The Oxford Handbook of Historical Ecology and Applied Archaeology 9780199672691, 0199672695

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T h e Ox f o r d H a n d b o o k o f

H I S TOR IC A L E C OL O G Y AND APPLIED A RC HA E OL O G Y

The Oxford Handbook of

HISTORICAL ECOLOGY AND APPLIED ARCHAEOLOGY Edited by

CHRISTIAN ISENDAHL and

DARYL STUMP

1

3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Oxford University Press 2019 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted First Edition published in 2019 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number:  2018955548 ISBN 978–​0–​19–​967269–​1 Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

Preface

I have long been an advocate of the relevance of archaeology in the modern world and a firm believer in the importance of lessons from the past (see Allen et al., 2003; Little, 2002; McIntosh et al., 2000; Redman, 1999; Sabloff, 2008; van der Leeuw, 2014 for just a few examples of this perspective). So I am especially delighted by the strength and specificity of the chapters in this stimulating and important volume. In particular, the growing linkages between historical ecology and applied archaeology, that are discussed in the pages that follow, come at a most opportune time. As van der Leeuw and Redman (2002: 597) cogently state: ‘current environmental research based in life, earth, and social sciences pays inadequate attention to the long time span and slow-​moving processes that often underlie environmental crises. Archaeologists, as purveyors of the past, are well equipped to bring this long-​term perspective to bear on contemporary issues . . . We believe that the time is right and our colleagues are willing to see an enhanced role for archaeologists in the study of contemporary environmental issues’. Let me briefly focus on two of the reasons that this volume arrives so opportunely. The first is quite obvious, but the second perhaps not. The first and most important reason why such linkages are opportune is the widespread fear that without significant changes in ecological management the world over, our modern, increasingly urban world system, is not sustainable. The main question is not if but when the global system will break down if current trends continue unabated. Ecology is clearly a necessary part of any attempt to answer this crucial question. As Simon Levin (2009: vii) has forcefully noted: ‘Ecology, the unifying science in integrating knowledge of life on our planet, has become the essential science in learning how to preserve it.’ So, a related question is how to shift current trends to avert such a breakdown, and it is in this regard that a combination of both historical ecological and archaeological approaches is so promising, as the chapters in this book strongly indicate. I am particularly impressed with the possibility that such approaches may uncover processes, actions, and materials from the past that are not present in the world today but might have useful impacts in confronting modern problems (see Minnis, Chapter 2 on agriculture, for example). The second reason is that the fields of historical ecology and archaeology are increasingly seeing their subjects through the lens of complex adaptive systems, whether explicitly or implicitly (also see Crumley, Chapter 1; Heckbert et al., Chapter 16; Wells, Chapter 28; as well as Bentley and Maschner, 2003; Kohler and van der Leeuw, 2007; Lane et al., 2009; among others). A complex adaptive system is ‘A system in which large networks of components with no central control and simple rules of operation give

vi   Preface rise to complex collective behavior, sophisticated information processing, and adaptation via learning or evolution’ (Mitchell 2009: 13). Further, a complex adaptive system is ‘a system that exhibits nontrivial emergent and self-​organizing behaviors’ (Mitchell 2009: 13). Having moved well beyond older views of ecological and cultural systems as being in equilibrium and closed, as well illustrated in this volume, historical ecologists and archaeologists are now viewing the systems they study as dynamic and ever-​changing (or nonlinear systems with emergent phenomena in complex adaptive systems terms). Previous views of stable, pristine environments—​for example, the ‘pristine’ Amazon prior to modern expansion—​have been abandoned in light of both historical ecological and archaeological research. As Ekblom (Chapter 5: 85) clearly states: ‘The historical sciences in combination with new ecological thinking have taught us that landscapes are constantly in flux.’ Further (Ekblom, Chapter 5: 74), ‘In the latter part of the twentieth century there was a shift in ecological theory away from the idea of balance to one of dynamic equilibrium, or even non-​equilibrium’ (also see Golley, 1993; Kingsland, 2005). Using complex adaptive systems approaches in ecology and applied research allows practitioners not only to more productively study the past but also offers them opportunities to pursue new, potentially (and hopefully!) useful lessons from the past that might help lead to a sustainable planet in the future. Crumley (Chapter 1: 14) puts it succinctly: ‘Global-​scale models of change cannot point to viable modes of living on Earth without comprehending human history and cognition and incorporating regional diversity.’ As the chapters in this volume strongly show, the world needs the disciplines of historical ecology and applied archaeology to grow and flourish! Jeremy A. Sabloff External Professor and Past President Santa Fe Institute and Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, Emeritus University of Pennsylvania

References Allen, T. F. H., Tainter, J. A., and Hoekstra, T. W. (2003). Supply-​Side Sustainability. New York: Columbia University Press. Bentley, R. A., and Maschner, H. D. G. (eds) (2003). Complex Systems and Archaeology: Empirical and Theoretical Applications. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. Golley, F. B. (1993). A History of the Ecosystem Concept in Ecology: More than the Sum of its Parts. New Haven: Yale University Press. Kingsland, S. E. (2005). The Evolution of American Ecology, 1890–​2000. Baltimore:  Johns Hopkins University Press.

Preface   vii Kohler, T., and van der Leeuw, S. E. (eds) (2007). The Model-​Based Archaeology of Socionatural Systems. Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research Press. Lane, D., van der Leeuw, S. E., Pumain, D., and West, G. (eds) (2009). Complexity Perspectives on Innovation and Social Change. Berlin: Springer. Levin, S. (2009). Preface. In S. Levin (ed.), The Princeton Guide to Ecology. Princeton: Princeton University Press, vii–​viii. Little, B. J. (ed.) (2002). Public Benefits of Archaeology. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. McIntosh, R. J., Tainter, J. A., and McIntosh, S. K. (eds) (2000). The Way the Wind Blows: Climate, History, and Human Action. New York: Columbia University Press. Mitchell, M. (2009). Complexity: A Guided Tour. New York: Oxford University Press. Redman, C. L. (1999). Human Impact on Ancient Environments. Tucson:  University of Arizona Press. Sabloff, J. A. (2008). Archaeology Matters: Action Archaeology in the Modern World. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press. van der Leeuw, S. E. (2014). Transforming lessons from the past into lessons for the future. In A. F. Chase and V. L. Scarborough (eds), The Resilience and Vulnerability of Ancient Landscapes: Transforming Maya Archaeology through IHOPE. Archaeological Paper of the American Anthropological Association, Vol. 24. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-​Blackwell, 215–​231. van der Leeuw, S. E., and Redman, C. L. (2002). Placing archaeology at the center of socio-​ natural studies. American Antiquity 67(4): 597–​605.

