Theme:
7. Archaeology of Sustainability through World Crises, Climate Change and War
Session format:
Discussion session (with formal abstracts)
Title:
Dryland Agriculture and Land Use; Past, Present and Future Resilience
Content:
Drylands provide a vital but sometimes overlooked land resource, ranging from forests and other wooded lands through to grasslands and deserts. They have been inhabited for thousands of years and are home to societies that display a range of adaptive behaviours. The current climate crisis is putting livelihood in drylands at risk, as climate and environmental changes are having a magnified impact on these ecosystems and the societies that inhabit them. Up to now, traditional and long-term agricultural and ecological knowledge has been largely under-explored in these regions, despite the challenges facing these areas today and the richness of information to be gained.
At the same time, we believe the rest of the world can learn from drylands: agricultural systems have typically developed in areas of more limited natural resources (e.g., rainfall, soil fertility), demanding and changing climatic contexts, and sometimes challenging socio-political systems, but are also based on crops that can be grown in a wide range of ecological niches. Communities have often transformed soils and adapted land use to maximise opportunities for crop growing in the face of aridity (e.g., cultivation terraces) and scarce resources. Similarly, the integration of farming with livestock and wild resources is often key to achieve food security in drylands. The resilience of dryland systems may therefore offer important lessons for more northern latitudes whilst knowledge of traditional and ancient land and farming adaptations also offer important understanding and solutions for drylands themselves.
In this session we would like to focus on the archaeology of dryland agriculture and land use (broadly defined), with a particular emphasis on case studies from the Mediterranean, South-west Asia, South and Central Asia and dryland Africa. This session draws its inspiration from a recently funded Marie Curie Doctoral Training Network [AGRI-DRY] with a focus on this topic.
Keywords:
Drylands, Agriculture, Land Use, Africa, Mediterranean, Traditional Ecological 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:
Nicki Whitehouse (United Kingdom) 1
Co-organisers:
Girolamo Fiorentino (Italy) 2
Affiliations:
1. University of Glasgow
2. University of Salento
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