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Dahlgren K. The final voids: the ambiguity of emptiness in Australian coal mine rehabilitation. JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE 2022. [DOI: 10.1111/1467-9655.13707] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
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Abstract
Archaeological evidence of human-influenced transformations of physical strata and the Earth system provides strong support to the broad concept of the Anthropocene, yet it also presents a powerful material challenge to some of its most entrenched assumptions. This substantial and growing body of time-transgressive evidence has the potential to radically alter the concept from the ground up and to provide a literal ground on which interdisciplinary collaboration among the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities can take place.
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Affiliation(s)
- Matt Edgeworth
- School of Archaeology and Ancient History, University of Leicester, Leicester LE1 7RH, United Kingdom
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Abstract
An emerging arena of archaeological research is beginning to deploy remote sensing technologies—including aerial and satellite imagery, digital topographic data, and drone-acquired and terrestrial geophysical data—not only in support of conventional fieldwork but also as an independent means of exploring the archaeological landscape. This article provides a critical review of recent research that relies on an ever-growing arsenal of imagery and instruments to undertake innovative investigations: mapping regional-scale settlement histories, documenting ancient land use practices, revealing the complexity of settled spaces, building nuanced pictures of environmental contexts, and monitoring at-risk cultural heritage. At the same time, the disruptive nature of these technologies is generating complex new challenges and controversies surrounding data access and preservation, approaches to a deluge of information, and issues of ethical remote sensing. As we navigate these challenges, remote sensing technologies nonetheless offer revolutionary ways of interrogating the archaeological record and transformative insights into the human past.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jesse Casana
- Department of Anthropology, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire 03755, USA
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Thompson JC, Wright DK, Ivory SJ, Choi JH, Nightingale S, Mackay A, Schilt F, Otárola-Castillo E, Mercader J, Forman SL, Pietsch T, Cohen AS, Arrowsmith JR, Welling M, Davis J, Schiery B, Kaliba P, Malijani O, Blome MW, O'Driscoll CA, Mentzer SM, Miller C, Heo S, Choi J, Tembo J, Mapemba F, Simengwa D, Gomani-Chindebvu E. Early human impacts and ecosystem reorganization in southern-central Africa. SCIENCE ADVANCES 2021; 7:7/19/eabf9776. [PMID: 33952528 PMCID: PMC8099189 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abf9776] [Citation(s) in RCA: 11] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/02/2020] [Accepted: 03/17/2021] [Indexed: 06/12/2023]
Abstract
Modern Homo sapiens engage in substantial ecosystem modification, but it is difficult to detect the origins or early consequences of these behaviors. Archaeological, geochronological, geomorphological, and paleoenvironmental data from northern Malawi document a changing relationship between forager presence, ecosystem organization, and alluvial fan formation in the Late Pleistocene. Dense concentrations of Middle Stone Age artifacts and alluvial fan systems formed after ca. 92 thousand years ago, within a paleoecological context with no analog in the preceding half-million-year record. Archaeological data and principal coordinates analysis indicate that early anthropogenic fire relaxed seasonal constraints on ignitions, influencing vegetation composition and erosion. This operated in tandem with climate-driven changes in precipitation to culminate in an ecological transition to an early, pre-agricultural anthropogenic landscape.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jessica C Thompson
- Department of Anthropology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA.
- Institute of Human Origins, P.O. Box 874101, Tempe, AZ 85287, USA
| | - David K Wright
- Department of Archaeology, Conservation and History, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.
- State Key Laboratory of Loess and Quaternary Geology, Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xian, China
| | - Sarah J Ivory
- Department of Geosciences and Earth and Environmental Systems Institute, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA.