Contents

List of Contributors Introduction: The Construction of the Present through the Reconstruction of the Past Daryl Stump and Christian Isendahl

xiii xvii

PA RT I   P OT E N T IA L A N D P I T FA L L S Introduction 3 Christian Isendahl and Daryl Stump 1. New Paths into the Anthropocene: Applying Historical Ecologies to the Human Future Carole L. Crumley

6

2. Thinking Like an Archaeologist and Thinking Like an Engineer: A Utilitarian-​Perspective Archaeology Paul E. Minnis

21

3. Expedience, Impermanence, and Unplanned Obsolescence: The Coming-​About of Agricultural Features and Landscapes William E. Doolittle

31

4. Just How Long Does ‘Long-​Term’ Have to Be? Matters of Temporal Scale as Impediments to Interdisciplinary Understanding in Historical Ecology Paul J. Lane

49

5. Archaeology, Historical Sciences, and Environmental Conservation Anneli Ekblom 6. Landscaping, Landscape Legacies, and Landesque Capital in Pre-​Columbian Amazonia Manuel Arroyo-​Kalin

72

91

x   Contents

7. Integrating Geoarchaeology with Archaeology for Interdisciplinary Understanding of Societal–​Environmental Relations Karl W. Butzer

110

PA RT I I   A P P ROAC H E S A N D A P P L IC AT ION S Introduction 133 Daryl Stump and Christian Isendahl 8. Digging for Indigenous Knowledge: ‘Reverse Engineering’ and Stratigraphic Sequencing as a Potential Archaeological Contribution to Sustainability Assessments 137 Daryl Stump 9. Linking the Past and Present of the Ancient Maya: Lowland Land Use, Population Distribution, and Density in the Late Classic Period Anabel Ford and Keith C. Clarke

156

10. Paleozoology Is Valuable to Conservation Biology R. Lee Lyman

184

11. Historic Molecules Connect the Past to Modern Conservation Ashley N. Coutu

208

12. Community and Conservation: Documenting Millennial Scale Sustainable Resource Use at Lake Mývatn, Iceland Megan Hicks, Árni Einarsson, Kesara Anamthawat-​Jónsson, Ágústa Edwald Maxwell, Ægir Thór Thórsson, and Thomas H. McGovern 13. Soils, Plants, and Texts: An Archaeologist’s Toolbox Federica Sulas

226

246

14. Grappling with Interpreting and Testing People–​Landscape Dynamics Charles French

263

15. From Narratives to Algorithms: Extending Archaeological Explanation beyond Archaeology C. Michael Barton

279

Contents   xi

16. Growing the Ancient Maya Social-​Ecological System from the Bottom Up Scott Heckbert, Christian Isendahl, Joel D. Gunn, Simon Brewer, Vernon L. Scarborough, Arlen F. Chase, Diane Z. Chase, Robert Costanza, Nicholas P. Dunning, Timothy Beach, Sheryl Luzzadder-​Beach, David L. Lentz, and Paul Sinclair

302

17. Wells, Land, and History: Archaeology and Rural Development in Southern Africa Karl-​Johan Lindholm

323

18. Participatory Checking and the Temporality of Landscapes: Increasing Trust and Relevance in Qualitative Research Camilla Årlin, Lowe Börjeson, and Wilhelm Östberg

345

19. Freelisting as a Tool for Assessing Cognitive Realities of Landscape Transformation: A Case Study from Amazonia William Balée and Justin M. Nolan

366

PA RT I I I   R E V I V I N G PA S T T E C H N OL O G I E S Introduction 391 Daryl Stump and Christian Isendahl 20. A 1980 Attempt at Reviving Ancient Irrigation Practices in the Pacific: Rationale, Failure, and Success Matthew Spriggs

395

21. The Invisible Landscape: The Etruscan Cuniculi of Tuscania as a Determinant of Present-​Day Landscape and a Valuable Tool for Sustainable Water Management Lorenzo Caponetti

412

22. The Rehabilitation of Pre-​Hispanic Agricultural Infrastructure to Support Rural Development in the Peruvian Andes: The Work of the Cusichaca Trust 422 Ann Kendall and David Drew 23. Applied Archaeology in the Americas: Evaluating Archaeological Solutions to the Impacts of Global Environmental Change Jago Cooper and Lindsay Duncan

441

xii   Contents

24. Indigenous Technologies, Archaeology, and Rural Development in the Andes: Three Decades of Trials in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru Alexander Herrera

459

PA RT I V   B R I D G I N G T H E PA S T A N D P R E SE N T Introduction 483 Christian Isendahl and Daryl Stump 25. Quality of Life and Prosperity in Ancient Households and Communities Michael E. Smith 26. Applied Perspectives on Pre-​Columbian Maya Water Management Systems: What Are the Insights for Water Security? Christian Isendahl, Vernon L. Scarborough, Joel D. Gunn, Nicholas P. Dunning, Scott L. Fedick, Gyles Iannone, and Lisa J. Lucero

486

506

27. Beyond Rhetoric: Towards a Framework for an Applied Historical Ecology of Urban Planning Paul Sinclair, Christian Isendahl, and Stephan Barthel

524

28. Culture, Power, History: Implications for Understanding Global Environmental Change E. Christian Wells

540

29. Energy Gain and the Evolution of Organization Joseph A. Tainter and T. F. H. Allen

558

PA RT V   C ON C LU SION 30. Conclusion: Anthropocentric Historical Ecology, Applied Archaeology, and the Future of a Usable Past Christian Isendahl and Daryl Stump

581

Index

599

List of Contributors

T. F. H. Allen Professor Emeritus in the Department of Botany, University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA Kesara Anamthawat-​Jónsson Professor of Plant Genetics at the Institute of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland Camilla Årlin (Ph.D. in Human Geography, Stockholm University) has written Becoming Wilderness: A Topological Study of Tarangire, Northern Tanzania 1890–​2004 (2015) Manuel Arroyo-​Kalin Lecturer in Geoarchaeology at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London, UK William Balée Professor of Anthropology at Tulane University, New Orleans, USA Stephan Barthel Associate Professor at the University of Gävle, Sweden, and Associated Researcher at Stockholm Resilience Centre, Sweden C. Michael Barton Director of the Center for Social Dynamics and Complexity and Professor of Anthropology in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University, Tempe, USA Timothy Beach Professor and Centennial Chair in Geography & Environment at the University of Texas at Austin, USA Lowe Börjeson Associate Professor at the Department of Human Geography, Stockholm University, Sweden Simon Brewer Assistant Professor at the Department of Geography, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, USA Karl W. Butzer (deceased) was Raymond  C. Dickson Professor of Liberal Arts, Department of Geography and the Environment at the University of Texas at Austin, USA Lorenzo Caponetti Farmer and lecturer at Casa Caponetti, Tuscany, Italy Arlen F. Chase Professor of Anthropology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, USA Diane Z. Chase Executive Vice President and Provost, and Professor of Anthropology at University of Nevada, Las Vegas, USA Keith C. Clarke Professor of Geography at the University of California, Santa Barbara, USA

xiv   List of Contributors Jago Cooper Curator and Head of the Americas Section at the British Museum, London, UK Robert Costanza Professor and Chair in Public Policy at the Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia Ashley N. Coutu Lecturer in Archaeology in the School of History, Classics, and Archaeology at Newcastle University, Newcastle, UK Carole L. Crumley Professor Emerita of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina–​Chapel Hill, USA, Visiting Professor at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, and Executive Director of the Integrated History and Future of People on Earth (IHOPE) project based at Uppsala University, Sweden William E. Doolittle is the Erich W. Zimmerman Regents Professor in the Department of Geography and the Environment at the University of Texas at Austin, USA David Drew Archaeologist, writer, and broadcaster Lindsay Duncan Research Student, Institute of Archaeology, University College London, UK Nicholas P. Dunning Professor of Geography at the University of Cincinnati, USA Árni Einarsson Professor, Faculty of Life and Environmental Sciences at the University of Iceland, and Director of Myvatn Research Station, Iceland Anneli Ekblom Senior Lecturer in the Department of Archaeology and Ancient History at Uppsala University, Sweden Scott L. Fedick Professor Emeritus of Anthropology with the Department of Anthropology, University of California, Riverside, and currently a Visiting Lecturer with the Department of Anthropology at Rhode Island College, USA Anabel Ford Director of the MesoAmerican Research Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara, USA and President of the non-​profit Exploring Solutions Past: The Maya Forest Alliance Charles French Professor of Geoarchaeology and Director of the McBurney Laboratory in the Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, UK Joel D. Gunn Lecturer at University of North Carolina at Greensboro, USA Scott Heckbert Chief Environmental Scientist at the Alberta Energy Regulator, Canada Alexander Herrera Associate Professor at Universidad de los Andes, Colombia Megan Hicks CUNY Presidential Fellow, NABO NORSEC Laboratory Supervisor, CUNY Graduate Center, New York, USA Gyles Iannone Professor in the Anthropology Department at Trent University, Canada

