ENVIRONMENTAL ARCHAEOLOGY: Introduction Concept Meaning Sources Process

 INTRODUCTION 

A succession of interconnected discussions and discoveries set the framework for environmental archaeology in the years following the publication of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species (see p. 70). First, the inherent deep time scales weakened historical explanations of the human past, allowing biological explanations of human variation to emerge. Second, nineteenth-century industrial and technological advancement sparked a debate called Man's Role in Changing the Face of the Earth, which was the title of a major book by George Perkins Marsh (1864). Third, the dry summers of the mid-1860s reduced the water levels in Swiss lakes, revealing the extent to which direct biological evidence from the past may be maintained. Finally, Herbert Spencer gave a new physical and scientific meaning to the hitherto aesthetic concept of environment. 

Definition of Archaeology Environmental

Environmental archaeology is the study of how humans have interacted with their natural environment across time. Since the late 1960s, it has grown substantially as a sub-discipline of archaeology, largely due to the stimulation of the 'New Archaeology' (see p. 212), which draws on systems theory (see p. 259) and ecological archaeology (see p. 79). Environmental archaeology (Albarella 2001; Bintliff et al. 1988; Branch et al. 2005; Butzer 1971, 1982:5; Dimbleby 1965, Evans 1978, 2003; Evans and O'Connor 2001; Luff and Rowley-Conwy 1994; O'Connor 1998; Shackley 1981; Wilkinson and Stevens 2003) is a diverse field aimed at understanding the ecology of human communities. Environmental researchers use organic and inorganic evidence from archaeological sites to examine links between peoples and their environments, utilizing information and techniques from the earth and biological sciences. Environmental archaeology spans a wide range of interests, including those covered by the categories paleoecology, paleoenvironment, paleoeconomy, and paleogeography, but it frequently eludes such intellectual bounds in practice (see discussions in Albarella 2001). Archaeological sites are formed by a combination of cultural and non-cultural forces. Environmental archaeology, at its best, interprets human behavior within an environmental framework that includes broad social, spatial, temporal, physical, and biotic parameters. Although much environmental research traces ecological relationships at a site or within a region, at its best, environmental archaeology interprets human behavior within an environmental framework that includes broad social, spatial, temporal, physical, and biotic parameters.

The Emergence of Environmental Archaeology

The study of the link between humans and their natural environment over time is known as environmental archaeology. It has grown substantially as a sub-discipline of archaeology since the late 1960s, partly due to the stimulation of the 'New Archaeology' (see p. 212), which draws on systems theory (see p. 259) and ecological archaeology (see p. 79). Its origins, however, may be traced back to the years after Darwin's groundbreaking publication. Many of the sub-key discipline's lines of inquiry, such as the study of vertebrate remains, insects, mollusks, plant macrofossils, peat stratigraphy, and glacial geomorphology, were already underway by the end of the nineteenth century. In 1916, one of the most important methodologies in environmental archaeology, pollen analysis, was added to the mix. Environmental archaeology now involves the study of a wide range of materials that all have one thing in common: they were not molded primarily by human action. They are ecofacts, not artefacts. Their shape reflects human interaction with nature, including climate, weather, biology, and landform, rather than culture. Because all archaeological objects bore testament to their natural origin and cultural change, the line is significantly less apparent than previously imagined. Archaeologists have recently found it fascinating to consider ceramics as gathered mud and meals as artefacts, blurring and undermining these distinctions. Nonetheless, because environmental evidence poses distinct issues than artefactual evidence in general, environmental archaeology has its own set of concepts, which, predictably, have many parallels with artefact studies notions. 

Sequence, procedure, and setting 

While archaeology acquired and altered stratigraphy from geology (see p. 243), this idea has more continuity from geology to environmental archaeology, which some would see as a feature of quaternary geology in any case. In general, archaeology has emphasized sequence: a series of layers and cuts that form a ranking sequence of containers, each containing its unique artefact assemblage. Stratigraphy in geology and environmental archaeology is as much about process as it is about sequence. Not only does the order in which sediments were set down matter, but also how they got there in the first place. This is due to two factors.  

First, artefacts are often huge particles in sedimentological terms, only transported by high-energy processes like glaciers and human action. Ecofacts have a much wider range of mobility, and comprehending an environmental sequence may rely on knowing how the sediment was created in the first place. 

Second, whereas an isolated artefact may contain a wealth of information about the human past due to its artistic form, technological makeup, cultural affiliations, and age, an isolated ecofact may have lost virtually all of its knowledge due to its lack of context. 

