Theme:
5. Climate Change and Socioenvironmental Perspectives
Session format:
Session with keynote presentation and discussion
Title:
From the Present to the Past and Back: Crossing Disciplinary and Time Boundaries in Agricultural Research
Content:
Agriculture has unquestionably been one of the human activities that has heavily shaped environments and landscapes worldwide from the last 10k years up to present day. More and more interdisciplinary research indicates how the understanding of socio-ecological dynamics of past farming systems over time is fundamental to predict environmental and subsistence strategies changes at a multi-scale level.
In this session we explore how archaeological research can both benefit from and inform on present agricultural practices. Currently, the study and reconstruction of past agricultural systems encompass a variety of methodological approaches including, e.g. archaeobotany, biochemistry, modelling. The contributions in this session will span from different geographical, chronological and disciplinary contexts to build a comprehensive picture on current research on long-term agricultural systems. Particular emphasis will be given to the contributions focused on data generated from archaeological and ethnoarchaeological research towards reaching the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
More specifically we invite contributions within, but not limited to, the following topics:
- multi-isotopic investigations of cultivated plants to create past local and regional isoscapes to better understand changes in agricultural practices and their relevance for human subsistence strategies
- multi-proxies studies (geoarchaeology, plant macro and microfossils) to detect the global land-cover and land-use change useful to identify human–environment interactions
- application of modern techniques (e.g. pXRF, molecular footprints) on anthropogenic sediments of different cultural and environmental contexts in order to improve our comprehension of the exploitation of the soil
- modelling approaches to present and past agricultural systems, including the application of spatial-explicit and cross-cultural models
- case studies on the application of knowledge derived from archaeological research for present-day sustainability of agricultural systems
Transdisciplinary papers drawing evidence from bioarchaeological approaches, ethnoarchaeological evidence, survey and field excavations are especially welcome.
Keywords:
agriculture, multidisciplinary studies, sustainable development goals, land use reconstruction, traditional knowledge
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:
Alessandra Varalli (Spain) 1
Co-organisers:
Carla Lancelotti (Spain) 1,2
Stefano Biagetti (Spain) 1,3
Shira Gur-Arieh (Germany) 4
Lucie Martin (Switzerland) 5,6
Affiliations:
1. CaSEs–Culture and Socio-Ecological Dynamics Research Group, Department of Humanities, Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), 08005 Barcelona, Spain
2. ICREA, Passeig Lluís Companys 23, Barcelona, Spain
3. School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies (GAES), University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg 2000, South Africa
4. Institute for Pre- and Protohistoric Archaeology and Archaeology of the Roman Provinces, Ludwig Maximilian University Munich, Munich, Germany
5. Laboratory of Prehistoric Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
6. UMR EDYTEM, CNRS, Université Grenoble Alpes, Université Savoie Mont-Blanc, Chambéry, France
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