List of Contributors    xv Christian Isendahl Associate Professor and Senior Lecturer in Archaeology at the Department of Historical Studies, University of Gothenburg, Sweden Ann Kendall Honorary Research Associate, University College London, UK, and Director of the Cusichaca Trust Paul J. Lane Jennifer Ward Oppenheimer Professor of the Deep History and Archaeology of Africa at the University of Cambridge, UK, and Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Geography, Archaeology, and Environmental Studies, Witwatersrand University, South Africa R. Lee Lyman Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of Missouri–​Columbia,  USA David L. Lentz Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Cincinnati and Executive Director of the UC Center for Field Studies, USA Karl-​Johan Lindholm Associate Professor and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Uppsala University, Sweden Lisa J. Lucero Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a Professor in the Anthropology Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana–​Champaign,  USA Sheryl Luzzadder-​Beach Professor, and Fellow of the C.B. Smith, Sr. Centennial Chair in U.S.–​Mexico Relations, Department of Geography and the Environment at the University of Texas at Austin, USA Thomas H. McGovern Professor in Anthropology at City University of New York, USA Ágústa Edwald Maxwell Marie Curie Fellow at the Department of Archaeology, University of Iceland, Iceland Paul E. Minnis Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of Oklahoma, USA Justin M. Nolan Associate Professor and Chair of Anthropology at the University of Arkansas, USA Wilhelm Östberg Associate Professor in Social Anthropology and affiliated researcher at the Department of Human Geography, Stockholm University, Sweden Vernon L. Scarborough Distinguished University Research Professor and Charles Phelps Taft Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Cincinnati, USA Paul Sinclair Professor Emeritus at the Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Uppsala University, Sweden Michael E. Smith Professor of Archaeology in the School of Human Evolution & Social Change, Arizona State University, USA

xvi   List of Contributors Matthew Spriggs Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow and Professor of Archaeology, School of Archaeology and Anthropology, College of Arts and Social Sciences, Australian National University Daryl Stump Lecturer in the Department of Archaeology and the Department of Environment and Geography, University of York, UK Federica Sulas Assistant Professor at the Danish National Research Foundation Centre for Urban Network Evolutions, Aarhus University, Denmark Joseph A. Tainter Professor of Sustainability in the Department of Environment and Society, Utah State University, USA Ægir Thór Thórsson Research scientist at the Institute of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Iceland, Iceland E. Christian Wells Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Centre for Brownfields Research and Redevelopment, University of South Florida, USA

Introduction The Construction of the Present through the Reconstruction of the Past Daryl Stump and Christian Isendahl

Setting the Scene The seed for this volume was planted with the editors’ organizing of a session on Applied Archaeology and Historical Ecology:  Archaeological Approaches to the Definition and Application of Historic Resource Exploitation Strategies at the Sixth World Archaeological Congress (WAC) in Dublin, in July 2008. The starting point for the session was the observation that attempts by government agencies and non-​governmental organizations (NGOs) to intervene in the operation of local resource exploitation strategies are frequently motivated by reference to historical arguments. For instance, conservationists may present landscapes as virgin territory unaffected by local populations, while proponents of the extension or reapplication of indigenous knowledge (IK) tend to emphasize the longevity and environmental sustainability of local cultivation techniques. Supporters of modernization, on their part, may highlight examples of local environmental degradation or stress the inadequacies of indigenous techniques in the face of perceived social, economic, or environmental crises, and their proposed interventions may rely on models of ecological or social change that are implicitly historical or which are themselves extrapolated from historical case studies. With this discourse as backdrop, archaeology’s emphasis on material culture, long-​term perspective, and close alignment with cognate fields such as palaeoecology and palaeoclimatology seem to offer the tools necessary to challenge or qualify these narratives and models. Indeed, a limited number of archaeological projects have taken this process further by attempting to re-​establish abandoned agricultural features such as raised fields, irrigation canals, and cultivation terraces; an approach that correlates well with current thinking regarding the desirability of low external input, locally managed, sustainable resource use. The WAC session explored questions arising from these issues by focusing on the practical, theoretical, methodological, and political implications of archaeological involvement in IK-​based rural development projects, drawing on fieldwork-​based research and practical applications in Bolivia (Christian Isendahl), France (Carole

xviii    Daryl Stump and Christian Isendahl Crumley), Italy (Lorenzo Caponetti), Peru (Ann Kendall), and Tanzania (Daryl Stump). The width and depth of issues introduced in presentations and discussions at the session and immediately following it made clear the need for further explorations of approaches to a usable past from the vantage points of historical ecology and applied archaeology. This volume is the result of that expansion. Its appearance, and the multi-​faceted discourse within, form part of a reshaping of the ontological framework of archaeology and the anthropological historical sciences from one with a focus distinctly placed on the past towards an inter-​and transdisciplinary critical science that integrates the empirical study of the past with approaches to understand the present, ultimately to offer reflection on alternative futures. This is a reshaping that has involved and continues to involve a host of scholars with very different backgrounds and experiences from across the globe. While editing this book, we have learned of the passing of three scholars, colleagues, and friends instrumental to this reshaping of the scope of archaeology: Karl W. Butzer (1934–​2016), who contributed Chapter 7 to this volume, William I. Woods (1947–​2015), and Denise Pahl Schaan (1962–​2018). Their research and publications have made major and lasting impacts on the field of overlap between historical ecology and applied archaeology. This volume is dedicated to their memory.

The Scope of This Volume The authors of the chapters of this book were presented with the challenge to examine the ways in which data from the past has been, or could be, used to benefit communities today. In order to achieve this they were asked to present frank assessments of the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches and available data and methods, and to propose—​if they so wished—​recommendations for future directions, either in terms of subject matter or methodologies; the latter including not just techniques for retrieving additional and more relevant data, but also methods for combining data from disparate sources and proposals for innovative interdisciplinary conceptual approaches to the interpretation of historic data and the linking of this knowledge to contemporary situations. This collection of related tasks is far from easy, and indeed is one that some archaeologists and historians have even rejected as a fool’s errand (e.g. Pluciennik, 2009). As the chapters collected here make clear, however, information from the past can inform actions and policies today in a number of ways, but it is also necessary to remain alert to the limitations of doing so. The volume could thus be regarded as a ‘critical friend’ of historical ecology and applied archaeology. Initially the focus of the volume was on archaeological data and techniques, but since archaeological research includes the study of written and oral historical sources (historical archaeology), comparative insights drawn from the observation of living communities (ethnoarchaeology), the study of soils and sediments (geoarchaeology), and the study of plants and animals (environmental archaeology, bioarchaeology, archaeobotany, zooarchaeology) it was clear that focusing narrowly on the material