Third, while there is a clear conceptual distinction between artefact and ‘matrix' (the medium from which it is excavated), there isn't one between ecofact and matrix. 

In both material and evidentiary perspectives, there is a continuity; the matrix itself contains fundamental environmental data. While the study of artefacts has placed an increasing emphasis on context, in environmental archaeology, process and context have always been the starting point; it is difficult to comprehend the contents without first comprehending the context. 

Proxies and indicators 

The study of ecofacts is frequently motivated by a desire to learn more about anything other than the ecofact itself. Environmental archaeologists examine beetles to derive conclusions about climate or urban living circumstances, not to study insects. They act as a stand-in for something else. The proxies we're looking at could be a single step or several steps away from the target of interest. A segment of the elm bark beetle's exoskeleton is one step away from an elm tree, two steps away from deciduous woods, and three steps away from a warm interglacial environment, and it might be used to represent all or any of these. Each phase is predicated on certain premises and assumptions, the most important of which is that natural communities and ecosystems are organized in the same way they were in the distant past. Uniformitarianism is based on this premise (see p. 274). It's a principle that's safer in systems that are close to equilibrium, but gets progressively dangerous as they get further away from it. 

Proxies come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Climate (particularly temperature) proxies, vegetation cover proxies, and human action/disturbance proxies are the most common. The best proxies have a small ecological range or niche, as well as a quick turnover and response time. Those with a slower response time, on the other hand, can help expose the type of environmental change. Early Holocene temperature mismatches between temperature-sensitive insects and temperature-sensitive trees, for example, can be linked to the speed with which post-glacial warming occurred. 

Individuals and groups of people  

Both sedimentological and biological data are used in environmental archaeology. When it comes to biological data, there are two ways to understand it. The one follows individual species and infers environmental implications from the finer features of their ecology; the other groups species into communities, and those communities serve as proxies. The choice of route is influenced by intellectual tradition as well as the nature of the content. In Britain and America, plant macrofossils have tended to study the individual method, but in Germany and Central Europe, they have preferred to examine the communal approach. 

Individual studies of vertebrates are more prevalent, but various invertebrate groups are typically investigated in community terms. The uniformitarian assumption constrains each technique in distinct ways. Too much interpretation can be based on the oscillations of a single species in the individual approach. The notion that species categories remain intact in the community method is problematic. Indeed, a direct comparison of present and prehistoric pollen rains would suggest that half of the plant communities found in Europe after the glacial maximum vanished during the Holocene's rapid warming phase. These non-analogue communities, on the other hand, are fascinating in and of themselves, and contain some of the Palaeolithic's most important human ecosystems. 

Taphonomic sequences and death assemblages 

It's crucial to distinguish between the living community and the death assemblage, especially in community approaches, because they can differ dramatically. Short-lived species, for example, will make up a far higher proportion of the latter than the former. Aside from such life-cycle characteristics, the depositional process can dramatically alter the proportions in a death assemblage. To understand and interpret an assemblage of biological pieces within the entrance of a cave, for example, we must consider elements of the creatures' original life-cycles, the behavior of birds and bats that preyed on and transported the fragments, and the cave's karstic geomorphology. This is a subset of the larger science of taphonomy (see p. 122), which studies the changes that occur as the biosphere (our planet's'skin' of living species) transitions to the lithosphere (the Earth's solid crust). Taphonomic studies focus on cultural transformations as well as natural transformations, providing one type of insight into the aspect that most directly interests archaeologists: human action. 

Human reaction and action

Environmental archaeology focuses on reconstructing historical human settings in order to better understand how they shaped life. It has also been interested in identifying human impact on the environment and its shape. Many of them entail the discovery of a quaternary sequence deviation, or a divergence from the natural climax sequence (see p. 80). This may be indicated by a decrease in tree pollen in pollen sequences, showing the contraction of climax woodland and the transition to an open agrarian landscape. At a more subtle level, disturbance may not substantially reduce tree cover, but oscillations in individual components, such as elm, which decline across most of Europe during the Early Neolithic, may indicate human intervention. The challenge with linking changes in tree cover to human activity is that other factors such as climate and disease can have similar effects. A more secure technique is to follow proxies of soil matrix disturbance, which can only be attributable to human or glacial action at particular levels. Plants whose cycle methods are exceptionally durable in the face of substantial soil disruption are markers of such disturbance. Weeds are the term for these plants. Invertebrates such as mollusks and insects, for example, are exceptionally durable in the face of recurrent devastation of their local environment and might be used as proxies for disturbance.