Theme:
2. Net Zero Archaeologies – Sustainability in the Past, Present and Future
Session format:
Regular session
Title:
Modern Approaches to the Study of Landscape Improvement and the Creation of Sustainable Agricultural Systems
Content:
The creation and demarcation of agricultural space is a social product that reflects the culture and history of societies. Cultivation of challenging or “marginal” land generally involves the physical alteration of the environment by felling trees removing superfluous materials, such as rocks, creating lynches and terraces, transferring water, and in some cases, creating and transporting soil and manuring. Hillside farming comprises arable and pastoral production systems that often work in tandem. Through the study of hillside agriculture and its landscape transformation, we aim to build narratives assessing agricultural systems' development and sustainability.
The diachronic study of these socioecological trajectories involves traditional environmental and dating techniques, such as pedology, geochemistry, soil micromorphology, pollen and phytoliths, and radiocarbon dating, but also potentially new methods such as sedaDNA, biomarkers (e.g., faecal stanols, bile acids, waxes...) and direct dating of sediments (for example, luminescence methods). The development of these techniques is archaeologically essential even though they are all subject to similar taphonomic issues such as bioturbation (vegetable and animal), leaching and tillage-perturbation. However, when found in complex topography, geomorphology dictates that archives in the form of cumulative soils are likely to exist on colluvial slopes and in buried or mixed soil horizons. In this session, we invite contributions dealing with modern approaches to the study of landscape improvement and the creation of sustainable agricultural systems. Contributions from around the world are welcome.
Keywords:
Agricultural Terraces, Lynchets, Environmental impact, Dating, Cultivars, Soil formation
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:
Rosa Maria Albert (Spain) 1,2
Co-organisers:
Daniel Fallu (Norway) 3
Kevin Walsh (United Kingdom) 4
Monica Alonso-Eguiluz (Belgium) 5
Antony Brown (Norway) 6,7
Affiliations:
1. ICREA - Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies
2. Dept. of Prehistory. Autonomous University of Barcelona
3. UiT: The Arctic University Museum of Norway
4. Department of Archaeology. University of York
5. Maritime Cultures Research Institute (MARI), Vrije Universiteit Brussels.
6. The University Museum, The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø
7. The Palaeo Lab, Geography & Environment, University of Southampton, UK
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