Introduction   xix culture of the past was too prescriptive. The scope of the volume was thus expanded to include any research technique that explores how information from or about the past can inform our understanding of the present, and thereby help plan for the future. While roughly half of the chapters retain this focus on archaeology, the volume includes methodological reviews and case studies from a range of research techniques, including those based on interviews and/​or observations of living communities, and are authored by individuals that describe themselves as anthropologists, archaeologists, environmental scientists, ethnographers, geographers, and historians. Having noted this disciplinary diversity, however, it is also noteworthy that all chapters advocate an interdisciplinary approach, demonstrating the advantages of combining a variety of different techniques in multiple ways (on the significance of interdisciplinarity see e.g. Butzer, Chapter 7; Crumley, Chapter  1; Doolittle, Chapter  3; Isendahl and Stump, Chapter  30; Lane, Chapter 4). This reflects the fact that drawing lessons from human history will always require, at some level, an attempt to understand the complex interactions between human communities and their respective resource bases, and that to disclose this complexity to any significant degree of certainty requires input from multiple disciplines. In one way or another all of the chapters cover this broad topic of human–​environment interactions, itself the broadest possible definition of what constitutes historical ecology—​ though definitions are returned to below and in the concluding chapter (Isendahl and Stump, Chapter 30). It is worth acknowledging that the very premise of the volume might seem counterintuitive to anyone unfamiliar with either historical ecology or applied archaeology: why on earth would you go to the trouble of looking for answers to current concerns by studying the history of communities in the past? If, for example, sustainable farming is your concern, why is agronomy (or any cognate field) not your main skill? The first response to this question is to note that none of the chapter authors started their careers with this aim in mind, all having come to the realization that some of the processes they were studying out of purely academic interest in the past had the potential to shed light on contemporary concerns. Perhaps the most obvious and direct examples of this are presented in Part III on ‘Reviving Past Technologies’, the earliest advocates of which were initially interested in exploring how long-​abandoned agricultural techniques operated in the past, the answers to which suggested that these same techniques could be of use in the present (Cooper and Duncan, Chapter 23; Kendall and Drew, Chapter 22; Spriggs, Chapter 20; see also e.g. Erickson, 1998). The chapters in Part IV on ‘Bridging the Past and Present’ in essence follow the same trajectory but on a grander scale, most famously perhaps in Tainter’s (1988) analysis of why historic and ancient civilizations collapsed—​an analysis that is extended here in the chapter by Tainter and Allen (Chapter 29) to conclude that the global economy’s current reliance on fossil fuels mirrors a process of diminishing investment returns experienced during the later phase of the Roman Empire. Other chapters in this section take similar comparative approaches to explore aspects of societies rather than societies as a whole, for example the sustainability of cities (Sinclair et al., Chapter 27) or water management systems (Isendahl et al., Chapter 26), or indices of household prosperity and ‘quality of life’

xx    Daryl Stump and Christian Isendahl (Smith, Chapter 25). The chapters in Part IV are thus based on the recognition that archaeological and historical research has created a vast archive of studies of communities in different social-​environmental settings over long time frames, and that the examination of this archive potentially makes it possible to define general rules that are relevant to both ancient and contemporary societies—​or, at the very least, highlight factors and processes that may not be evident from observational studies. Although the chapters in Part II, ‘Approaches and Applications’, are grouped together because they primarily discuss the strengths and weaknesses of particular research techniques, many of the chapters in this section broadly take this stance to the utility of knowledge about the past, noting that the sheer number of historical and archaeological case studies of the interaction between humans and their environments is too important a resource to neglect within current studies of sustainable management. Indeed, provided these studies have sufficient detail, the techniques outlined and discussed in Part II have the potentially crucial advantage that they can help define the trade-​offs, outcomes, and unintended consequences of processes that can take several generations or even centuries to become apparent, and thereby to identify thresholds of change and tipping points beyond which remedial action is unlikely to be effective. Observational studies cannot directly record such long-​term processes or the effect of variables changing over long time scales, and although models and computer simulations can use recent observations to predict future outcomes, such models still need to be calibrated and validated, suggesting a further role for the use of archaeological and historic data within predictive modelling—​an approach discussed in different ways in the chapters by Barton (Chapter 15), French (Chapter 14), and Heckbert et al. (Chapter 16). Indeed, non-​specialists might be surprised to learn that all predictive models of future global climate change rely on understanding how complex climatic feedbacks have operated in the past, and then employ these mechanisms to forecast future change. For much of the world the raw data needed for modelling is either absent or dispersed through innumerable archaeological, historical, and palaeoecological research findings (Dearing et al., 2015); with these findings particularly relevant for the period of rapid environmental change that many now—​popularly and academically—​refer to as the Anthropocene (Crumley, Chapter 1; for a critical stance see Doolittle, Chapter 3). This last point regarding the absence of data could, in fact, serve as an answer to why the study of the past is significant to contemporary issues, because perceptions of the past are frequently marshalled in support of actions in the present regardless of whether significant historic facts exist or not (Stump, 2010). Many of the chapters here, but particularly those in Parts I and II, illustrate important examples of this, including the long-​ held assumption that the Amazonian rainforests were undisturbed prior to European colonization in the sixteenth century AD onwards (e.g. Arroyo-​Kalin, Chapter  6; Balée and Nolan, Chapter 19), and what might be regarded as the opposite assumption that communities in eastern and southern Africa have been degrading natural resources throughout the twentieth and twenty-​first centuries (Årlin et al., Chapter 18; Ekblom, Chapter 5; Lindholm, Chapter 17). Assumptions of this kind have influenced and continue to influence policy, a striking and unusually clear example of which is

Introduction   xxi presented by Lyman (Chapter 10), who notes that attempts to return national parks in the United States to pre-​disturbance conditions have included the eradication of species that were assumed to be exotic but which are now known from zooarchaeological data to have been indigenous. Even from this very brief summary it should be clear that data from the past is relevant to current policies, but this does not mean that it is always possible to produce relevant data and interpretations at the resolution and level of precision required to directly inform policy, or that communicating results to potential or known stakeholders is easy (e.g. Årlin et al., Chapter 18; Barton, Chapter 15; Lyman, Chapter 10; Minnis, Chapter 2; Smith, Chapter 25; Wells, Chapter 28). This combination—​discussions of the strengths and weaknesses of particular techniques and discussions of how and to whom they should be communicated—​is important for the aims of the volume. The book was, however, never intended as a ‘how-​to’ guide or as a field handbook, even in its earlier incarnation as a primarily archaeological text. Instead, it is intended to provide an overview of the issues relevant for any attempt to use data from the past to inform the present—​both the potential and the pitfalls—​and is aimed at both archaeological and non-​archaeological researchers and students. The volume reviews the results of previous projects and looks towards the future of archaeological applications, employing a combination of theoretical discussions, methodological papers, and case studies from a range of geographical areas and historical periods. Attention is directed to the ways in which existing and current research can be—​and indeed are being—​employed within broader debates, and stresses the necessity of further work. The fact that archaeological case studies may be interpreted or misinterpreted as precedents of the sustainability of local practices or as examples of environmental degradation is highlighted, placing emphasis on evaluating the strengths and deficiencies of current data and on the application and suitability of available archaeological methods to contribute insight on issues of contemporary relevance. Hence, the volume is intended as a key text for those wishing to explore the potential of applied archaeology, and for those who work in fields that employ historical data to provide historical baselines or to assess long-​term trends.

