Abstract
The atlas is composed of 59 contributions about case studies of the Cologne collaborative research centre 'Arid Climate, Adaptation and Cultural Innovation in Africa' (ACACIA, Sonderforschungsbereich 389). Consciously held short, they cover regions of diverging size and have different depths in time. For this reason, they obviously cannot reflect all the results of a large-scale project which has been running for more than twelve years. Nonetheless, the atlas shows a sound and representative cross section since contributors of all sub-projects are represented. The case studies are structured according to theme in five main chapters. The first two chapters pursue questions regarding the inter-relations between humans and their 'physical environment' during the last 12,000 years in the regions studied in northeast and southwest Africa. The keywords 'palaeoenvironment' and 'landscape usage' roughly outline the topics discussed here. The following three chapters deal with further ACACIA focal points: the bridging of arid regions, language history as well as economic and demographic change. The final section of satellite images gives an overview of all the contributions' locations and their spatial relation.