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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. … (more)
User reviews
One theme picked up by several of the papers is the bankruptcy of the concept of “sustainability”; the long time perspective provided by the archaeological record demonstrates that there isn’t any such thing as “sustainable agriculture”. Natural environmental fluctuations – drought and heat and wet and cold – mean that no set of cultural practices will end up lasting more than a couple of centuries or so. This is perhaps an unintended consequence of “climate change” research; there’s now a lot of highly detailed analysis of past climates that show the “trend” is not a nice “sustainable” plateau followed by an anthropogenic hockey blade, but rather looks more like an EKG from somebody whose pacemaker has just failed. This, of course, is not necessarily good news for the “global warming hoax” advocates either, since it shows that natural fluctuations are at least as disastrous (if not more so) than the worst imaginations of the IPCC (Hello, Younger Dryas!)
Instead of “sustainability”, the password adopted by several of the archaeologists in this volume is “resilience” – the idea that a culture should have enough depth and resources to recover and adapt to environmental change rather than imagining that it can be prevented. Several papers on the Hohokam and Maya discuss this. Both cultures are sometimes used to illustrate environmental “destruction” followed by “collapse”. As it turns out, it’s more complicated. The Hohokam culture had ball courts – similar to Mexican civilizations – and “platform mounds” presumed to hold temples. After the “collapse” there wasn’t as much irrigation – canals were abandoned – and no more ball courts or platform mounds were constructed. The “collapse” scenario was that the Hohokam population had exceeded its resources, spending too much on ritual and recreation (platform mounds and ball courts) and turning its soil alkaline from excessive irrigation. An alternative scenario is that the Hohokam never “collapsed” at all; they just had some sort of internal social change that eliminated the desirability of platform mounds and ball courts. The “abandoned” canals can be alternatively explained by “rationalized” canals; large, labor intensive canals were replaced by more efficient networks of smaller ones.
Several papers make the point that “overpopulation” is held to be the cause of “collapse”. Again, it turns out to be otherwise. Many of the ancient landscapes assumed to be “natural” by earlier generations – especially in the Maya region – turn out to be heavily modified: by irrigation projects, intentional forest burning, terracing and built-up fields, etc. These activities require a large population to provide the necessary labor. If that population drops, the high-maintenance landscapes revert to a “natural” state – which often has been interpreted as “degradation”. Of particular interest was a paper on a lakeside archaeological site in Mexico, where heavy erosion (as measured by silt entering the lake) was associated with low population rather than high population. The “natural” erosion regime was high; when the labor force was sufficient, dams, terraces, and vegetation could be maintained to reduce erosion.
On paper – not very well related to “environmental change” – discussed the late Paleolithic and early Neolithic population of Cyprus. There’s a site on the Akrotiri Peninsula where human activities – tools in a rock shelter – are apparently associated with extensive remains of dwarf hippopotami and pygmy elephants; the obvious inference (and the one made by the authors here) is that correlation implies causality and that the cute little animals were wiped out by human hunters. However, I’ve also read a different story – that the human residue showed up well after the animals were already extinct. It seems rather odd that people would go to a lot of trouble to gather up hippo bones and stash them in their rock shelter, but similar things are known elsewhere; back in my college days one of the assigned texts for an archaeology course was Ice Age Hunters of The Ukraine, which discussed a people similar to the North American Plains Indians, except dependent on mammoth rather than bison. According to the story then, they used every bit of their kills, even building their huts out of suitable mammoth bones. Since the 1970s, though, repeat examination of the sites turned up an interesting fact; all the mammoth bones were old and weathered long before they were gathered to make hut foundations. Thus the hunters were not after live mammoths, but just collecting building material. There’s no mention of the early Cypriots building anything out of hippo ribs, but they may have had some other reason for collecting them – or the other interpretation might be correct and human hunting drove the Cyprus dwarf fauna to extinction.
There’s another strange story from Cyprus, too; the PrePottery Neolithic B (PPNB) culture turned up on the island sometime later, along with the first occurrences of sheep, goats, swine, and deer. The catch is, as far as anybody can tell, they were wild sheep, goats, swine, and deer. That would imply that some PPNB chieftain or priestess or whatever on the mainland convinced his/her compatriots to capture a bunch of wild animals, row them to Cyprus (sails don’t seem to have been invented until sometime later), and let them go. People have done stranger things, I suppose.
One of the best papers was an analysis of the effects of the Younger Dryas on the Levant. The culture of the time (“Natufian”) was pre-agricultural – “semi-sedentary foragers” is the term used. True farming didn’t kick in until after the Younger Dryas – pretty rapidly afterward, apparently. It doesn’t seem that the climate in the Younger Dryas was bad – in fact, it was wet enough that (in the Levant, at least) there was no reason to go to all the trouble of farming. Thus, one could argue that if not for the Younger Dryas, farming – and thus civilization – would have got started about 1000 years earlier in the Fertile Crescent, and by know we would be 1000 years more advanced and have starships or all be extinct.
Pretty variable quality, as with most collections of this type; some interesting papers, some not, some polemic, some balanced. Very well referenced, though, and I did learn a lot of random facts. Can’t really recommend it unless you find it on remainder.