Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Anthropological Archaeology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jaa Water, dust, and agro-pastoralism: Modeling socio-ecological co-evolution of landscapes, farming, and human society in southeast Kazakhstan during the mid to late Holocene Isaac I.T. Ullah a, ⁎ , Claudia Chang b , Perry Tourtellotte b a San Diego State University, United States b Sweet Briar College, United States ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Anthropocene Social-ecological systems Niche construction theory Human-landscape co-evolution Agro-pastoral subsistence Central Eurasia Sedimentology Loess ABSTRACT How can archaeologists contribute to tracing the evolutionary dynamics of the coupled human-natural systems that characterize the Anthropocene? We present a Socio-Ecological Systems (SES) framework to integrate models of human and natural landscape formation processes in the mid to late Holocene on the Talgar alluvial fan on the north slope of the Tian Shan Mountains in the area known as “Semirech’ye” (“Seven Rivers”). We compare our model to the physical evidence from sediment profiles and the archaeological record of subsistence and set- tlement over the Holocene. The resulting coupled model situates “niche construction theory” and the idea of “transported landscapes” within the SES perspective to focus on how couplings and feedbacks between humans and biophysical processes create or limit opportunities for different modes of subsistence over time, especially during periods of expansion and colonization of new territories. In the Talgar region, we hypothesize that initial, low-level human manipulations of surface water flow across an alluvial fan coupled with aeolian and fluvial sediment dynamics in a series of positive feedbacks to increase the possibilities for agricultural production over time. The human niche in Talgar therefore became increasingly sedentary and agricultural in emphasis com- pared to niches constructed in other parts of Central Eurasia. 1. Introduction This paper presents a single case study of Anthropocene landscape dynamics from southeastern Kazakhstan showcasing the co-evolution of Bronze and Iron Age agro-pastoral landscapes across a vertical gradient of alluvial fan formations. The concept of the “Anthropocene” derives from recent consensus among earth scientists that Earth-System dy- namics have been become inordinately affected by human activities over time (Crutzen, 2006; Crutzen and Steffen, 2003; Davis, 2011; Gale and Hoare, 2012; Lewis and Maslin, 2015; Steffen et al., 2011, 2007; Zalasiewicz et al., 2011, 2010, 2008). Although a more recent onset of the Anthropocene is espoused by some (e.g., Crutzen and Steffen, 2003) archaeologists have argued for earlier beginnings (Foley et al., 2013; Smith and Zeder, 2013), and we take this latter position as well. Ar- chaeologists have entered late into debates about the onset and defining characteristics of the Anthropocene, yet ironically our subject matter and our long-term historical interests in human-environmental inter- action put us in a unique position to contribute to this debate (Barton et al., 2016; Braje and Erlandson, 2013; Erlandson and Braje, 2013; Smith and Zeder, 2013). One reason for this lack of cross-pollination between archaeologists and earth scientists has been the rigid dis- ciplinary boundaries in both literatures. The result is that we are often “talking past each other in a crowded room.” To move forward mean- ingfully will require conscientious integration of theory, concepts, models, and methods between the two communities. 1.1. The socio-ecological systems perspective We think that using the Socio-Ecological Systems (SES) framework (Becker, 2012; Glaser et al., 2012; Walker et al., 2004) is the best so- lution to bridging the gap between archaeology and earth sciences. The SES framework conceptualizes environments as complex adaptive sys- tems composed of interacting bio-physical and social actors and pro- cesses. Importantly, an SES has the capacity to evolve and change as a consequence of both external forcings and internal feedback processes between or among any combination of its constituent social or natural components. As an example of how to apply this idea to connect ar- chaeology and earth science, we here integrate a set of social and https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2019.101067 Received 7 December 2018; Received in revised form 12 April 2019 ⁎ Corresponding author at: Department of Anthropology, San Diego State University, 5500 Campanile Dr., San Diego, CA 92182-6040, United States. E-mail address: iullah@sdsu.edu (I.I.T. Ullah). Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 55 (2019) 101067 0278-4165/ © 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. T