Environmental humanities a rethinking of landscape archaeology?

Organisers

Sjoerd Kluiving, Kerstin Líden, Christina Fredengren, Christof Mauch,  Kristine Steenbergh.

There has been an increasing archaeological interest in human-animal-nature relations and the material turn within archaeology has shifted focus from symbols and social construction to an acknowledgement of how things, places or even the agencies of land and water contribute to the shaping of relations. Parallel to this, the field of environmental humanities poses the question of how to work with the intermeshing of humans and their surroundings. Environmental Humanities aims to invigorate current interdisciplinary research on the environment, in response to a growing interest around the world in the many questions that arise in this era of rapid environmental and social change. In this session we narrow the focus to environmental humanities and landscape. The Environmental Humanities are an emerging interdisciplinary area of international research and teaching that addresses contemporary environmental challenges in a way that is historically, philosophically and culturally informed. Environmental Humanities explores questions such as: What are the historical relations between humans and landscapes? How do fiction and film shape our thinking about climate change? How did people react to floods in the seventeenth century? How do we compare different time scales in different disciplines? These questions and many more are at the heart of the Environmental Humanities (EH) as well as Landscape Archaeology (LA). To take stock of the ways in which we interpret the term EH we propose in this session a rethinking of LA. Is the broad interdisciplinary arena of EH an acceleration of the process of integration that is central in LA? Can we envision that future developments, such as the discussion of the Anthropocene concept, are in fact demanding interdisciplinary collaborations such as EH and LA? In this session we encourage researchers and scientists to submit their abstract in landscape archaeology which, in LAC, is a tradition of interdisciplinary research in geology and archaeology related to different perspectives of landscapes. This session calls for papers that reflect on how the landscape concept can be re-vitalised by taking a critical look at nature/culture relationships and benefit from moving beyond a social constructivist backing for landscape theory. We especially encourage young scientists to submit an abstract in this emerging new interdisciplinary research area. We intend to produce a special volume as the outcome of this session.

Contact: Sjoerd Kluiving     s.j.kluiving@vu.nl

List of papers

Andrew Hoaen (Institute of Science and the Environment, University of Worcester): Engaging the Senses in the Wilder World: Archaeology of the Wild

Benjamin Gearey & Suzi Richer (Department of Archaeology, University of York): Into the Woods: A Rhizomic Approach to Understanding Past and Present Woodland

Claudia Sciuto (University of Umea) & Johan Hallqvist: “What are men to rocks and mountains?” (Austen 1853:135) A New Materialist Framework for Provenance Studies on Stones

Françoise Besson (Université Toulouse 2-Jeaen Jaurès): Travel Books as Landscape Archaeology Reports

Felix Henselowsky (Institute of Geography, University of Cologne), Jonas Handke, Andreas Bolten, Karin Kindermann & Olaf Bubenzer: Multi-scale Dimensions of Relief in Geoarchaeology: A Base for Reconstructing Late Pleistocene Environments of the Eastern Desert of Egypt

H.J. Pierik (Department of Physical Geography, Faculty of Geosciences, Utrecht University), R.J. van Lanen, M.T.I.J. Gouw-Bouman, B.J. Groenewoudt & W.Z. Hoek: Aeolian Drift-Sand Dynamics, Vegetation Changes, and Population Pressure: Spatial Analysis of Inland Drift Sands and Roman and Early-Medieval Occupation Patterns in the Netherlands

Helene Martinsson-Wallin (Department of Archaeology & Ancient History, Uppsala University) & Paul Wallin: Digital Re-construction of a Bronze Age Stone Wall Enclosure and its Surrounding Landscape at Lina Mire on Gotland, Sweden

Caroline Wickham-Jones (University of Aberdeen),Martin Bates, Richard Bates & Sue Dawson: People, Land and Water at the Heart of Neolithic Orkney

List of Posters

Angelo Castrorao Barba (Centre for Research on Technology-Environment Interaction, University of Palermo), Giuseppe Bazan, Antonio Rotolo, Pasquale Marino & Stefano Vassallo: “Harvesting Memories”: Integrated approaches of Human Ecology and Landscape Archaeology in rural Sicily, the case of Castro Valley and Mt. Barraù (Corleone, PA)

Ronald van Gelder (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam): Geological Findings in Unique Streets of Diemen, The Netherlands, Reveal Different Anthropogenic Substrate Control

Oscar Jacobsson (Independent Researcher): Nature and Society: An Integrated Multi-Perspective Landscape Approach in Practice