| | - Jeong-Heon Choi
- Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Korea Basic Science Institute, Ochang, Republic of Korea
| | - Sheila Nightingale
- Department of Anthropology, City University of New York, Graduate Center, New York, NY, USA
| | - Alex Mackay
- Centre for Archaeological Science, School of Earth, Atmospheric and Life Sciences, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW, Australia
| | - Flora Schilt
- Institute for Archaeological Sciences and Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
- Universidade do Algarve, Interdisciplinary Center for Archaeology and Evolution of Human Behavior (ICArEHB), FCHS, Campus Gambelas, J27, Faro 8005-139, Portugal
| | | | - Julio Mercader
- Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada
- Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany
- Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolució Social (IPHES), Zona Educacional, 4-Campus Sescelades URV (Edifici W3), 43007 Tarragona, Spain
| | | | - Timothy Pietsch
- Australian Rivers Institute, Griffith University, Brisbane, QLD, Australia
| | - Andrew S Cohen
- Department of Geosciences, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA
| | - J Ramón Arrowsmith
- School of Earth and Space Exploration, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA
| | - Menno Welling
- Reinwardt Academy, Amsterdam University of the Arts, Amsterdam, Netherlands
- African Heritage Ltd., Box 622, Zomba, Malawi
| | | | | | - Potiphar Kaliba
- Malawi Department of Museums and Monuments, Lilongwe, Malawi
| | - Oris Malijani
- Malawi Department of Museums and Monuments, Lilongwe, Malawi
| | - Margaret W Blome
- Department of Geological Sciences, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC, USA
| | - Corey A O'Driscoll
- Centre for Archaeological Science, School of Earth, Atmospheric and Life Sciences, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW, Australia
| | - Susan M Mentzer
- Institute for Archaeological Sciences and Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
- School of Anthropology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA
| | - Christopher Miller
- Institute for Archaeological Sciences and Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
- SFF Centre for Early Sapiens Behaviour (SapienCE), University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway
| | - Seoyoung Heo
- Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Korea Basic Science Institute, Ochang, Republic of Korea
| | - Jungyu Choi
- Gyeongju National Research Institute of Cultural Heritage, Gyeongju, Republic of Korea
| | - Joseph Tembo
- Malawi Department of Museums and Monuments, Lilongwe, Malawi
| | | | - Davie Simengwa
- Lanujos Social Research and Consultancy, Blantyre, Malawi
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A Meaningful Anthropocene?: Golden Spikes, Transitions, Boundary Objects, and Anthropogenic Seascapes. SUSTAINABILITY 2020. [DOI: 10.3390/su12166459] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/16/2022]
Abstract
As the number of academic manuscripts explicitly referencing the Anthropocene increases, a theme that seems to tie them all together is the general lack of continuity on how we should define the Anthropocene. In an attempt to formalize the concept, the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) is working to identify, in the stratigraphic record, a Global Stratigraphic Section and Point (GSSP) or golden spike for a mid-twentieth century Anthropocene starting point. Rather than clarifying our understanding of the Anthropocene, we argue that the AWG’s effort to provide an authoritative definition undermines the original intent of the concept, as a call-to-arms for future sustainable management of local, regional, and global environments, and weakens the concept’s capacity to fundamentally reconfigure the established boundaries between the social and natural sciences. To sustain the creative and productive power of the Anthropocene concept, we argue that it is best understood as a “boundary object,” where it can be adaptable enough to incorporate multiple viewpoints, but robust enough to be meaningful within different disciplines. Here, we provide two examples from our work on the deep history of anthropogenic seascapes, which demonstrate the power of the Anthropocene to stimulate new thinking about the entanglement of humans and non-humans, and for building interdisciplinary solutions to modern environmental issues.
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Archaeology, environmental justice, and climate change on islands of the Caribbean and southwestern Indian Ocean. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2020; 117:8254-8262. [PMID: 32284400 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1914211117] [Citation(s) in RCA: 32] [Impact Index Per Article: 8.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/18/2022] Open
Abstract
Climate change impacts island communities all over the world. Sea-level rise, an increase in the frequency and intensity of severe weather events, and changes in distribution and health of marine organisms are among the most significant processes affecting island communities worldwide. On islands of the Caribbean and southwestern Indian Ocean (SWIO), however, today's climate change impacts are magnified by historical environmental injustice and colonial legacies, which have heightened the vulnerability of human and other biotic communities. For some islands, archaeological and paleoecological research offers an important record of precolonial climate change and its interplay with human lives and landscapes. The archaeological record suggests strategies and mechanisms that can inform discussions of resilience in the face of climate change. We detail climate-related challenges facing island Caribbean and SWIO communities using archaeological and paleoecological evidence for past climate change and human response and argue that these cannot be successfully addressed without an understanding of the processes that have, over time, disrupted livelihoods, reshaped land- and seascapes, threatened intergenerational ecological knowledge transfer, and led to increased inequality and climate vulnerability.
