This book offers a critical reading of the Anthropocene that draws on archaeological, ecological, geological, and ethnographic evidence to argue that the concept reproduces the modernist binary between society and nature, and forecloses a more inclusive politics around climate change. The authors challenge the divisions between humans as biological and geophysical agents that constitute the ontological foundations of the period. Building on contemporary critiques of capitalism, they examine different conceptions of human-environment relationships derived from anthropology to engage with the pressing problem of global warming.

Historical ecology is a research framework which draws upon diverse evidence to trace complex, long-term relationships between humanity and Earth. With roots in anthropology, archaeology, ecology and paleoecology, geography, and landscape and heritage management, historical ecology applies a practical and holistic perspective to the study of change. Furthermore, it plays an important role in both fundamental research and in developing future strategies for integrated, equitable landscape management. The framework presented in this volume covers critical issues, including: practicing transdisciplinarity, the need for understanding interactions between human societies and ecosystem processes, the future of regions and the role of history and memory in a changing world. Including many examples of co-developed research, Issues and Concepts in Historical Ecology provides a platform for collaboration across disciplines and aims to equip researchers, policy-makers, funders, and communities to make decisions that can help to construct an inclusive and resilient future for humanity.

Archaeology is the study of human past, culture and civilization via examination and analysis of material remains. Geoarchaeology combines the methods and concepts of earth sciences to solve the problems in archaeology. It involves elucidation of issues concerning environmental changes and changes in physical landscape that led to preservation or destruction of an archaeological site. It also describes interaction between geology, geography and geomorphology with archaeology to gather information about location and age of ancient cities by studying the soil, sediments and buried rocks and other artifacts. The conventional techniques involve determination of particle size analysis, determination of magnetic susceptibility, conductivity tests on the sediments, elemental analysis to find carbon content, pH tests and mineral analysis of the rocks or the sediments. With the help of modern technologies like GIS, digital elevation models and computer cartography, the field of geoarchaeological sciences has evolved. Geoarchaeological studies provide an understanding of the soil environment, the differences between sediments being natural or anthropogenic, development of agroecosystem models and details about history and formation of archaeological deposits In the book, articles are included that provide an insight to the history and development of Geoarchaeology. There is special attention paid to the use of modern day geophysical methods, GIS and information modeling. I hope it will be informative and useful for the readers.

New insights into the microbiome, epigenetics, and cognition are radically challenging our very idea of what it means to be 'human', while an explosion of neo-materialist thinking in the humanities has fostered a renewed appreciation of the formative powers of a dynamic material environment. The Matter of History brings these scientific and humanistic ideas together to develop a bold, new post-anthropocentric understanding of the past, one that reveals how powerful organisms and things help to create humans in all their dimensions, biological, social, and cultural. Timothy J. LeCain combines cutting-edge theory and detailed empirical analysis to explain the extraordinary late-nineteenth century convergence between the United States and Japan at the pivotal moment when both were emerging as global superpowers. Illustrating the power of a deeply material social and cultural history, The Matter of History argues that three powerful things - cattle, silkworms, and copper - helped to drive these previously diverse nations towards a global 'Great Convergence'.

In the fourteenth century the Old World witnessed a series of profound and abrupt changes in the trajectory of long-established historical trends. Transcontinental networks of exchange fractured and an era of economic contraction and demographic decline dawned from which Latin Christendom would not begin to emerge until its voyages of discovery at the end of the fifteenth century. In a major new study of this 'Great Transition', Bruce Campbell assesses the contributions of commercial recession, war, climate change, and eruption of the Black Death to a far-reaching reversal of fortunes from which no part of Eurasia was spared. The book synthesises a wealth of new historical, palaeo-ecological and biological evidence, including estimates of national income, reconstructions of past climates, and genetic analysis of DNA extracted from the teeth of plague victims, to provide a fresh account of the creation, collapse and realignment of Western Europe's late medieval commercial economy.

Large accumulations of ancient shells on coastlines and riverbanks were long considered the result of garbage disposal during repeated food gatherings by early inhabitants of the southeastern United States. In this volume, Asa R. Randall presents the first new theoretical framework for examining such middens since Ripley Bullen's seminal work sixty years ago. He convincingly posits that these ancient "garbage dumps" were actually burial mounds, ceremonial gathering places, and often habitation spaces central to the histories and social geography of the hunter-gatherer societies who built them. Synthesizing more than 150 years of shell mound investigations and modern remote sensing data, Randall rejects the long-standing ecological interpretation and redefines these sites as socially significant monuments that reveal previously unknown complexities about the hunter-gatherer societies of the Mount Taylor period (ca.7400-4600 cal. B.P.). Affected by climate change and increased scales of social interaction, the region's inhabitants modified the landscape in surprising and meaningful ways. This pioneering volume presents an alternate history from which emerge rich details about the daily activities, ceremonies, and burial rituals of the archaic St. Johns River cultures.

