Theme:
The archaeology of material culture, bodies and landscapes
Session format:
Session, made up of a combination of papers, max. 15 minutes each
Title:
The “island laboratory” revisited: integrating environmental and socio-cultural approaches
Content:
Islands have played a considerable role in the development of environmental archaeology. Geographically isolated by water, islands are widely considered as ideal laboratories for investigating human impact on “critical ecosystems” and approached as challenging territories in which environmental constraints acquire a crucial role for human development. Parallel to this, islands have inspired the creation of innovative archaeological narratives based on interaction rather than isolation, emphasising the social experiences of landscape and concepts such as fragmentation, connectivity, islandscape and seascape. With limited integration between these two fields, island studies have become polarised between environmental and cultural approaches.
Theoretical approaches tend to disregard palaeoenvironmental data which can shed light on the formation, transformation, and experience of social landscapes. Similarly, palaeoenvironmental data are generally used to support the variety/scarcity of resources available in limited territories with little consideration to accompanying social and cultural issues. Geographical constraints tend to be equated to social isolation, even though archaeological and bioarchaeological evidence often points to the contrary.
With this session we aim to reconsider the “island laboratory” analogy, discussing and integrating paleoenvironmental, bioarchaeological and archaeological research. The session is open to studies dealing with i) the identification of social connection/isolation of islands through different kinds of archaeological records; and ii) the exploration of landscape practices and experiences combining paleoenvironmental and archaeological information. Disciplinary or geographical boundaries are deliberately avoided in order to generate discussions that bridge arbitrary theoretical/scientific divisions or geographical/historical specificities, with the aim to widen our archaeological understanding of nature-culture interactions on islands.
Keywords:
islands, bio-cultural diversity, socio-environmental processes
Session associated with MERC:
no
Session associated with CIfA:
no
Session associated with SAfA:
no
Main organiser:
Dr. Llorenc Picornell-Gelabert (Spain) 1
Co-organisers:
Dr. Manuel Calvo Trias (Spain) 1
Dr. Helen Dawson (Germany) 2,3
Dr. Gabriel Servera-Vives (Spain) 1
Dr. Alejandro Valenzuela Oliver (Spain) 4
Affiliations:
1. ArqueoUIB Research Group, University of the Balearic Islands (Spain)
2. Excellence Cluster Topoi
3. Freie Universitaet Berlin
4. Equip de Recerca Arqueològica i Arqueomètrica, Universitat de Barcelona
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