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Løvschal M. The logics of enclosure: deep‐time trajectories in the spread of land tenure boundaries in late prehistoric northern Europe. JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE 2020. [DOI: 10.1111/1467-9655.13252] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/27/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Mette Løvschal
- Department of Archaeology and Heritage Studies and Moesgaard MuseumAarhus University Moesgaard Allé 20, 4210‐125, 8270 Højbjerg Denmark
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Domination, Power, Supremacy: Confronting Anthropolitics with Ecological Realism. SUSTAINABILITY 2020. [DOI: 10.3390/su12072617] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/16/2022]
Abstract
In this article, we study politics as domination. From our point of view, domination, especially in the Anthropocene, has had two vital components—power and supremacy. In order to dominate, one has to have power over others. In addition, the politics of domination, such as colonial oppression of Latin America, has required reasoning, justification, and legitimation, often connected to superiority (because of religion, society, or civilization) from the oppressor’s end. Past and present political ideologies and programs, such as colonialism, imperialism, but also welfare state capitalism, neoliberalism and increasingly popular Green New Deal are examples of what we call “anthropolitics”, an anthropocentric approach to politics based on domination, power, and supremacist exploitation. In contrast to the prevailing anthropolitics, this article discusses post-Anthropocene politics, characterized by localization and decentralization, as well as a steep reduction of matter–energy throughput by introducing a theoretical frame called ecological realism.
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Leipe C, Long T, Sergusheva EA, Wagner M, Tarasov PE. Discontinuous spread of millet agriculture in eastern Asia and prehistoric population dynamics. SCIENCE ADVANCES 2019; 5:eaax6225. [PMID: 31579827 PMCID: PMC6760930 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aax6225] [Citation(s) in RCA: 24] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/08/2019] [Accepted: 08/28/2019] [Indexed: 06/10/2023]
Abstract
Although broomcorn and foxtail millet are among the earliest staple crop domesticates, their spread and impacts on demography remain controversial, mainly because of the use of indirect evidence. Bayesian modeling applied to a dataset of new and published radiocarbon dates derived from domesticated millet grains suggests that after their initial cultivation in the crescent around the Bohai Sea ca. 5800 BCE, the crops spread discontinuously across eastern Asia. Our findings on the spread of millet that intensified during the fourth millennium BCE coincide with published dates of the expansion of the Sino-Tibetan languages from the Yellow River basin. In northern China, the spread of millet-based agriculture supported a quasi-exponential population growth from 6000 to 2000 BCE. While growth continued in northeastern China after 2000 BCE, the Upper/Middle Yellow River experienced decline. We propose that this pattern of regional divergence is mainly the result of internal and external anthropogenic factors.