A Note on Definitions Having given the authors the difficult task of defining how and in what ways the past is relevant today, it was important to the aims of the volume that definitions of historical ecology and applied archaeology were allowed to emerge from the discussion rather than be prescribed from the outset. The various contributors to the volume certainly take differing views on what is meant by both historical ecology and applied archaeology, and pursue different connotations of central concepts. These include terms that seem to have clear meanings in common parlance like ‘sustainability’ and ‘resilience’, but which take on more specific connotations in the context of these discussions. Examining what is meant by these terms in turn raises the connotations of further terms, some of

xxii    Daryl Stump and Christian Isendahl which are potentially contentious and context-​dependent, such as ‘degradation’, ‘trade-​ offs’, ‘baselines’, ‘legacies’, ‘diversity’, ‘biodiversity’, and even ‘prosperity’, ‘poverty’, and ‘failure’. Exploring why the meanings of these terms are not as straightforward as they first appear is in itself instructive.

Historical Ecology Balée (2006)—​a principal founder of historical ecology—​offers a seminal definition of its ontology and approach, for which Crumley (Chapter 1)—​another principal founder—​offers a clear summary (see also Isendahl and Stump, Chapter 30). Balée’s definition draws a distinction between historical ecology, political ecology, and culture ecology, with the emphasis of historical ecology clearly being change through time. Wells (Chapter  28) partially dissolves this separation, noting that understanding change through time requires an understanding of political and cultural change, and thus that each of these approaches could be said to encompass the other (see also Butzer, Chapter 7). The distinction is nevertheless important because historical ecology’s focus demands analysis of the causes and consequences of historical change. Like Wells, Crumley (Chapter  1) also notes this relationship to political ecology, references the methodological debt historical ecology owes to environmental history and the Annales school of history (the latter an avowedly political project), and sees a focus on providing information pertinent to modern resource management as integral to historical ecology’s aims; the latter contrary to Balée (2006) and Isendahl et al. (Chapter 26) who regard this as ‘applied historical ecology’. Interestingly, and unusually, Crumley also adds a moral dimension to historical ecology of ‘equity, respect, [and] tolerance of difference’ (Chapter 1: 8). It is arguable that these moral arguments are not simply statements of ideology but instead emerge from the facts, i.e. that studies of subaltern and marginalized local societies (e.g. Balée and Nolan, Chapter 19; Ford and Clarke, Chapter 9) demonstrate that their ecological knowledge is ‘worthy of respect’. There is, however, a clear overlap between Crumley’s description of the aims of historical ecology with the aims of development and conservation projects that attempt to learn from or reapply local resource exploitation strategies; a point returned to below. To Crumley, historical ecology is most useful at landscape scales. A strong case can be made for this position, but it is also clearly crucial to be able to bridge between scales to comprehensively understand the complete range of sociocultural and environmental processes and systems that influence the development of a landscape. Indeed, as both Crumley (Chapter  1) and Lane (Chapter  4) note, the widely influential concept of ‘panarchy’ was explicitly designed to deal with influences between scales (Gunderson and Holling, 2002), and the fact that both authors reference this approach serves to demonstrate that complex systems ecology and resilience theory have become incorporated into historical ecology thinking. This having been said, although resilience theory is referenced and employed by many historical ecologists and those interested in

Introduction   xxiii the application of data about the past in present settings (e.g. Fisher et al., 2009; Redman and Kinzig, 2003), it is by no means an integral part of historical ecology to every author of the present volume.

Resilience In common parlance the term ‘resilience’ is often seen as a synonym for ‘sustainability’, but the authors who use the term within the current volume do so in reference to ‘resilience theory’ (particularly Crumley, Chapter  1; Lane, Chapter  4), as first posited by Holling (1973). While this theory of ecological change and the definition of resilience within it has subsequently been refined, ‘resilience’ was used from the outset to connote the ability of a system to recover from a disturbance, and is now most commonly defined as the capacity of a system to absorb and deal creatively with stress, to reorganize and to continue developing without losing fundamental functions (Barthel and Isendahl, 2013; Carpenter and Folke, 2006; Folke, 2006). ‘Resilience’ is different from ‘sustainability’, which at its simplest merely refers to the ability of a system to persist through time (Lane, Chapter 4). This has clear echoes in Holling’s (1973) contrast between ‘stability’ and ‘resilience’ that is based on the recognition that a system could be highly unstable (i.e. constantly changing) and yet repeatedly return to its former condition (i.e. be highly resilient). The classic example is a forest recovering from fire (Holling, 1973: 15), whereby the destruction of vegetation initially creates conditions conducive to the growth of grasslands, but where a longer period of recovery sees the re-​establishment of a forest composed of the same species that existed prior to disturbance. This succession is now known as the ‘adaptive cycle’ (e.g. Gunderson and Holling, 2002), with—​in the forest fire example—​a phase of ‘reorganization’ after the fire; a ‘growth’ stage characterized by fast-growing opportunistic species; a ‘conservation’ phase characterized by a diverse ecosystem including long-​lived, slow maturing species; followed by a ‘release’ phase of another fire. Analysing the factors that prompt a system to pass through phases of the adaptive cycle thus offers the potential to quantify resilience, with early proponents noting that resilience could be measured by recording the time required for an ecological system to return to a pre-​disturbance state, while more recent approaches have focused on attempts to quantify the amount of disturbance necessary to force a change (Gunderson, 2000). This change could be a shift into another phase of the adaptive cycle, or could break the cycle entirely, for instance by so depleting the seedbank that the forest in the fire example can never be re-​established. As Crumley (Chapter 1) makes clear through multiple examples, this approach is applicable to ecosystems occupied and modified by humans, but can also be applied to human social systems, and to ‘socioecological systems’ (citing Folke et al., 2002): i.e. ecosystems that are so integrated with human societies as to be impossible to understand as purely ‘natural’ dynamics. Such systems are self-​evidently complex, since they involve multiple factors interacting at different spatial scales and at different rates

xxiv    Daryl Stump and Christian Isendahl (Lane, Chapter 4), which in turn means the span of time under examination can influence whether or not a system is seen as ultimately resilient or in a state of constant flux (Ekblom, Chapter 5). Nevertheless, archaeological examples presented by Isendahl et al. (Chapter 26) and Sinclair et al. (Chapter 27) show how parts of complex socioecological systems can be studied in isolation in order to assess their resilience to particular threats, with both chapters concluding that resilience is highest when there are the greatest number of future options, and that limiting options increases vulnerability. To put this conclusion in terms of the adaptive cycle: the reorganization and growth phases offer the greatest number of potential future pathways, whereas the conservation phase reduces options and thereby increases the chance that the system will dramatically collapse. Although not couched in terms of resilience theory, Tainter and Allen (Chapter 29) reach precisely the same conclusion, noting that systems of resource extraction that can obtain high levels of energy from low investments of effort do not require complex organizations and are correspondingly highly flexible and sustainable, whereas systems characterized by low energy returns on investments (EROI) are often more complex and fragile (an analytical approach also used by Isendahl et al., Chapter 26). What Tainter and Allen term ‘complexity’ would be termed ‘connectedness’ by resilience theorists (e.g. Gunderson and Holling, 2002) since highly biodiverse ecosystems have high numbers of mutually dependent species; complex socioeconomic systems have high numbers of interconnected elements; and even comparatively simple human resource procurement strategies may have deeply embedded cultural ties that make them extremely inflexible and resistant to change. Identifying factors of complexity, connectivity, diversity, flexibility, adaptability, and propensity for change, and their influence on future pathways, is thus an important potential contribution of studies of the history of human societies and linked socioecological systems, and it is certainly rare—​at least within the archaeological literature—​for authors to confidently highlight factors from historical case studies that are equally relevant to modern policy-​makers (Isendahl et al., Chapter 26; Sinclair et al., Chapter 27; Tainter and Allen, Chapter 29).

