Paper short abstract:

This paper outlines the analytical potential of adopting the key precepts of historical ecology and in particular the notion of ‘domesticating landscape’ so a to develop a new historical anthropology of East African pastoralism that is informed by an understanding of the dialectical relationships between history, culture and ecology.

Paper long abstract:

In a discussion of the idea of natural selection that occurs early on in his most seminal of publications On the origin of species by means of natural selection…, Charles Darwin noted that:

"Every one has heard that when an American forest is cut down, a very different vegetation springs up; but it has been observed that ancient Indian ruins in the Southern United States, which must formerly have been cleared of trees, now display the same beautiful diversity and proportion of kinds as in the surrounding virgin forest."

This paper takes its inspiration from these remarks so as to consider how scholarly disregard (or misrepresentation) of their significance has shaped archaeological and anthropological characterisation of the relationships between 'landscape', 'culture' and 'ecology.' Using the changing history of East African pastoralism as case material, the more specific aims of this paper are to examine, first, the ways in which archaeologists have used anthropological data on East African pastoralists and how these have changed over the last c. 70 years of research; second, how anthropologists have integrated (or not) the results of archaeological, historical and palaeoclimatic data into their accounts and models of pastoralist society; and finally, to outline the analytical potential of adopting an alternative approach to combining these diverse data sets as developed from the key precepts of historical ecology and in particular the notion of 'domesticating landscape.'