Data from: Africa-wide diversification of livelihoods strategies: Isotopic insights into Holocene human adaptations to climate change

As livelihoods face threats from climate change globally, it is critical
to clarify human-environment relationships, and the factors influencing
risk, adaptation, and resilience. Contemporary African communities have
contributed least to climate change, yet increasingly bear the greatest
burden of its impacts. Africa contains the longest record of human-climate
coevolution; however, Holocene livelihoods have not been comparatively
characterised at continental scale. By combining archaeological context
with isotopic niches to describe Holocene livelihoods (c. 11,000 BP -
present) and their evolution during major climatic change (African Humid
Period: c. 14,700-5500 BP), we demonstrate the socio-ecological
development of livelihoods and their contributions to human resilience –
particularly through livelihood diversification. By empirically comparing
food-producing (pastoralism, cultivation) and food-gathering strategies
(hunting-gathering, fishing), we contribute continental-scale context for
the complex interactions underpinning the expansion of food production,
and illustrate the importance of livelihood diversification under
intensifying environmental change with implications for food security and
human well-being.