Sustainability, Degradation, and Trade-​Offs Since entering the global discourse in the 1980s ‘sustainability’ has become one of the most popular concepts in science, politics, governance, planning, economics, and business. However, once popularized (e.g. when distorted by marketing strategists to green wash businesses) it has lost coherence, thus forfeiting precision. Lane (Chapter 4) notes that it is much in vogue—​as exemplified by the Sustainable Development Goals (United Nations, 2015)—​but vague. Doolittle (Chapter 3) makes a similar point, observing that ‘sustainable development’ is potentially an oxymoron since ‘sustain’ connotes lack of change while ‘development’ refers to the opposite. At the core of the sustainability concept is a temporal dimension associated with ‘persistence’, ‘permanence’, or a situation that will continue ‘indefinitely’. Archaeologists, whose primary data sources cogently

Introduction   xxv suggest that all things must pass, should be well equipped to strenuously test these semantic associations. The four-​point query of sustainability outlined by Tainter and colleagues (Allen et al., 2003, cited by Hicks et al., Chapter 12) provides an analytical framework to do so, arguing that it is insufficient to ask whether a natural resource management strategy is sustainable, and that we need to ask more specifically ‘sustainability of what, for whom, at what cost, and for how long?’ The term is thus context-dependent, because it is possible to prioritize economic sustainability over ecological sustainability (Stump, Chapter 8), and it is perfectly reasonable to describe a system as being sustainable for period X, but as being unsustainable (or non-​resilient) thereafter. Hence, archaeology’s long-​term perspective can contribute to assessments of sustainability by, for instance, offering examples where recovery rates exceed rates of extraction (e.g. Hicks et  al., Chapter  12), but it can also provide salutary examples, such as Butzer’s (Chapter 7) exploration of sustainability’s apparent opposite: degradation. However, many of the same problematic issues also apply to degradation as a concept. To an ecologist any process that disturbs a natural system is regarded as degradation. Yet this degradation can have positive outcomes for some species, most obviously in the form of soil and vegetation manipulation when creating agricultural land. Indeed ‘human niche construction’, as Arroyo-​Kalin (Chapter 6) puts it, is often the aim of sustainable development projects. As with ‘sustainability’, therefore, it is possible to create a system of resource exploitation that ‘degrades’ some aspect of an environment while ‘improving’ it for its human inhabitants, or which improves the survival chances for one human community to the detriment of a community elsewhere. Virtually all of the chapters address this issue to some extent. Ford and Clarke (Chapter 9) and Balée and Nolan (Chapter 19), for instance, provide examples of disturbance (and hence degradation) in Neotropical forests where human communities could be regarded as well-​ integrated within the ecosystem. Once again, however, these examples of ‘forest gardens’ are effectively a question of scale: settlements are farmed until the soils are so degraded that the settlement or cultivation plot must be abandoned and re-​established elsewhere, meaning that a decade-​scale, highly localized study would record degradation, whereas a longer-term perspective studying the wider landscape would see a sustainable and low-​impact strategy (see also Ekblom, Chapter 5). Many other chapters present examples where degradation ultimately led to systems becoming unsustainable. Several chapters look at soil erosion, for example, as well as at methods to prevent it, such as the construction of agricultural terraces. At first glance erosion seems self-​evidently a degradation, yet here too we see examples where degradation in one part of the landscape (hillside soil erosion, for example) led to benefits elsewhere (e.g. exploitation of the deposited colluvium) (Barton, Chapter 15; French, Chapter 14; Stump, Chapter 8). In current policy terms this can be regarded as a form of ‘trade-​off ’: the loss of something has a cost, but this cost might create a corresponding benefit. This is not to say, of course, that individuals, households, or communities in the past or present, necessarily think consciously in these terms:  Doolittle (Chapter  3) argues that individuals do not, and notes that many changes that have long-​term consequences occur so gradually

xxvi    Daryl Stump and Christian Isendahl that individuals could not perceive them. Arroyo-​Kalin (Chapter 6) makes an important and related point, since to talk of ‘trade-​offs’ implies intentional modifications by humans, but the immediate consequences and long-​term legacies of both intentional and unintentional interventions almost always have unintended costs and/​or benefits. The long time frames and multiple scales of analysis offered by combining archaeological, historical, and palaeoecological data create the opportunity to learn from these trade-​offs in the past, and to examine cumulative impacts of degradation. Barton (Chapter 15) and French (Chapter 14), for example, use computer models of human impacts on landscapes and note several case studies where soil erosion initially benefited small-​scale communities but ultimately led to detrimental degradation (see also Stump, Chapter 8). Heckbert et al. (Chapter 16) and Tainter and Allen (Chapter 29) explore these same issues of initial benefits leading to ultimate costs on the far grander scale of long-​lived states. Approaching these issues from an historical perspective serves to highlight trade-​offs and complexities resulting from issues of scale (see also Hegmon, 2017) and provides lessons with policy implications, some of which are highly case specific, while others provide universal insight.

Narratives and Indigenous Knowledge The idea that lessons from the past could have policy implications in the present played an important role in the early development of both historical ecology and applied archaeology. For historical ecology this is most obvious in the rejection of the ‘pristine myth’ (e.g. Denevan, 1992) that large parts of the globe—​in particular Australia, sub-​Saharan Africa, the Americas (especially the Amazonian rainforest)—​had been wholly or largely undisturbed by human communities prior to European colonialism from the late fifteenth century AD onwards. Archaeological, historical, and palaeoecological data of various kinds has now comprehensively debunked this fallacy (e.g. Arroyo-​Kalin, Chapter 6; Butzer, Chapter 7; Ekblom, Chapter 5), and in doing so has discredited any environmental conservation projects based upon this misconception (Lyman, Chapter 10). For the earliest forms of applied archaeology, attempts to influence policy by employing data on the past were more direct, and took the form of efforts to reconstruct and reuse abandoned agricultural techniques such as raised fields, irrigation systems, and agricultural terraces; many of which predated European colonialism, and were assumed to have been abandoned as a result of their environmental or economic unsustainability (Cooper and Duncan, Chapter 23; Herrera, Chapter 24; Kendall and Drew, Chapter 22; Spriggs, Chapter 20). Both the pristine myth and the assumption of unsustainable practices contain what have become known as ‘narratives’: self-​contained stories of cause and effect that appear to justify a particular course of action. Many of the chapters here provide examples of such narratives and serve to demonstrate their potential rhetorical power and hence influence on policies and developmental interventions. Both Sulas (Chapter 13)

