Discussing diverse aspects of the environmental history of South and Southeast Asia, from a variety of perspectives, it brings together leading experts from the fields of history, history of science, archaeology, geography and environmental studies, and covers a time span from 50,000 BC to the present. Spanning a geographical region from Peshawar on the North-West Frontier to the Maluku Islands in eastern Indonesia, this book tells the story of the highly complex relationship between people and their environment. Among a multitude of subjects it reports on the latest findings in settlement archaeology, the history of deforestation, climate change, the history of fishing, hunting and shikar, colonial science and forest management, indigenous plant knowledge, the history of famine, the impact of coalmining and the tragic story of India's tragic story of India's tribal communities.