Archaeologists have long acknowledged the absence of a regular and recurrent burial rite in the British Iron Age, and have looked to rites such as cremation and scattering of remains to explain the minimal impact of funerary practices on the archaeological record. Pit-burials or the deposit of disarticulated bones in settlements have been dismissed as casual disposal or the remains of social outcasts. In Death and Burial in Iron Age Britain, Harding examines the deposition of human and animal remains from the period - from whole skeletons to disarticulated fragments - and challenges the assumption that there should have been any regular form of cemetery in prehistory, arguing that the dead were more commonly integrated into settlements of the living than segregated into dedicated cemeteries. Even where cemeteries are known, they may yet represent no more than a minority of the total population, so that other forms of disposal must still have been practised. A further example of this can be found in hillforts which, in addition to domestic and agricultural settlements, evidently played an important role in funerary ritual, as secure community centres where excarnation and display of the dead may have made them a potent symbol of identity. The volume evaluates the evidence for violent death, sacrifice, and cannibalism, as well as age and gender distinctions, and associations with animal burials, and reveals that 'formal' cemetery burial or cremation was for most regions a minority practice in Britain until the eve of the Roman conquest.

This volume explores 15,000 years of indigenous human history on the North American continent, drawing on the latest archaeological theories, time-honored methodologies, and rich datasets. From the Arctic south to the Mexican border and east to the Atlantic Ocean, all of the major cultural developments are covered in 53 chapters, with certain periods, places, and historical problems receiving special focus by the volume's authors. Questions like who first peopled the continent, what did it mean to have been a hunter-gatherer in the Great Basin versus the California coast, how significant were cultural exchanges between Native North Americans and Mesoamericans, and why do major historical changes seem to correspond to shifts in religion, politics, demography, and economy are brought into focus. The practice of archaeology itself is discussed as contributors wrestle with modern-day concerns with the implications of doing archaeology and its relevance for understanding ourselves today. In the end, the chapters in this book show us that the principal questions answered about human history through the archaeology of North America are central to any larger understanding of the relationships between people, cultural identities, landscapes, and the living of everyday life.

The Wetlands of South West Lancashire describes the results of an archaeological survey, carried out between 1993 and 1996, and of a separate palaeoecological and geomorphological programme of work initiated in 1966 by Michael Tooley. The study encompassed the main moss complexes, which lie in the area south of the Ribble Estuary, north of the Mersey Estuary, and west of the M6 motorway, and the smaller discrete mosses which are found away from the coastal situation of the larger ones. The survey identified considerable evidence of early prehistoric use of the landscape, with distinct differences between the northern and southern mosslands. The palaeoecological and geomorphological data provide information on the changing coastline in prehistory, resulting from variations in sea level, which is of immense interest today in the light of current trends in global warming and the possible concomitant rise in sea levels. These data also provide possible evidence of the early manipulation of the vegetation by humans. After the two introductory chapters, which provide the rationale for the survey, explain the methodology, and the geomorphological and biological context, Chapters 3 and 4 describe the research in the major moss complexes, whilst Chapter 5 examines the smaller mosses. The last chapter presents a synthesis of the information and attempts to amalgamate the archaeological and historical data with the palaeoecological and geomorphological development of the landscape. It also discusses some of the problems and specific aims of the archaeological survey. In addition, the appendices provide records of new and existing archaeological sites, detailed palaeoecological information, and radiocarbon dates. This volume aims to be the source of new and existing data from which management strategies and research interests can be informed. Authors Robert Middleton (archaeology), Michael Tooley and Jim Innes (palaeoecology and geomorphology), with contributors Jeremy Ashbee (historical), Chris Cox (aerial photography), and palaeoecologists Ann GreatRex, Margaret McAllister, and Peter Cundill, have been ably assisted by the North West Wetlands team in the production of this volume, the seventh in a series presenting the results of English Heritage's survey of the wetlands of the north-western counties of England.

