate, human palaeoecology and the use of fuel in Wadi Sana, Southern Yemen Masoumeh Kimiaie • Joy McCorriston Received: 30 July 2012 / Accepted: 5 February 2013 Ó Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013 Abstract This study integrates analysis of wood charcoal assemblages with climate proxies, palaeoenvironmental and archaeological data sets in hyper-arid Wadi Sana, Yemen, to address the availability and use of wood fuels by South Arabian hunter-herder groups from the Early Holocene (8000–7700 cal. B.P.) to Middle Holocene (6000–4800 cal. B.P.) periods. The Early Holocene envi- ronment, regulated by a stronger Southwest Asian mon- soon, was moister than the present, providing a marshy winter grazing area for cattle herders, whose construction of hearths and food preparation strategies changed over time. This study provides an insight into long term stability of land cover and use as well as the dynamics of human contributions to landscape change. We suggest that com- plex environmental and cultural processes affect species availability, fuel choice and land use management. Despite environmental and economic changes in Wadi Sana, our dataset does not show changes in fuel choice from the Early to Middle Holocene. Keywords Holocene Á Palaeoecology Á Wadi Sana Á Charcoal analysis Á Fuel choice Á Human impact Introduction During the Holocene period, the local environments of South Arabia were regulated by a stronger Southwest Asian monsoon than today and were generally moister than the present (Davies 2006; Fleitmann et al. 2007; Parker and Goudie 2008). While the climate history and regional moisture balances of the Holocene are broadly understood across Arabia (Le ´zine et al. 2010), local ecosystem histo- ries and especially human-environment interactions are poorly documented, and the dynamic of human contribu- tions to landscape change is poorly understood. This study explores a record of archaeological wood charcoals once used as fuel to assess whether economic and landscape management changes in the Early-Middle Holocene cor- respond to changes in fuel choices and ultimately in woody vegetation cover. Fuel use is a major source of charred macro-botanical remains. Where populations lived in permanent settle- ments, such remains may accumulate in site middens as the result of numerous hearth and cooking episodes (Miller 1984; McCorriston 1998), but in the Wadi Sana, no set- tlement occurred prior to about the 3rd century A.D. (McCorriston et al. 2005; McCorriston 2006). Archaeo- logical charcoal came from numerous, widely distributed camp hearths, and each archaeological charcoal assem- blage is the product of the last use episode of a hearth. These hearths may be safely associated with mobile peo- ples and show a distinct shift in construction techniques over time, possibly corresponding to changing cooking practices. Furthermore, these assemblages may be dated, either with radiometric dates on charcoal ( 14 C) or in stratigraphic context with other absolutely and relatively dated features. The composition of fuels in hearths pro- vides a sequence of cooking events that contribute overall Communicated by G. Willcox. M. Kimiaie (&) Á J. McCorriston Department of Anthropology, The Ohio State University, 4034 Smith Laboratory, 174 W. 18th Ave., Columbus, OH 43210, USA e-mail: kimiaie.1@osu.edu 123 Veget Hist Archaeobot DOI 10.1007/s00334-013-0394-2