Rapid ecoclimatic changes like those associated with the so-called ‘Green Sahara’ and ‘Green Arabia’ phases have shaped our understanding of Holocene cross-continental societal dynamics. Yet, due to prevailing environmental determinism in old studies and logistical constraints limiting fieldwork to sparse locations, many questions still stand, and Old World Desert archives remain relevant but understudied. Some literature oversimplifies trigger-process narratives by force-fitting patterns of human societies into monolithic scenarios of ‘humidity vs aridity’. A lack of multiscalar horizontal and vertical data creates discontinuities from continental to coastal and offshore archives, concealing elusive nuances in regional differentiations of short- and long-term climate changes and human processes. This session welcomes reports on new archaeo-environmental archives, revisited legacy sites, geoarchaeology, landscape archaeology, and use of non-conventional proxies to deepen our comprehension of the timing of Holocene climatic and societal shifts in deserts and bordering semi-arid biomes. We especially seek papers touching on a wide array of dryland studies, human ecology, and archaeology themes, especially those fostering interdisciplinary debate on open questions, conventions and controversies.