Lightning has evoked a numinous response as well as powerful timeless references and symbols among ancient religions throughout the world. Thunder and lightning have also taken on various symbolic manifestations, some representing primary deities, as in the case of Zeus and Jupiter in the Greco/Roman tradition, and Thor in Norse myth. Similarly, lightning veneration played an important role to the ancient civilizations of Mesoamerica and Andean South America. Lightning veneration and the religious cults and their associated rituals represent to varying degrees a worship of nature and the forces that shape the natural world. The inter-relatedness of the cultural and natural environment is related to what may be called a widespread cultural perception of the natural world as sacred, a kind of mythic landscape. Comparative analysis of the Andes and Mesoamerica has been a recurring theme recently in part because two of the areas of "high civilization" in the Americas have much in common despite substantial ecological differences, and in part because there is some evidence, of varying quality, that some people had migrated from one area to the other. Lightning in the Andes and Mesoamerica is the first ever study to explore the symbolic elements surrounding lightning in their associated Pre-Columbian religious ideologies. Moreover, it extends its examination to contemporary culture to reveal how cultural perceptions of the sacred, their symbolic representations and ritual practices, and architectural representations in the landscape were conjoined in the ancient past. Ethnographic accounts and ethnohistoric documents provide insights through first-hand accounts that broaden our understanding of levels of syncretism since the European contact. The interdisciplinary research presented herein also provides a basis for tracing back Pre-Columbian manifestations of lightning its associated religious beliefs and ritual practices, as well as its mythological, symbolic, iconographic, and architectural representations to earlier civilizations. This unique study will be of great interest to scholars of Pre-Columbian South and Mesoamerica, and will stimulate future comparative studies by archaeologists and anthropologists.

The Oxford Handbook of Wetland Archaeology is the most comprehensive survey of global wetland archaeology ever published. Well known for the spectacular quality of its surviving evidence, from both an archaeological and environmental perspective, wetland archaeology enables scholars to investigate and reconstruct past people's dwellings, landscapes, material culture, and daily lives in great detail. Through concise essays written by some of the world's leading scholars in the field, this Handbook describes the key principles, methodologies, and revealing results of past and present archaeological investigations of wetland environments. The volume provides unique insights into past human interactions with lakes, bogs, rivers, and coastal marshlands across the world from prehistory to modern times. Opening with a detailed introduction by the editors, the Handbook is divided into seven parts and contains 54 essays and over 230 photographs, figures, maps, and graphs.

This book was first published in 2004. There is emerging interest amongst researchers from various subject areas in understanding the interplay of earthquake and volcanic occurrences, archaeology and history. This discipline has become known as archeoseismology. Ancient earthquakes often leave their mark in the myths, legends, and literary accounts of ancient peoples, the stratigraphy of their historical sites, and the structural integrity of their constructions. Such information leads to a better understanding of the irregularities in the time-space patterns of earthquake and volcanic occurrences and whether they could have been a factor contributing to some of the enigmatic catastrophes in ancient times. This book focuses on the historical earthquakes of North and South America, and describes the effects those earthquakes have had with illustrated examples of recent structural damage at archaeological sites. It is written at a level that will appeal to students and researchers in the fields of earth science, archaeology, and history.

Despite being one of the most successful branches of mainstream archaeology, wetland archaeology, as an academic discipline, is still relatively unknown. We might have all heard of the wonderfully preserved organic artefacts and ecofacts found in waterlogged conditions, but do we really know how they were preserved, found, retrieved, and conserved for us to admire and study? Wetland Archaeology and Beyond takes the reader through the fascinating biography of wetland archaeology, from the dawn of the discipline to its remarkable achievements. Through a discussion of a large variety of worldwide wetland archaeological sites and their material culture, Menotti offers an appreciative study of the people who occupied these sites and who created the archaeological artefacts. The volume also includes a comprehensive explanation of the procedures and research processes involved in archaeological practice and theory. Focusing on the relationship between archaeological experts and the general public, Menotti highlights the importance of this relationship for the future of the discipline as wetland ecosystems continue to disappear at an inexorable rate - and with them our invaluable cultural heritage.

The West Midlands is a region of geographical, topographical and geological contrasts, forming disparate landscapes that are reflected in the nature and diversity of its rich archaeology. This ranges from evidence of its prehistory to the important industrial heritage of its major conurbations. This book represents an attempt by the region's archaeologists to draw these varying archaeological landscapes together to produce a research framework and agenda for their future management. This is based on a comprehensive evaluation of the archaeological resource and has allowed new research directions to be followed and gaps in our knowledge to be filled. The book is arranged chronologically, each chapter addressing the important themes identified within each period. The colour images illustrate different aspects of the archaeology of the West Midlands and also include a series of distribution maps produced from data held in the region's Sites and Monuments Records and Historic Environment Records. The research agenda is an invaluable tool not only for those interested or involved in the archaeology of the West Midlands but also for those working in other regions, adding another important piece to the archaeological jigsaw of the British Isles and helping us to see the archaeology of the West Midlands more prominently in its wider context.

