Call for Papers 'At the interface: Investigating coupled human and natural system from natural scientific and archaeological perspective. Challenges and opportunities' (original) (raw)

Review of Environmental Archaeology: Theoretical and Practical Approaches

This is the latest in a series of books on environmental change that are designed to show that environmental science is "big science," just as worthy of "big funding" as the hard sciences. The authors of Environmental Archaeology argue that studies of environmental change are central components of archaeological research, not narrow specializations. They define archaeology as, "the study of people and their relationship with the environment through time" (p. 1). They suggest that even in these times of "cultural wars" (Taylor, 2003), environmental archaeology can serve as a bridge between the sciences and the humanities and that empirical studies of physical remains can be reconciled with postprocessual examinations of cultural perceptions. The proper study of human cultural and biological evolution calls for the integration of humanistic and scientific approaches (Ehrenreich 1996; Hall 1977, 1997), and pointless confrontations between "scientific" and "anthropological" archaeologists serve no useful purpose. The authors of Environmental Archaeology are to be commended for their attempts at reconciliation, even if their discussion of the search for the true past is somewhat disjointed. In their view, science is limited to the search for universal laws. They do not distinguish between experimental sciences (such as chemistry and physics) and historical sciences (such as biology, geology, and archaeology). All types of science employ the sdentific method to form hypotheses from observed facts through induction. Predictions based on these hypotheses (by deductive reasoning) must be tested with new observations , and the hypotheses may be rejected. The proper application of the scientific method can produce historical narrative explanations of past events and generalizations about phenomena and processes, as well as covering laws (Mayr, 1982). The authors claim that there is no such thing as "true history" (p. 2) (since all history is based on subjectiv·~ selective interpretation) and that the effects of human agency undermine the uniforrnitarian concepts at the foundation of environmental archaeology (p. 3). If this is so, what is left? Catastrophic models of a past with no modern analogs? Is human agency so individualistic that it denies the very existence of general patterns in human behavior? Environmental Archaeology is not a collection of papers by specialists, but a review of method, theory, and applications that draws on the ideas and experiences of the authors. Unfortunately, the book seems to have been written for a restricted audirnce of archaeologists and archaeology students in the United Kingdom. In the first of their five chapters, Branch et al. define environmental archaeology as, "the study of the environment and its relationship with people through time" (p. 8). This counterpoint to their definition of archaeology (p. 1) lacks the depth and breadth of Dincauze's (2000:40, 497) characterization of environmental archaeology as the employment of an anthropocentric palaeoecological approach in the study of paleoenvironments and human habitats (also see, Farrand, 2001). Branch et al. provide a brief review of the history of environmental archaeology (which incorporates the fields of archaeobotany, geoar-chaeology, and zooarchaeology), and outline the variable (logarithmic) mega, macro, meso, and micro scales for space, time, landforms, flora, and fauna that Dincauze (2000) introduced in her more comprehensive book on the subject. Branch et al. mention several key developments in environmental archaeology that have benefited from new and improved data collection and analytical methods, including (a) chronology, stratigraphy, and site.formation processes; (b) studies of human origins, migrations, and adaptations; and (c) greater understanding of the processes involved in plant and animal domestication and the establishment of systems of food production. However, their discussion of changes in climate, environment, and material culture oYer time is superficial, and they do not provide adequate definitions of many key terms and concepts in cultural ecology, evolutionary ecology, ecosystems research, and pale-oclirnatology (there is no glossary in their text). Each chapter is followed by a list of references, and although many recent studies are cited, several well-known standard works are not (e.g., the publications ofR.A. Bryson, just to mention a few). The second chapter in Environr.iental Archaeology deals with stratigraphy, sediments, soils, and excavation methods. Most of the tenninology and concepts are pretty basic and all but one of the examples comes from the United Kingdom. Quite a bit of space is devoted to Harris matrix analyses, much less