Geoarchaeolog: The Human-Environmental Approach

✍ Scribed by Carlos Cordova

• Publisher: I.B.Tauris
• Year: 2018
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 320
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Geoarchaeology is traditionally concerned with reconstructing the environmental aspects of past societies using the methods of the earth sciences. The field has been steadily enriched by scholars from a diversity of disciplines and much has happened as the importance of global perspectives on environmental change has emerged. Carlos Cordova, provides a fully up-to-date account of geoarchaeology that reflects the important changes that have occurred in the past four decades. Innovative features include: the development of the human-ecological approach and the impact of technology on this approach; how the diversity of disciplines contributes to archaeological questions; frontiers of archaeology in the deep past, particularly the Anthropocene; the geoarchaeology of the contemporary past; the emerging field of ethno-geoarchaeology; the role of geoarchaeology in global environmental crises and climate change.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Half-title
Title
Copyright
Contents
Figures and Tables
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. The Nature of Geoarchaeology
The nature of geoarchaeology and its practitioners
The three major traditions in geoarchaeology
The field and its status in the scientific realm
Practice, training, and the rapidly evolving subfields
2. Theoretical and Methodological Foundations
Introduction
Theory in geoarchaeology
The geoarchaeological method
Geoarchaeological models of inquiry and interpretation
Reconstructing and reproducing the past
The explanation of a complex and chaotic world
Concluding remarks
3. The Geoarchaeological Record: Concept and Contexts
An epistemological background
An all-inclusive geoarchaeological record
The interpretation of the record
4. The Geoarchaeological Record: Interpretation Issues
Visualizing time, causality, and context
Causality in natural and cultural transform processes
Time-transgressive phenomena in the record
Archaeological visibility, invisibility, and absence
The virtues of off-site geoarchaeology
Legacy effects, relicts, and palimpsests
Modern analogs, reference analogs, and modern references
Sampling and interpretation of the record
Correlation and its issues
5. The Human-Environmental Tradition in Geoarchaeology
Introduction
The ecological paradigm
The ecological context in geoarchaeology
Geoarchaeology since Archaeology as Human Ecology
Global climate change and the rise of the Anthropocene
Perspectives on the human and non-human worlds
Geoarchaeology and environmental history
6. Geoarchaeology and Human Evolution
Introduction
Geology, climate changes, and biogeography
Geoarchaeology in paleoanthropological research
Contexts and issues
Case 6.1: Context and scale in the Olduvai hominin record
7. Geoarchaeology and the Anthropization of the World
Introduction
The proto-anthropic period as a “gray zone”
Geoarchaeology and the pre- and proto-anthropic periods
Case 7.1: Between paleoontological and archaeological sites: Geoarchaeological issues in Pre-Clovis mammoth localities
Case 7.2: The geoarchaeology of early Australian human environments at Lake Mungo
8. The Geoarchaeology of Hunter-Gatherer Landscapes
Introduction
Hunter-gatherer societies and their environmental contexts
Geoarchaeological approaches to hunter-gatherer landscapes
Case 8.1: Epipaleolithic hunter-gatherers of the Eastern Levant: Sites, settings, and landscapes in a rapidly changing environment
Case 8.2: The geoarchaeology of the Archaic period in the Great Plains of North America
9. The Record of Early Agriculture and its Diffusion
Introduction
Agricultural beginnings: Contextual models
Neolithic impacts on the environment at different scales
Geoarchaeological contexts and research strategies
Case 9.1: Geoarchaeology of two Near Eastern Neolithic settlements: Ain Ghazal and Ain Abu-Nukhaila, and the first agricultural environmental crisis
Case 9.2: The arrival of pastoralism around Lake Ngami: Records from sites and lake sediments
10. Complex Societal-Environmental Systems and the Collapse Phenomenon
Introduction
Complex societal-environmental systems
The collapse phenomenon
Research contexts
Case 10.1: Ancient sustainability, risks, management, and centralization in large river basins: Three examples
Case 10.2: The Classic Maya collapse and the degradation of soils in the Maya lowlands: Geoarchaeological models of landscape transformation
11. The Geoarchaeology of Rural Landscapes
Introduction
The rural landscape: Concepts and environmental approaches
Geoarchaeological strategies in ancient rural contexts
Case 11.1: The Ancient Greek rural landscape in southwestern Crimea
Case 11.2: Xaltocan: The geoarchaeology of a complex lacustrine society before Tenochtitlan
12. Human-Environmental Approaches to Soils and Paleosols
Introduction
Thematic approaches to paleosols
Natural and anthropic spectra in soil formation
Case 12.1: Pastureland, cropland, and other past human activities in the geoarchaeological record below Brussels: A look into urban dark earths
Case 12.2: The understated human influence on North American prairie soils: The concept of bison paleopastures
13. The Geoarchaeology of Natural Disasters
Natural disasters in the human-environmental context
Geoarchaeological approaches to natural disasters
Contextual levels and issues of interpretation
Case 13.1: The Xitle Volcano catastrophe and its impact on the Preclassic and Classic environmental contexts in the Basin of Mexico
Case 13.2: The geoarchaeological record of Hurricane Katrina’s disaster in New Orleans
14. Environmental Crises in the Geoarchaeological Record
Introduction
Environmental crises and their relation to societal collapse
What do environmental crises look like in the geoarchaeological record?
Case 14.1: The Old World environmental crisis at the end of the Third Millennium BC as seen in the degradation of Levantine flood plains
Case 14.2: The Dust Bowl in the (future) geoarchaeological record of the Great Plains of North America
15. Native and Colonial Landscapes
Introduction
Human-environmental interactions in the context of colonial encounters
Environmental response and native and non-native legacies in the landscape
Case 15.1: The Spanish colonial land system on an Aztec landscape: An example from the Basin of Mexico
Case 15.2: The transformation of the South African landscapes through colonial encounters: A proposal for researching the geoarchaeological record
16. Geoarchaeology and Modern Traditional Societies
Introduction
Definition of concepts and research fields
Ethnogeoarchaeology: Definition and scope
Case 16.1: Modern and ancient irrigation systems in southern Mexico
17. Geoarchaeology of the Contemporary Past
Introduction
The contemporary past defined
Human-environmental relations as continuous processes
Towards a geoarchaeology of the contemporary past
Case 17.1: The legacies of the Soviet period in the geoarchaeological record: The Crimean case
References
Index