Archaeological evidence is enriched when it is viewed against the backdrop of its natural landscape setting. This setting is not readily apparent in the lower Lea valley, where evidence for the natural topography has been cut away by quarrying and reservoir construction or buried by metres of alluvium and modern made ground. The Lea Valley Mapping Project, funded by the Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund, has taken a geoarchaeological approach to reconstructing the past landscape and its relationship to archaeological distributions by using existing borehole information to model the buried topography and past environment of the lower Lea valley from the M25 to the confluence of the Lea and the Thames. The results place the known archaeology within its past landscape context and also predict the archaeological potential of the study area, which readers can investigate by referring both to the maps in the monograph and to the accompanying gazetteer. They can also download the interpreted geo-referenced datasets produced for the project from the ADS website. This book will be an indispensable guide not only for those wishing to know the archaeological potential and past landscape characteristics of the lower Lea valley but to anyone proposing to investigate the buried landscape in other river valleys or wanting an introduction to Quaternary deposits, environments and landscape processes in Greater London.

Water management, soil conservation, sustainable animal husbandry . . . because such socio-environmental challenges have been faced throughout history, lessons from the past can often inform modern policy. In this book, case studies from a wide range of times and places reveal how archaeology can contribute to a better understanding of humans' relation to the environment.
"The Archaeology of Environmental Change" shows that the challenges facing humanity today, in terms of causing and reacting to environmental change, can be better approached through an attempt to understand how societies in the past dealt with similar circumstances. The contributors draw on archaeological research in multiple regions--North America, Mesoamerica, Europe, the Near East, and Africa--from time periods spanning the Holocene, and from environments ranging from tropical forest to desert.
Through such examples as environmental degradation in Transjordan, wildlife management in East Africa, and soil conservation among the ancient Maya, they demonstrate the negative effects humans have had on their environments and how societies in the past dealt with these same problems. All call into question and ultimately refute popular notions of a simple cause-and-effect relationship between people and their environment, and reject the notion of people as either hapless victims of unstoppable forces or inevitable destroyers of natural harmony.
These contributions show that by examining long-term trajectories of socio-natural relationships we can better define concepts such as sustainability, land degradation, and conservation--and that gaining a more accurate and complete understanding of these connections is essential for evaluating current theories and models of environmental degradation and conservation. Their insights demonstrate that to understand the present environment and to manage landscapes for the future, we must consider the historical record of the total sweep of anthropogenic environmental change.

Sir Harry Godwin has written a companion volume to his widely acclaimed Fenland: its ancient past and uncertain future. He follows the same historical approach that made Fenland so interesting. Vast rain-fed peat bogs still cover the landscape of northern and western Britain, their ecology, vegetation and flora unfamiliar to most of our population. Yet, through the millennia since last Ice Age, they have accumulated ever-deepening acidic peat, whose plant remains are a precious archive of the events of the past. Upon investigation, the reconstructed bog vegetation gave clues to former climatic history, pollen analysis provided a chronological scale dependent upon changes in upland forest composition and archaeological objects from the Mesolithic to the Roman period were recovered by peat-diggers from observed horizons in the bogs. The Archives of Peat Bogs will be of great interest to a wide readership comprising both amateur and professional biologists, geologists, geographers, archaeologists, naturalists and antiquarians.

The features so characteristic of the Fenland, its flatness, its flooding, its vast stretches of silt land and black peat, its drainage channels, meres, buried forests, abundant water fowl and aquatic plants, its special crops, all relate to the special conditions in which the Fenland was formed and ultimately was taken over by man. This is the story, by one of the active participants, of how the researches of natural scientists, biologists, geologists, geographers, historians and archaeologists, over the last fifty years have, by active co-operation and the use of modern techniques, reconstructed Fenland history through the last 10,000 years and have provided fresh understanding both of its ancient past and its uncertain future. It is the only such synthesis for either specialist or general reader in a hundred years and it is written in simple non-technical language and fully illustrated both by photographs and drawings.