Introduction   xxvii and Ekblom (Chapter 5), for example, explore ‘degradation narratives’ in Africa, with Ekblom offering case studies where the practices of local communities were blamed for depleting assumed pristine ecosystems, while Sulas provides an example of recent soil erosion in Ethiopia that was presumed to be a legacy of long periods of poor local management (cf. Butzer, Chapter 7). Historical information from multiple sources (archaeological; geoarchaeological; oral testimony and tradition; the accounts, maps, drawings, and photographs of earlier travellers; comparisons of aerial photographs and satellite images; palaeoenvironmental reconstructions) have all been used to test these narratives, and thereby to challenge the logic and efficacy of the practices they have helped promote. To Årlin et al. (Chapter 18) all narratives are representations of change which can themselves become artefacts that are debated, regardless of whether or not these assumed truths have any empirical grounding. Indeed, it is not uncommon for narratives with colonial origins to become enmeshed within local beliefs and to be reported back to researchers as if they were part of a community’s cultural history (which in a sense they are), making the process of unravelling them difficult and politically sensitive (Årlin et al., Chapter 18; Lindholm, Chapter 17). Testing the validity of a ‘received wisdom’ (Leach and Mearns, 1996) is thus in itself an important contribution of research into the past, as is determining whether these perceptions have their origins in political or economic interest groups, and whether they are maintained (knowingly or unknowingly) by interest groups in the present (Ekblom, Chapter 5; Lindholm, Chapter 17). This job of deconstructing narratives is further complicated by what Fairhead and Leach (2003, cited by Ekblom, Chapter 5) call ‘intertextuality’: the fact that some narratives can only be understood in reference to others, just as some texts can only be understood within a wider canon. Moreover, challenging narratives risks creating counter-​narratives. Demonstrating the fallacy of the pristine myth certainly had this effect, leading some to forward the idea that indigenous communities prior to extractive colonial exploitation lived in harmony with their environments; an equally dangerous and empirically unsupportable notion that Butzer (Chapter  7; see also Balée, 1998) succinctly and effectively refutes. Nevertheless, at some level this perception of the sustainability of pre-​industrial societies could be said to lie behind the idea that development planners and ecological conservationists can learn from so-​ called ‘indigenous knowledge’, though historical critiques of failed modernization schemes certainly played a part here too (Stump, Chapter 8 citing Nazarea, 2006). In Herrera’s view (Chapter 24), early attempts to use archaeology to directly contribute to sustainable development through the re-​establishment of ‘indigenous technical knowledge’ came very close to endorsing this romanticized idea, albeit tacitly. It is thus clearly necessary to continually question the empirical basis of narratives that are based on perceptions of historical and ongoing change; something that all of the chapters here are attempting to achieve by focusing on the consequences and legacies of human–​environment interactions, rather than advocating for particular modes of resource use.

xxviii    Daryl Stump and Christian Isendahl

Baselines, Thresholds, and Tipping Points One of the most important contributions of the challenging of narratives has been the rejection of the simplistic notion of systemic baselines or benchmarks in favour of tracking non-​equilibrium system dynamics and the nature of socioecological systems in flux (e.g. Ekblom, Chapter 5; Lane, Chapter 4; Lyman, Chapter 10). In other words, once it is understood that systems are constantly changing, the idea of attempting to restore them to a pre-​disturbance state becomes nonsensical. Ekblom (Chapter 5) presents an extreme example of this where the establishment of the Kruger National Park in South Africa in the early twentieth century included the expulsion of human communities; the binary (and historically inaccurate) thinking here being that ‘culture’ is antithetical to ‘nature’ so restoring the area to a ‘natural’ state required the removal of humans. There are of course colonial legacies and frankly racist factors at play in this example (see also Lindholm, Chapter 17), but in essence the same thinking underlies attempted ecological restoration projects outlined by Lyman (Chapter 10; see also Broughton, 2004), while Coutu (Chapter 11) highlights the need to design wildlife conservation strategies that understand how species adapt their behaviour in response to both predictable seasonal changes and to longer-​term unpredictable phenomena such as droughts. Coutu’s work examines seasonal, yearly, and decadal time scales, since the analysis of stable isotopes within elephant hair and tusks permits the examination of dietary changes within individual animals over the course of their lifetimes. Lyman, in contrast, presents case studies that span over 10,000 years; time frames that allow researchers to determine how changes in species composition have cascade effects that alter ecosystem function. This is potentially crucial data for modern conservationists, and allows palaeozoologists, palaeoecologists, and palaeoclimatologists to identify the conditions that lead to a threshold being crossed: with a threshold defined as the nominal boundary between systems with different characteristics and feedbacks, or the point at which even a small change in conditions will force the system into a different ‘regime’ (see Heckbert et al., Chapter 16). As noted above in reference to the adaptive cycle and non-​equilibrium dynamics, a landscape may repeatedly shift back and forth between multiple regimes (i.e. repeatedly cross thresholds), though of course the time frames needed to do so may be so long that these changes in conditions seem permanent to the human inhabitants, or the period of transition so protracted that a shift in regime is imperceptible to the individuals that live through it. The term ‘tipping point’ is thus often used as a synonym for ‘threshold’, but within complexity theory and the climate change debate it has come to be used as a radical form of threshold where the shift to a new regime is dramatic and may be irreversible. This is the sense in which Barton (Chapter 15) uses the term ‘tipping point’, and illustrates all of these scale issues by noting that computer simulations of prehistoric landscapes in Jordon show that even relatively small agropastoral settlements of 50–​100 inhabitants can force the system to tip from one characterized by low and beneficial rates of soil erosion to one characterized by detrimental degradation, and that the tipping point of change is crossed long before inhabitants can foresee its consequences.

Introduction   xxix

Applied Archaeology As with the meaning and scope of historical ecology, a definition of the term ‘applied archaeology’ was not offered to the contributing authors prior to their submissions, despite the fact that one of the editors has attempted a definition (Stump, 2013) and the other has previously discussed the process of learning from past modes of agricultural land-​use as ‘applied agro-​archaeology’ (Isendahl et al., 2013). Stump’s (2013) definition is far narrower than that adopted by several of the contributors to the current volume (e.g. Cooper and Duncan, Chapter 23; Wells, Chapter 28), and attempts to distinguish applied archaeology (the co-​opting of aspects of historic technologies or techniques for use in the present) from the ‘usable past’ (e.g. the challenging of narratives of the use of historical data to refine models). Where the term is used here it tends to be used to combine both of these potential uses of archaeological data. In the concluding chapter, Isendahl and Stump (Chapter 30) attempt a new definition on the basis of the multi-​ faceted discourse emerging from the collected contributions to this volume. Caponetti (Chapter 21) offers a clear example of the co-​opting approach by outlining how he has adapted an Etruscan ‘water tunnel’ to irrigate his farm in Tuscany, Italy. Importantly, this ancient and formerly disused technology continues to perform its original function, albeit that it is now used for market production and incorporates solar-​ powered pumps. The approaches described by Herrera (Chapter 24), Kendall and Drew (Chapter 22), and Spriggs (Chapter 20) also discuss the adoption of aspects of abandoned agricultural techniques, though the abstraction from the social systems that formerly supported these technologies is an important aspect of the lessons learnt from attempts to do so. Minnis’s (Chapter 2) ‘utilitarian-​perspective archaeology’ in effect also adopts this approach of learning from past technologies, though Minnis includes not just the engineering solutions of soil and water conservation features but also the technological innovation that is the selective modification and domestication of crops. Indeed, Minnis doubts that archaeological data will ever be sufficiently chronologically precise or provide sufficient clarity on day-​to-​day practices to ‘offer robust and unambiguous models for human–​environmental interactions’, and instead argues that archaeological data are most useful when ‘documenting novel human behaviours not present in the ethnographic or historical record’ (Chapter 2: 23). Importantly, Minnis also argues that the aim of applied approaches should be fundamentally different from traditional archaeology: rather than producing interpretations and models and then asking whether these are relevant to present-​day concerns, applied approaches should start with the problem in the present and then explore if and how archaeological data can assist. Smith’s (Chapter 25) approach is similar, arguing that studies of societies in the past provide proxies for wealth, poverty, prosperity, and quality of life that can contribute to studies of inequality in the present. Like Stump’s (2013) attempted distinction between ‘applied archaeology’ and ‘the usable past’, Smith subdivides applied archaeology into ‘direct’ (e.g. the reuse of technologies as described by Herrera, Chapter 24; Kendall and Drew, Chapter 22; and Spriggs, Chapter 20), ‘abstract’

