Theme:
1. Artefacts, Buildings & Ecofacts
Session format:
Regular session
Title:
New Insights into Agricultural Practices and Their Environmental Conditions. The Contribution of Archaeometry
Content:
Past-agriculture is widely studied, not only because it can represent an inspiration for our current agriculture, but also because it is a precious source of information about past societies. This session focuses more precisely on plant production, which was, for a long time, understudied due to a lack of evidence. Yet, the domestication, production, exploitation and diffusion of plants and crops were at the basis of numerous socio-economic transformations on different scales. Most of the information known about former crop production is based on literary sources (when available), traditional archaeobotanical or artefact studies. Nonetheless, they still give an incomplete picture of the farmers' techniques and their environmental setting. The complex entanglement existing between these different aspects remains also challenging to assess.
The last two decades have seen the development of new methodological approaches to archaeological soils and/or archaeobotanical remains to address these issues. For instance, new protocols, including biogeochemical analyses on different proxies, weed ecology or soil micromorphology can help assess various farming techniques (such as tillage, manuring, irrigation, marling) or environmental conditions (such as water status, soil types).
In this session, we want to bring together scholars from different backgrounds to discuss innovative methods for the reconstruction of field environment, ecology, land use, and farming practices, across time and space. Multidisciplinary research dealing with relationships between livestock, draught animals, and crop production, as well as studies offering experimental protocols developed in modern field experiments which could be applied to the archaeological record, are also welcome.
Keywords:
Agriculture practices, Paleoenvironment, Archaeobotanical remains, Elemental and stable isotope analyses, Weed ecology, Soil micromorphology
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:
Sammy Ben Makhad (France) 1
Co-organisers:
Fanny Gavériaux (Italy) 2
Affiliations:
1. Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, Paris
2. Independent researcher
THIS SESSION CAN NOT BE SELECTED AT THIS MOMENT