Review of Humans and the Environment: New Archaeological Perspectives for the 21st Century

Abstract

themes prevalent in recent archaeological discourse concerning, as is evident in the title, interactions between human beings and the natural environment. The chapters within, drawn predominantly from a session held at the 2008 World Archaeological Congress in Dublin, promote multidisciplinary approaches to environmental questions, and frame much of the discussion within topical debates on how humanity might respond to future climatic change. Though both editors are focused in their own work on eastern Africa, this volume presents, if not a truly global perspective – the majority of the chapters are concerned with either Africa or the Americas – a discussion that draws together philosophically and geographically disparate examples to make a largely coherent central argument; that archaeology can offer a positive contribution within the wider environmental and development research communities. Section one reviews how ideas of what constitutes an environment have developed in European and North American (Davies, Chapter 1) and Soviet (Smyntyna, Chapter 2) archaeology. While I felt Davies’ chapter provides a useful background to recurring concepts and themes, there is no obvious Soviet influence evident in any of the later chapters. Though perhaps of interest as a stand-alone piece in its explanation of how considerations of environment during and following the Soviet Union reflected changing emphases in society and government, in the context of this volume the paper seemed slightly redundant. Section two examines distinctions between nature and culture, questioning notions of what constitutes a “pristine” environment. Balee (Chapter 3) argues eloquently that the Amazon forest is a manifestation of longterm human manipulation recognisable via observable signatures, equating the rainforest environment with an archaeological record, “environment as artefact”. A key tenet of Balee’s chapter, and, indeed, throughout the volume (e.g. Kost, Chapter 7; Anderson et al, Chapter 15), is that human-instigated environmental change should not be considered a priori as negative, an argument persuasively and steadfastly expounded by proponents of historical ecology (among whom Balee Boles, O 2014 Review of Humans and the Environment: New Archaeological Perspectives for the 21st Century. Papers from the Institute of Archaeology, 24(1): 3, pp. 1-3, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/pia.452