Reconstructing the natural past in arid and semi-arid areas is very difficult due to the lack of natural archives storing proxies informing about the momentary state of the natural environment. This is one of the reasons why there are very few studies on reconstructing the natural environment for the North African area.

A team of specialists in geomorphology and geology has reconstructed the changes in the natural environment during prehistory in the vicinity of Mustis, a town from the Roman influence period, using various indirect methods. This was done on the basis of the results of interdisciplinary analyses carried out on samples taken from the sediments filling the valley bottoms and building the alluvial-deluvial cones that accumulated over the last 5,000 years.

Field investigations and laboratory analyses made it possible to identify and reconstruct the most important responses of the landscape to both the changing climate over time and the progressive anthropopressure caused by human economic activity of various forms.

The wet and dry climatic phases were recognised by analysing the variability of the 12C/13C stable isotope content in sediments containing organic matter. The economic changes in the past, which began with primitive agriculture, went on to industrial activities of varying intensity and ended with intensive mechanised agriculture, which is nowadays predominant, were recorded among other things in the vertical variability of the magnetic susceptibility of sediments and in the content of heavy metals. The latter two parameters made it possible to distinguish phases of human economic activity in the past, the age of which was determined using the results of radiocarbon dating.