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There is now a large degree of synergy exhibited by the various classes of palaeoenvironmental data investigated through the FRAGSUS Project on Malta and Gozo and the direct inter-linkages and associations of aspects of the environment with human activities during the last 8000 years. The geological setting and well dated palynological, molluscan and soil/sediment data present a background picture of vegetational and landscape change throughout the Holocene, with some very specific data on trajectories of clearance, erosion and farming activities in various valleys of the Maltese landscape. Nested within this broader framework, there is an immense amount of more specific data on the development of and changes in palaeosols, the frequencies and types of soil erosion and formation of valley fill sequences, as well as the dynamics of near-shore, valley and plateaux landscapes through prehistoric and historic times in both Malta and Gozo. Within these, there is an exceptional amount of data concerning the impacts of the first farming communities and the resilience of these island landscapes during the Neolithic period between the seventh and third millennia bc. The following summative interpretational sections attempt to draw out the main themes and trajectories of landscape change that have occurred during the Holocene in the Maltese archipelago. ; This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7-2007-2013) (Grant agreement No. 323727). ; peer-reviewed

This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7-2007-2013) (Grant agreement No. 323727).

This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7-2007-2013) (Grant agreement No. 323727).

This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7-2007-2013) (Grant agreement No. 323727).

Adequate absolute dating is critical to understanding the past, especially where data concerning environmental changes from different sites are being compared, as chronology is often the only reliable way to compare evidence from multiple contexts. The archaeological chronology of Malta is becoming increasingly well resolved and this sets up a challenge – how can we obtain comparable high-resolution chronologies of environmental change in the Maltese Islands? The Maltese landforms pose significant barriers to achieving this goal, as much of the available palaeoenvironmental evidence is limited to cores in alluvial or shallow-marine sediments, which contain materials that have been subject to much re-working through time. In this chapter, we introduce and discuss the various techniques that the FRAGSUS Project has brought to bear on this problem, and review the main approaches used. [excerpt] ; This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7-2007-2013) (Grant agreement No. 323727). ; peer-reviewed