Lolland’s changing landscapes: insights from long-term interactions between people and the environment

Many parts of Europe are today facing a wide range of societal and environmental challenges that demand a high degree of resilience and adaptability. Archaeology has an important role to play by providing novel perspectives on how people have been living with, and adapting to, change in dynamic environments over considerable time. This paper adopts a trans-chronological perspective on human-environment interaction in the Syltholm Fjord on the Danish island of Lolland. The area provides extraordinary archives of long-term data on the environment and human activity in a dynamic and changing landscape. The fjord, which has been inhabited for several millennia, has been prone to regular flooding. We focus on three topics: (1) Habitation and subsistence, (2) Ritual behaviour and burial, and (3) Responses to dynamic environmental challenges and opportunities. From these topics, we identify a set of key-insights related to how to be resilient through disruptive societal and environmental changes.