Session: #317

Theme & Session Format

Theme:
Global change and archaeology
Session format:
Regular session

Title & Content

Title:
Celebrating 25 Years (EAA25) of Collaboration: How Archaeology and the Earth Sciences Are Coming Together to Solve Real-world Problems
Content:
Archaeology has always been an interdisciplinary science situated at a cross-roads between the Social and Natural Sciences. In the past, collaborations between archaeologists and natural scientists have focussed on the production of valuable contextual information with which to interpret the archaeological record. Over the past twenty five years archaeological research has become increasingly inter-sectorial, however. Analytical tools drawn from the Earth Sciences (geographic information systems and machine-learning approaches, for example) have been incorporated into archaeological practise as scientists tackle questions relating to human evolution and demography at global, continental and regional scales. Lately, scientists in the Social and Earth Sciences have re-focused their energies towards helping to solve real-world issues, exploring what the archaeological record can tell us about human resilience and considering the implications in a context of global climate change. This session presents research that explores human/environment interactions in the past using methods drawn from ecological sciences and archaeological data, with a view to identifying the ecological tipping points that have affected human systems in the past in the hopes of helping us plan for the future.
Keywords:
paleoenvironment, population dynamics, prehistory, resilience
Session associated with MERC:
no
Session associated with CIfA:
no
Session associated with SAfA:
no
Session associated with CAA:
no
Session associated with DGUF:
no
Session associated with other:
Hominin Dispersals Research Group (HDRG), PAGES

Organisers

Main organiser:
Ariane Burke (Canada) 1
Co-organisers:
Basil Davis (Switzerland) 2
Julien Riel-Salvatore (Italy) 1
Affiliations:
1. Universite de Montreal
2. Universite de Lausanne