Agricultural societies have been entangled with dryland ecosystems for millennia. Evidence of these entanglements and their legacy effects are preserved within archaeological settlements and across landscapes. In the LEGASYS Lab, we use a range of archaeological science methods and geospatial technologies to access these archives of past human-environment interactions and to understand the unique human societies that generated them. We also aim to understand long-term socio-environmental processes, ecosystem resilience capacities, and gain strategic insights into our present climate-related crises. 

We perform basic science research on modern land-use systems to inform and constrain our understanding of the paleoecological and archaeological past. By leveraging readily accessible geospatial, environmental, and botanical data from modern land-use systems—retrieved from direct observation, lab-based studies, decades of satellite remote sensing, and other long-term records—we gain a deep understanding of how these systems function and change. Our goal is to connect contemporary and historical land-use practices and to increase the precision and reliability of archaeological insights.

For millennia, people have successfully managed dryland agricultural systems, generating rich cultural and archaeological landscapes. Currently, drylands are home to nearly two billion people and account for almost one-fifth of the world's agriculture, underscoring the ongoing importance of these regions. Using a political ecology lens, our research examines how ancient and contemporary societies in drylands navigate competing subsistence, economic, environmental, and socio-cultural pressures. We focus on challenges arising at the intersection of agricultural intensification, climate-related aridification, and cultural heritage protection, including maintaining tangible cultural and botanical heritage, cultural values and lifeways, and critical plant-soil ecosystem services amidst the influence of imperial and globalized networks.