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- Convenors:
-
Sarah Walshaw
(Simon Fraser University)
Jade D'Alpoim Guedes (University of California, San Diego)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Sessions:
- Friday 29 October, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract
This session presents recent examples of how archaeological case studies contribute to our understanding of how humans have enhanced biodiversity and resilience in natural human systems.
Long Abstract
Increasing archaeological evidence shows that humans have interacted with plant and animal species, shaping biodiversity in nearly every corner of the globe. This reality, however, is at odds with much current practice in conservation which views humans as items to be removed from natural systems. This session presents deep time perspectives which tell us about how humans have enhanced and shaped local biodiversity and adapted to climate change.
Accepted papers
Session 1 Friday 29 October, 2021, -Paper short abstract
The archaeology of hunter-gatherers living in the Mississippi floodplain between 5000 and 3000 years ago demonstrates that land use strategies are best understood in the context of the sociopolitical relationships underlying them.
Paper long abstract
This paper explores using the past to inform conservation efforts today using an archaeological case study from the Lower Mississippi Valley of the United States. Drawing from research on hunter gatherers in the region during the Late Archaic (ca. 5000-3000 years BP), I propose looking to social structure rather than resource management strategies when trying to derive resilient solutions. The ecology of the Mississippi floodplain has been radically altered by centuries of plantation and industrialized agriculture. Drawing from historical and political ecology, the ecology of an anthropogenic environment is a palimpsest of social and political history. Strategies of land use, then, are meaningless without an understanding of the social relationships that created and maintained them. Data suggest that Late Archaic society was non-hierarchical, encompassed cycles of gathering and disaggregation, and facilitated nearly continent-wide exchange networks. I discuss these aspects according to their material remains: earthworks as records of collaborative labor projects; stratified deposits rich in persimmon as evidence for cycles of gathering; and chenopod seeds and imported lithics as representatives of material and informational exchange. The social relationships encoded in these practices were essential to Late Archaic land use, a system of gathering, fishing, and hunting that persisted for millennia. If we want to learn from how Indigenous people in the past managed the Mississippi floodplain, I argue we start by looking at the difference between the social relationships that characterized the Late Archaic and the relationships that characterize the system of capitalist production threatening the floodplain today.
Paper short abstract
Plant cultivation does not always result in soil degradation, Dark Earths are examples of societies enhancing soil nutrients and physical properties which allow for centuries of cultivation. My research applies this framework to look at Coast Salish soils in a formerly cultivated landscape.
Paper long abstract
Traditional Coast Salish cultivation of root foods—e.g. Camas (Camassia spp.), Chocolate lily (Fritillaria lanceolata), and Nodding onion (Allium cernuum)—produced large quantities of food for consumption and trade. Cultivation was practiced extensively in the Salish Sea (British Columbia, CAN and Washington, USA) but did not degrade soil health. Instead, cultivation was coupled with selective harvesting, hand tilling the soil, and low-intensity burning of the fields at the end of the season, these practices continually aerated and added nutrients back to the soil which developed into distinctly dark coloured soils. Areas with darkly coloured soils are often found near village sites and within Garry oak ecosystems which are facing ecological decline due in part to a century and a half of forced removal of Indigenous people from managing their lands. My research is testing whether chemical signatures and physical traits of cultivated soil are useful methods in distinguishing these soils. If specific traits in the soil can be identified there is a better chance of their protection by archaeological regulatory bodies for which there is currently none.
Paper short abstract
Paleoethnobotanical analyses of a Late Period Columbia Plateau site indicate that a wide range of economic plant resources were processed and consumed, indicative of a dynamic and flexible subsistence system focused on plant food diversity rather than targeting specific taxa.
