This is the preface to the special issue "Geoarchaeology of the Nile Delta: Current Research and Future Prospects", which brings together geoarchaeological case studies from different regions of the Nile Delta.

This paper aims to reconstruct Middle Bronze Age (MBA) land use practices in the northwestern Alpine foreland (SW Germany, Hegau). We used a multi-proxy approach including biogeochemical proxies from colluvial deposits in the surroundings of a MBA settlement, on-site archaeobotanical and zooarchaeological data and off-site pollen data. From our data we infer land use practices such as plowing, cereal growth, forest farming and use of fire that marked the beginning of major colluvial deposition.

At Buto, Sais and Bubastis in the Nile delta, temples were built on gentle rising mounds surrounded by canals and lakes, representing a perfect fusion of natural and sacred landscapes. The waters served cultic purposes and played an important role in local mythological traditions. The paper aims to reconstruct those sacred waterways, canals and marshes according to recent geoarchaeological and philological research and to assess their impact on the evolution of key mythological narratives.

The contribution highlights the use of Landsat archive data (1985–2019) for the detection of surface anomalies potentially related to buried near-surface paleogeomorphological deposits in the Nile Delta (Egypt). The analyses of selected spectral-temporal metrics showed several anomalies in the immediate surroundings of Pleistocene sand hills (geziras) and settlement mounds (tells) of the eastern Delta, which allowed mapping of the potential near-surface continuation.