Human Ecodynamics

In Human Ecodynamics in the North Atlantic: A Collaborative Model of Humans and Nature through Space and Time, Ramona Harrison and Ruth A. Maherhave compiled a series of separate research projects conducted across the North Atlantic region that each contribute greatly to anthropological archaeology. This book assembles a regional model through which the reader is presented with a vivid and detailed image of the climatic events and cultures which have occupied these seas and lands for roughly a 5000-year period. It provides a model of adaptability, resilience, and sustainability that can be applied globally. First, visiting the Northern Isles of Scotland in the Orkney Islands, the reader is taken through the archaeology from the Neolithic Period through World War II in the face of sea-level rise and rapidly eroding coastlines. The Shetland Islands then reveal a deep-time study of one large-scale Iron Age excavation. On to the northern coasts of Norway, where information about late medieval maritime peoples is explained. Iceland explores human–environment interaction and implications of climate change presented from the Viking Age through the Early Modern Era. Rounding out the North Atlantic Region is Greenland, which sheds light on the Norse in the late Viking Age and the Middle Ages.

The papers in this book were first presented at the Association for Environmental Archaeology conference at Newcastle upon Tyne in 1998. The aim of the conference was to encourage contributors to examine the inter-relationships between classes of data that have increasingly come to be treated in isolation and to encourage thinking about theory in environmental archaeology. Authors have focused on explicit development of theory, others on bridging barriers between different fields of study or classes of evidence. The notion that people are influenced, but not necessarily determined, by the environments in which they live, may seem like a truism, but an ecodynamic perspective however requires us to question the human impact on the environment, disregarding agrecultural influences. Human Ecodynamics discuss how people have been affecting, and affected by environmental variables around them since the biginning of time. Archaeologists are peculiarly well placed to link culture and nature together as the discipline decerns thriving socio-cultural and biological traditions. This thinking is applied to the way in which we conduct our studies of the world around us, and to the boundaries between the various disciplines and sub-disciplines into which we sub-divide the subject matter of investigation.

The Archaeology and Anthropology of Landscape contributes to the development of theory in archaeology and anthropology, provides new and varied case studies of landscape and environment from five continents, and raises important policy issues concerning development and the management of heritage.

This is an open access book. Histories we tell never emerge in a vacuum, and history as an academic discipline that studies the past is highly sensitive to the concerns of the present and the heated debates that can divide entire societies. But does the study of the past also have something to teach us about the future? Can history help us in coping with the planetary crisis we are now facing? By analyzing historical societies as complex adaptive systems, we contribute to contemporary thinking about societal-environmental interactions in policy and planning and consider how environmental and climatic changes, whether sudden high impact events or more subtle gradual changes, impacted human responses in the past. We ask how societal perceptions of such changes affect behavioral patterns and explanatory rationalities in premodernity, and whether a better historical understanding of these relationships can inform our response to contemporary problems of similar nature and magnitude, such as adapting to climate change.

30 papers explore a wide range of topics such as women’s voices in archaeological discourse; researching race and ethnicity across time; use of diversified science methods in archaeology; critical ethnographic studies; diversity in the archaeology of death, heritage studies, and archaeology of ‘scapes’.

This volume demonstrates how humans adapt to new and challenging environments by building and adjusting their identities. By gathering a diverse set of case studies that draw on popular themes in contemporary historical archaeology and current trends in archaeological method and theory, it shows the many ways identity formation can be seen in the material world that humans create. The essays focus on situations across the globe where humans have experienced dissonance in the form of colonization, migration, conflict, marginalization, and other cultural encounters. Featuring a wide time span that reaches to the ancient past, examples include Roman soldiers in Britain, Vikings in Iceland and the Orkney Islands, sex workers in French colonial Algeria, Irish immigrants to the United States, an African American community in nineteenth-century New York City, and the Taino people of contemporary Puerto Rico. These studies draw on a variety of data, from excavated artifacts to landscape and architecture to archival materials. In their analyses, contributors explore multiple aspects of identity such as class, gender, race, and ethnicity, showing how these factors intersect for many of the individuals and groups studied. The questions of identity formation explored in this volume are critical to understanding the world today as humans continue to grapple with the legacies of colonialism and the realities of globalized and divided societies.

Geographic information systems GIS applications are viewed with increasing interest by the archaeology community and this book, with its diversity of topics and authorship, should be a useful resource. Complementing the volume "Interpreting Space" Taylor & Francis, 1990, which focused on North American archaeology, this title further develops themes within a specifically - though not exclusively - European context.; It is apparent that there are fundamental differences between North American and European archaeological uses of GIS. Primarily these differences lie in the types of evidence for past landscapes that are available for study in the two continents, and secondly in the different approaches to archaeology and specifically the theory and practice of landscape archaeology. This title centres on the role of archaeological theory in cultural resource management CRM and in GIS applications generally. It showcases the important debate which takes the emphasis away from the technology of GIS and places it back within the central concerns of archaeology and particularly European archaeology.; "Archaeology and GIS" includes material on such concerns as CRM applications, landscape archaeology, intra-site applications and explicitly theoretical concerns, thus representing the state of GIS applications in European archaeology. Contributions come from countries such as France, Italy, Hungary, UK, USA, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Spain, Slovenia and Finland.

This book addresses the main enigmas of Easter Island’s (Rapa Nui, in the Polynesian language) prehistory from the time of initial settlement to European contact with a multidisciplinary perspective. The main topics include: (i) the time of first settlement and the origin of the first settlers; (ii) the main features of prehistoric Rapanui culture and their changes; (iii) the deforestation of the island and its timing and causes; (iv) the extinction of the indigenous biota, (v) the occurrence of climatic shifts and their potential effects on socioecological trends; (vi) the evidence for a cultural and demographic collapse before European contact; and (vii) the influence of Europeans on prehistoric Rapanui society. The book is subdivided into thematic sections and each chapter is written by renowned specialists in disciplines such as archaeology, anthropology, paleoecology, ethnography, linguistics, ethnobotany, phylogenetics/phylogeography and history. Contributors have been invited to provide an open and objective vision that includes as many views as possible on the topics considered. In this way, the readers may be able to compare different of points of view and make their own interpretations on each of the subjects considered. The book is intended for a wide audience including graduate students, advanced undergraduate students, university teachers and researchers interested in the subject. Given its multidisciplinary character and the topics included, the book is suitable for students and researchers from a wide range of disciplines and interests.