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Affiliation(s)
- C. Leipe
- Institute for Space-Earth Environmental Research (ISEE), Nagoya University, Research Institutes Building II, Furo-cho, Chikusa-ku, Nagoya 464-8601, Japan
- Institute of Geological Sciences, Section Paleontology, Freie Universität Berlin, Malteserstraße 74-100, Building D, 12249 Berlin, Germany
| | - T. Long
- School of Geographical Sciences, University of Nottingham Ningbo China, 199 Taikang East Road, Yinzhou Qu, Ningbo Shi 315100, Zhejiang Sheng, China
| | - E. A. Sergusheva
- Institute of History, Archaeology and Ethnography of the Peoples of the Far East, Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Pushkinskaya 89, Vladivostok 690001, Russia
| | - M. Wagner
- Eurasia Department and Beijing Branch Office, German Archaeological Institute, Im Dol 2-6, Building II, 14195 Berlin, Germany
| | - P. E. Tarasov
- Institute of Geological Sciences, Section Paleontology, Freie Universität Berlin, Malteserstraße 74-100, Building D, 12249 Berlin, Germany
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Lane SN, Bakker M, Costa A, Girardclos S, Loizeau JL, Molnar P, Silva T, Stutenbecker L, Schlunegger F. Making stratigraphy in the Anthropocene: climate change impacts and economic conditions controlling the supply of sediment to Lake Geneva. Sci Rep 2019; 9:8904. [PMID: 31266964 PMCID: PMC6606593 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-019-44914-9] [Citation(s) in RCA: 18] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/07/2019] [Accepted: 05/28/2019] [Indexed: 11/09/2022] Open
Abstract
The Anthropocene has been proposed as a profound, globally synchronous rupture in the history of the Earth System with its current state fundamentally different to that of the Holocene and driven by the geological force of human activity. Here, we show how stratigraphy is being made in a lake that is heavily impacted upon by climate change and human activities. For one of the largest inner-Alpine catchments in the European Alps, we draw attention to how sedimentation rates are a product of non-stationary, reflexive, human actions. In Lake Geneva, we identify both a human-induced climate change (HCC) signature and the effects of a recent economic shock on sediment extraction upon sediment loading to and sedimentation rates in the lake. The HCC signature thus reflects the nature of climate change impacts in this basin, where sediment accumulation rates evolve with climate, but where economic conditions contribute to shifts in the supply of sediment to the lake. Following social theory, we call this glocalization because of the combined importance and inseparability of human impacts across different spatial scales. The nature of human impacts on sediment delivery to the lake mean that the influence of humans is unlikely to be captured in the long-term depositional record.
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Affiliation(s)
- S N Lane
- Institute of Earth Surface Dynamics, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland
| | - M Bakker
- Institute of Earth Surface Dynamics, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland
| | - A Costa
- Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering, ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland
| | - S Girardclos
- Department of Earth Sciences and Institute of Environmental Science, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
| | - J-L Loizeau
- Department F.-A. Forel for Environmental and Aquatic Sciences, and Institute for Environmental Science, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
| | - P Molnar
- Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering, ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland
| | - T Silva
- Department F.-A. Forel for Environmental and Aquatic Sciences, and Institute for Environmental Science, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
| | - L Stutenbecker
- Institute of Geological Sciences, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland.
| | - F Schlunegger
- Institute of Geological Sciences, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
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Abstract
The debates about naming the unfolding times of anthropogenic global change the ‘Anthropocene’ are ultimately debates about the ‘human condition’. The proposal to amend the geological time scale by adding an ‘Anthropocene’ epoch (that is, the ‘Anthropocene proposal’ in its strict sense) is both an intra-geoscience debate about scientific sense-making and a debate about the societal context of the geosciences. This essay juxtaposes these debates, starting from three postulates: first, that the scientific methods of geological chronostratigraphy are applied rigorously; second, that anthropogenic global change is happening; and third, that the ‘Anthropocene proposal’ may be rejected if it does not meet the conditions required for its approval based on the rigorous application of the scientific methods of geological chronostratigraphy. These postulates are analysed through the lenses of the Cape Town Statement on Geoethics and the normative statements of the ‘geoethical promise’. It is found that an ethical quandary would arise if the ‘Anthropocene proposal’ were to be rejected. Consequently, and given the societal contexts of the geosciences, it is explored whether distinguishing between the geological past (as demarcated according to current chronostratigraphic methodology) and contemporary geological–historical times (characterised somewhat differently) could offer a work-around to tackle the quandary.
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Kosiba S. New Digs: Networks, Assemblages, and the Dissolution of Binary Categories in Anthropological Archaeology. AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST 2019. [DOI: 10.1111/aman.13261] [Citation(s) in RCA: 11] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 02/02/2023]
Affiliation(s)
- Steve Kosiba
- Department of AnthropologyUniversity of Minnesota Minneapolis MN 55455 USA
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Doughty K. Cultural Anthropology in 2018: Captivity and Its Unruly Failures. AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST 2019. [DOI: 10.1111/aman.13264] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/30/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Kristin Doughty
- Department of AnthropologyUniversity of Rochester Rochester NY 14627 USA
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