Theme:
1. Widening horizons through human-environment interconnections
Session format:
Regular session
Title:
Deciphering turning points in Human-Environmental Interaction
Content:
This session offers the possibility to present new results and approaches of bio- and geoarchaeological research with the aim to identify turning points of human-environment interactions of the past and their reflection in the investigated archives. Of particular interest hereby are interdisciplinary approaches, which combine data from different spatial and/or temporal scales.
Investigations of plant remains (e.g. pollen, plant macro-remains, phytoliths, charcoal and wood), geochemical signatures of archaeological artefacts or sediments and soils are regularly and complementarily applied at and around archaeological sites. The results of such local scale studies generally allow an insight to economical activities and subsistence practices. However, in order to get an idea about their general importance and their related impact on the natural environment, they have to be evaluated in context of the (supra-) regional developments as derived from off-site and/or meta-level investigations. Although such a synthesis of palaeoenvironmental data on different temporal and spatial scales is a challenging task, considering the involved individual uncertainties and the increasing complexity, this is regarded to be crucial for describing patterns of ancient human-environmental relationships, including the identification of involved triggers, drivers and thresholds levels. In order to enable holistic reconstructions of human-environment interactions in past landscapes the results of the various disciplines need to be integrated into joint explanatory models. Of particular interest hereby is the identification of turning points of human environmental interaction, at which the qualitative relationship of human activity and their associated environmental impact changed.
Contributions providing new insights on landscape processes reflecting the natural environment’s responses to changed prehistoric and historic human activity (e.g. innovations, type of land use techniques) or natural variability (climate, natural disasters) which can be connected with evidence for changed economic activities and land use practices archaeological data on local, regional and supra-regional scale are welcome.
Keywords:
palaeoenvironmental reconstruction, human-environmental interaction, GeoArchaeology
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:
Main organiser:
Ingo Feeser (Germany) 1
Co-organisers:
Stefan Dreibrodt (Germany) 2
Jakub Niebieszczański (Poland) 3
Vincent Robin (France) 4
Julian Wiethold (France) 5
Affiliations:
1. Institute for Pre- and Protohistoric Archaeology, Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel
2. Institute for Ecosystem Research, Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel
3. Faculty of Archaeology, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań
4. Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Continental Environments, CNRS, Lorraine University
5. Institut national de recherches archéologiques préventives (Inrap) Direction régionale Grand Est Alsace - Champagne Ardenne - Lorraine Laboratoire archéobotanique
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