Paper long abstract
Earth ovens, hearths, and middens are common archaeological features in western North America that contain the residues of everyday activities. Ethnographic and archaeological research indicates these in-ground food preparation features were frequently reused over many months and years, leading to a palimpsest of past cooking events. Here we present a framework for interpreting these archaeological food preparation features. We illustrate the value of this framework through our paleoethnobotanical and artifactual analyses from a bulk food processing site on Kalispel usual and accustomed lands in northeastern Washington State. While this site and other food preparation sites throughout the Plateau are largely interpreted as remains of intensive geophyte processing, our findings indicate that a wide range of economic plant resources were processed at this location, indicative of a dynamic and flexible subsistence system. We suggest that residents and visitors to the site from ca. 2700-500 cal BP frequently returned to and reused earth oven features as they processed multiple plant food taxa including nodding onion (Allium cernuum), camas (Camassia quamash) goosefoot chenopod seeds (Chenopodium atrovirens), and pine nuts (Pinus spp.). These analyses broaden our understanding of ancestral Kalispel diets as well as offering new potential plant foods to tribal food autonomy efforts. We further see our approach as a potential solution to the common “palimpsest problem” and suggest this framework may be a fruitful way of investigating multiple food preparation recipes, methods, and events.
Paper short abstract
Tsleil-Waut, also known as Burrard Inlet, is an inlet on the West Coast of what is now known as British Columbia, Canada. It has been home to Tsleil-Waututh Nation since time immemorial. The archaeological record along with Tsleil-Waututh science and community knowledge tell Tsleil-Waut's story.
Paper long abstract
Tsleil-Waut, also known as Burrard Inlet, is an inlet on the West Coast of what is now known as British Columbia, Canada. It has been home to Tsleil-Waututh Nation since time immemorial. Now also home to the Port of Vancouver, the largest port in Canada, Tsleil-Waut is also home to dozens of commercial, industrial, and recreational interests. This project focuses on two village sites in the Inlet: Tum-tumay-whueton and Say-mah-mit. The archaeological record along with Tsleil-Waututh science and community knowledge tell Tsleil-Waut's story: over 90% of plant and animal resources have been lost to or damaged by the rising urbanization and landscape change brought by colonization and settling of what is now known as the City of Vancouver. Vulnerable ecosystems, such as the abundant clam gardens throughout the Inlet, have been contaminated and are now unsafe to harvest from. Through Tsleil-Waututh Nation's Cumulative Effects Monitoring Initiative, this work seeks to quantify what has been lost, damaged, and changed since initial contact by European colonizers over 200 years ago, using a combined effort of zooarchaeology, Tsleil-Waututh science and traditional knowledge, ecosystem modelling, and fisheries science.
Paper short abstract
Recent archaeological, archaeobotanical and zooarchaeological evidence from the Jiuzhaigou national park is challenging assumptions about how humans contributed to the high biodiversity of the Hengduan mountain chain and the effectiveness of China's Returning the farmlands to forests program.
Paper long abstract
China's tuigeng huanlin or "Returning Farmland to Forest" program has been widely praised as the world's largest and most successful payment for ecosystem services program, as well as a major contributor to China's dramatic increase in forest cover from as low as 8% in 1960 to about 21% today. Located on the margins of the eastern Tibetan plateau, the Jiuzhaigou National Park is home to over 1950 species of plants along with many animals - at least 50 of them rare or endangered. In order to the preserve the biodiversity and the scenic lakes found in the area and believing that the history of human impact inside the park was relatively short, authorities decided to remove human impact, re-settling nine villages of Tibetans who occupied the area. Since 1999, park policies have prohibited residents from farming, and wood cutting and since 2001, residents can no longer herd animals above the treeline. For Tibetans, however, these narratives are at odds with their own histories of occupation of the region and the role they play in maintaining the natural diversity of their home. Recent archaeological, archaeobotanical and zooarchaeological evidence from the park is now challenging assumptions about the shallow time depth of human occupation in the region and shows that rather than harming local biodiversity, intermediate levels of disturbance created by small scale farming, pastoralism and tree cutting have contributed to the biodiversity of this region and have done so over the course of the past 5000 years.