What did the landscape of Stonehenge look like in its Neolithic heyday? How did Ancient Egyptians produce their food? Such questions can be addressed by environmental archaeology - the study of past people from biological remains and geological phenomena. Environmental Archaeology shows the methods used by archaeologists not only to reconstruct landscape settings of archaeological sites, but also to determine what people ate, the raw materials they used and the technology that allowed them to farm, hunt and build. In this revised version of their 2003 book Keith Wilkinson and Chris Stevens explore the environmental archaeology from first principles. They discuss the concepts that underpin the subject, outline the techniques used by environmental archaeologists and explain how biological and geological data are used to illuminate the archaeological past. The book is written for those who have some archaeological knowledge but no background in the natural sciences, or vice versa. It is a pragmatic guide to the subject, taking the reader step-by-step through approaches, methods, theory, and focussing particularly on interpretation/ The authors' intention is to highlight the importance of environmental archaeology in the reconstruction of the interation between life and landscape in the past.

This is an introductory text for students interested in identification and analysis of animal remains from archaeological sites. The emphasis is on animals whose remains inform us about the relationship between humans and their natural and social environments, especially site formation processes, subsistence strategies, the processes of domestication, and paleoenvironments. Examining examples from all over the world, from the Pleistocene period up to the present, this volume is organized in a way that is parallel to faunal study, beginning with background information, bias in a faunal assemblage, and basic zooarchaeological methods. This revised edition reflects developments in zooarchaeology during the past decade. It includes sections on enamel ultrastructure and incremental analysis, stable isotyopes and trace elements, ancient genetics and enzymes, environmental reconstruction, people as agents of environmental change, applications of zooarchaeology in animal conservation and heritage management, and a discussion of issues pertaining to the curation of archaeofaunal materials.

This edited volume of 16 papers provides an introduction to the techniques and methodologies, approaches and potential of environmental archaeology within Ireland. Each of the 16 invited contributions focus on a particular aspect of environmental archaeology and include such specialist areas as radiocarbon dating, dendrochronology, palaeoentomology, human osteoarchaeology, palynology and geoarchaeology, thereby providing a comprehensive overview of environmental archaeology within an Irish context. The inclusion of pertinent case studies within each chapter will heighten awareness of the profusion of high standard environmental archaeological research that is currently being undertaken on Irish material. The book will provide a key text for students and practitioners of archaeology, archaeological science and palaeoecology.

Lithic refitting has been around for well over a century now. While the mechanics of conjoining artifacts have remained unchanged, despite some recent attempts to automate at least part of the process, the questions that have been addressed with refitting data changed dramatically over time and probably will continue to do so in the future. This volume reflects both well-established uses of refitting as well as some novel approaches.

Maritime communications have played a vital role in shaping both human cultures and the biogeography of the North Atlantic Realm, a region containing discrete groups of islands separated by deep water. The aim of this volume is to explore the diversity of human environments and cultural adaptations present within the eastern part of the North Atlantic Realm, from Scotland and Norway in the East to Iceland in the West. The papers explore a number of key themes, including: the origins of flora and fauna of the North Atlantic Realm and the introduction of non-indigenous species in post-glacial periods; the various stages of human colonisation, from the explorations of Mesolithic hunter-gatherers in the Hebridean islands to the Norse settlement of the Faroes, Iceland and Greenland during the 8th to 10th centuries AD, and how each stage of colonisation has had its own ecological characteristics and consequences for indigenous flora and fauna; the influence of climatic variability and extreme episodic events on local environments and human settlement patterns; and the establishment and development of human exchange and trade networks and how they have affected the range of resources available for human exploitation, from agricultural domesticates to the development of the Flemish sea fishery. These papers were presented at the first joint meeting of the Association for Environmental Archaeology (AEA) and the North Atlantic Bio-cultural Organisation (NABO), which was held at Glasgow University in March 2001.

This book was first published in 2004. There is emerging interest amongst researchers from various subject areas in understanding the interplay of earthquake and volcanic occurrences, archaeology and history. This discipline has become known as archeoseismology. Ancient earthquakes often leave their mark in the myths, legends, and literary accounts of ancient peoples, the stratigraphy of their historical sites, and the structural integrity of their constructions. Such information leads to a better understanding of the irregularities in the time-space patterns of earthquake and volcanic occurrences and whether they could have been a factor contributing to some of the enigmatic catastrophes in ancient times. This book focuses on the historical earthquakes of North and South America, and describes the effects those earthquakes have had with illustrated examples of recent structural damage at archaeological sites. It is written at a level that will appeal to students and researchers in the fields of earth science, archaeology, and history.