From point to area: Upscaling approaches for Late Quaternary archaeological and environmental data

Abstract The study of past socio-environmental systems integrates a variety of terrestrial archives. To understand regional or continental socio-environmental interactions proxy data from local archives need to be transferred to larger spatial scales. System properties like spatial heterogeneity, historical and spatial contingency, nonlinearity, scale dependency or emergence make generalizations from local observations to larger scales difficult. As these are common properties of natural and social systems, the development of an interdisciplinary upscaling framework for socio-environmental systems remains a challenge. For example, the integration of social and environmental data is often hi…