I have been looking at archaeology courses on the internet recently and have come across 'Environmental Archaeology'. Does anyone know what it is and what its for?
[URL=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki Environmental_archaeology]Environmental archaeology From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/URL]
Links within links on that page above, heres the blurb.
quote:
Environmental archaeology is the study of the long-term relationship between humans and their environments. Various sub-disciplines are involved to document and interpret this relationship, including paleoethnobotany, geomorphology, palynology, geophysics, landscape archaeology, human biology and human ecology. Environmental archaeology has seen a surge of interest in recent years, as it is one of the few disciplines that is able to provide empirical evidence to show how humans have responded to rapid climate change in the past.
a field in which inter-disciplinary research, involving archaeologists and natural scientists, is directed at the reconstruction of human use of plants and animals, and how past societies adapted to changing environmental conditions.
Put a bit more simply, it's how archaeologists can work out what the environment was like in the past, by finding out what plants and animals were around in the area they are studying, and what the climate was like etc. They do it by all sorts of scientific methods, such as examining ancient soil samples from the levels they are digging in and examining them under a microscope for pollen grains (which survive well, and are very distinctive for each plant species). If it's a plant that liked, for example, a lot of rain, or wouldn't survive cold winters etc., that's a clue to what conditions were like. Or they might find tiny snail shells, and those snails only lived in grassland, or charred grains of wheat of a type not far different from wild species - lots of things like that.
Most of TT's sites have been in Britain, where details of what the climate was like at various times in history and prehistory is already known. I think I remember something about them looking at snail shells and voles' teeth when they excavated a palaeolithic site a few years ago - no doubt someone else's memory is better than mine!
Also the process of examining soil samples under a microscope probably takes longer than 3 days - finding those tiny pollen grains must be worse than a needle in a haystack.
Originally posted by ooban: I think I remember something about them looking at snail shells and voles' teeth when they excavated a palaeolithic site a few years ago - no doubt someone else's memory is better than mine!
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Coring has been done a a number of sites examined by TT - the most recent that I recall being the the excavation on the bank of the Thames. In the latter case, the sampling results were used to assess what the landscape might have looked like in the (?) Bronze Age.
Originally posted by ooban: I think I remember something about them looking at snail shells and voles' teeth when they excavated a palaeolithic site a few years ago - no doubt someone else's memory is better than mine!
That would have been Elveden, where Andy Currant had buckets full of sludge.
........................................................................ Support the PAS Go with the FLO
Environmental archaeology doesn't just deal with climate change. It deals with a whole series of issues from the elm decline to evidence of diet, health and hygiene, living conditions, sea-level change, changing river conditions and loads of other stuff!
Pollen is relatively easy to prep, so long as you have the correct facilities and how difficult that is depends on the technique you use!
