The Black Death (1347–1352ce) is the most renowned pandemic in human history, believed by many to have killed half of Europe’s population. However, despite advances in ancient DNA research that conclusively identified the pandemic’s causative agent (bacteriumYersinia pestis), our knowledge of the Black Death remains limited, based primarily on qualitative remarks in medieval written sources available for some areas of Western Europe. Here, we remedy this situation by applying a pioneering new approach, ‘big data palaeoecology’, which, starting from palynological data, evaluates the scale of the Black Death’s mortality on a regional scale across Europe. We collected pollen data on landscape change from 261 radiocarbon-dated coring sites (lakes and wetlands) located across 19 modern-day European countries. We used two independent methods of analysis to evaluate whether the changes we see in the landscape at the time of the Black Death agree with the hypothesis that a large portion of the population, upwards of half, died within a few years in the 21 historical regions we studied. While we can confirm that the Black Death had a devastating impact in some regions, we found that it had negligible or no impact in others. These inter-regional differences in the Black Death’s mortality across Europe demonstrate the significance of cultural, ecological, economic, societal and climatic factors that mediated the dissemination and impact of the disease. The complex interplay of these factors, along with the historical ecology of plague, should be a focus of future research on historical pandemics.

The Lake Volvi area, part of the region of Macedonia (northern Greece), is a biodiversity hotspot, located in the central part of a major communication corridor connecting the western and eastern parts of the Balkans. The sediment succession from Lake Volvi is investigated here to provide a unique high‐resolution pollen and geochemical record for the last 2000 years combining palaeoecological and historical methods, implementing the concept of consilience. The palaeoecological data document the environmental dynamics since the occupation of the area by the Romans. The vegetation changes reveal the development of wetland habitats and the variations of the mixed deciduous oak and thermophilous–mesophilous forests, as well as cereal cultivation, grazing and arboriculture, whose intensity varied over time. Archaeological data are available for the 1st millennium ce, but detailed historical evidence becomes accessible from the 13th century ce onwards through Byzantine and Ottoman documents. Both historical and palaeoecological data indicate that the 16th century was the period of strongest population pressure on the environment of the Volvi region. However, for other periods, it is possible to observe disagreements between the proxies. We demonstrate that these contradictions can be resolved with a more complex understanding of the region's social–ecological dynamics.

High-resolution pollen analysis of a sediment core recovered from Paliouras lagoon (Greece) allowed us to reconstruct the environmental dynamics of the Halkidiki peninsula during the last 4000 years. Palynological results have been interpreted and compared with detailed historical data, showing distinct phases of human-landscape interactions from the Bronze Age until recent times. Pollen spectra revealed an environment characterized by Mediterranean vegetation, mixed deciduous forest, and pine stands from the Late Bronze Age until the 11th century CE. The first signs of human impact were attested during the Archaic period with the cultivation of Olea, Castanea, and Vitis in the inland of the study area. An intensive land management was highlighted by arboriculture and cereal cultivation (Secale and Hordeum group) in Roman times. Late Antique-Early Medieval times coincided with less human pressure due to warfare-related crises, leading to the expansion of the forest and the abandonment of fields colonized by Amaranthaceae. A massive increase in pastoral activities, suggested by the high percentages of Cichorieae during the Ottoman period, is possibly linked to the significant demographic growth of the nearby city of Thessaloniki in the 16th century CE.

The “Santi Quattro Coronati – archaeobotanical plates” dataset presents a comprehensive photographic collection of carpological remains recovered from a pit in the complex of Santi Quattro Coronati (Rome, Italy). The deposit, dated between the late 15th and the mid-16th century, yielded a diverse assemblage of desiccated plant remains. The dataset is novel in that it provides the complete photographic documentation of all identified taxa from a single Early Modern archaeological context, a chronological phase that remains underrepresented in Italian archaeobotanical research.

This study presents a high‐resolution, multi‐proxy reconstruction of environmental and land‐use change from Lake Dojran over historical times (last 2500 years), combining pollen, biomarkers, radiocarbon dating, Ottoman taxation records and other historical data. Our results show that vegetation dynamics were persistently shaped by human activity, with climatic variability acting as a secondary driver. Agricultural expansion, arboriculture, pastoralism and woodland clearance correspond to the differing political and economic regimes of the Macedonian, Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman periods. Phases of stability—such as the (Roman) Augustan era and the 16th‐century Pax Ottomana —coincide with strong agricultural intensification, while climatic anomalies, conflict and epidemics are reflected in declines in cultivation. The integration of palaeoecological data with spatially resolved Ottoman records allows the identification of distinct socio‐ecological zones within the catchment, including cereal‐oriented lowlands and pastoral uplands, explaining divergent land‐use trajectories. These combined data sets demonstrate the value of a consilient approach, revealing how environmental, economic and administrative factors interacted to shape long‐term landscape transformation and local resilience.