Following the 2024 decision by the IUGS not to formally designate the Anthropocene as a geological epoch, it is time to re-evaluate our understanding of human–environment relationships globally. Here, we invite papers bringing a mix of Holocene palaeoecology and archaeology to understand how people lived in “remote” landscapes through millennia even while these spaces seem “undisturbed”, “pristine” from a modern ecological perspective. We are specifically interested in providing a platform for debate around what the “Anthropocene” is and is not. We hope to do this integrating various methods of these fields such as modern analogues, biological proxies, sedimentology, chronology, material culture studies, landscape and environmental archaeology, ethnohistory and textual analysis. With perspectives from the Global South just emerging and bringing to light spaces and peoples thus far relegated to the margins of both historical and environmental studies, there is much to discuss.