xxx    Daryl Stump and Christian Isendahl (e.g. contributing to a deeper understanding of concepts such as ‘sustainability’), and ‘intermediate’ (e.g. contributing to interdisciplinary studies). Like every chapter in the volume, Smith is thus advocating an interdisciplinary approach, but argues pragmatically that archaeological data are likely to play a contributory rather than a leading role in any attempt to apply it to present-​day issues.

The Future of Historical Ecology and Applied Archaeology Even from this brief summary of the ideas discussed in the following chapters it should be clear that none of the authors restrict themselves to discussing one technique, one case study, or one concept. The volume could thus have been organized in a number of different ways. The chapters by Arroyo-​Kalin (Chapter 6), Barton (Chapter 15), Butzer (Chapter  7), French (Chapter  14), Stump (Chapter  8), Sulas (Chapter  13), and Wells (Chapter 28), for instance, could all be described as discussing geoarchaeology, and so the volume could have included a geoarchaeology section. However, this would be reductive and doing the authors a disservice, since all are concerned with how different data sources can both complement other data sources and be complemented by them, and all discuss the potential, challenges, and dangers of applying insights from the past to the present. A theme that has been referenced several times already is the need for interdisciplinary approaches. In a sense the emphasis on interdisciplinarity emerges from acknowledging disciplinary limitations: data from the past cannot answer all relevant questions alone, and so require input from other disciplines—​a view expressed by many authors but perhaps most clearly by Minnis (Chapter 2), Lyman (Chapter 10), and Smith (Chapter 25). However, this same conclusion can be turned around: every chapter presents examples of questions that could not have been addressed without contributions from the historical sciences. As Lyman (Chapter 10) notes succinctly, zooarchaeological studies cannot quantify past populations of species in numerical terms or fully appreciate ecosystem diversity, but studies of modern zoology and ecology cannot address past extinctions or study speciation. Studies of ecosystem dynamics in the past were thus instrumental in debunking notions of ‘pre-​disturbance baselines’ and ‘benchmarks’, just as studies of human–​environment interactions have debunked narratives that denigrated the knowledge of non-​Western and colonized communities, in the process highlighting the political and economic interests that consciously or subconsciously promoted these narratives (e.g. Ekblom, Chapter 5; Lindholm, Chapter 17). It is also instructive to turn the question stated at the start of this chapter on its head: not what do you gain if you add data from the past to questions arising from modern concerns, but what do you miss if you do not include it? In essence, this is the approach proposed by Smith (Chapter 25), who not only sees studies of past quality of

Introduction   xxxi life as a potential adjunct to studies of inequality in the present, but also pragmatically advocates ‘translating’ that data into forms that are of use to social scientists studying this issue today (see also Kohler et al., 2017). For Smith, quantification of data is crucial in this translation process, but his advocacy of producing data sets that are relevant to social scientists working on issues in the present is based on the recognition that they have more experience of further translating their data sets and conclusions into the language of policy-​makers (see also Smith, 2017). Wells (Chapter 28) draws a similar conclusion in a different way, noting that studies of the more recent past should extend their data sets to the present in an attempt to demonstrate causation rather than merely coincidence. Both Butzer (Chapter 7) and Minnis (Chapter 2) also note pragmatic concerns in this regard, with Minnis suggesting that in directly engaging with policy ‘we [archaeologists] need to be prepared to defend the quality and integrity of our interpretations to a degree that we rarely have to in the academic setting’ (Chapter 2: 24). In part though, this is a question of being clear regarding definitions (in effect an aspect of the translation process highlighted by Smith), and in part it is a question of communicating complexity and of being open and transparent about what is and what is not known: what are the facts, and what are the different degrees of confidence in models and interpretations that are drawn from them. Although it is no doubt a truism to say that ecosystems are complex systems, or that cost–​benefit analyses of trade-​offs will differ in different contexts, it is also true that over-​simplifying complex situations has led to poor policy decisions in the past (Crumley, Chapter 1; Ekblom, Chapter 5; Wells, Chapter 28). Continuing to supply clear case studies of these past errors is therefore likely to remain an important contribution of both historical ecology and applied archaeology. One theme that emerges, and one that is clearly still in the process of being refined, is how to incorporate the potential application of insights from the past into future projects from the outset of project design. Indeed, this is a topic that we would hope readers from all disciplines—​whether from research, practice, or policy backgrounds—​will bear in mind when reading the chapters, since it is a challenge that evidently requires input from all potential stakeholders. Although not explicitly discussed below, one potential route forward is co-​designed projects, i.e. projects that not only start from the identification of an issue of relevance to the present (as advocated by Minnis, Chapter 2), but which are designed in partnership with the policy-​makers that might seek to apply the results, or with the communities that may benefit from either the research or resulting policies. Of the chapters here, Årlin et al. (Chapter 18) come closest to this position, stressing both the importance of communicating research results back to host communities, and the ways in which these research results may influence land management and development policies. In different ways the chapters by Herrera (Chapter 24) and Spriggs (Chapter 20) also approach the issue of co-​design, since both in effect critique early attempts to revive abandoned agricultural systems for not adequately considering how the revived systems would benefit the host communities—​a self-​critique in the case of Spriggs. Interestingly, in both these cases local communities adopted aspects of apparently failed external interventions some 20 years later, in the process demonstrating

xxxii    Daryl Stump and Christian Isendahl the importance of community engagement, the necessity of favourable economic conditions, and the potential of re-​establishing elements of abandoned agricultural systems. Caponetti (Chapter 21) draws the same conclusions, and whilst it is tempting to cite this as an example of a successful co-​designed project, it would be somewhat disingenuous given that Caponetti is both researcher and beneficiary rolled into one, having refurbished an ancient Etruscan water tunnel to help irrigate his own farm! His example nevertheless aptly demonstrates the potential of ancient technologies, and succinctly illustrates the points made in other chapters of the value of recognizing and adapting appropriate approaches to well-​defined problems. It is hoped, therefore, that the case studies, techniques, approaches, and concepts outlined and explored below will help evaluate the potential of existing data sets, aid in the design of future projects, and in so doing promote further research and practical applications that push the boundaries of how knowledge and insights generated from the study of the past can inform a quite desperate present.

Acknowledgements The gestation period of this volume, from original conception to appearance in print, has been frustratingly long. The editors would like to take this opportunity to express their sincere gratitude to all contributors for enthusiastically responding to our invitation to be part of this project; for submitting original, thoughtful, and expert chapters on a highly challenging, complex, and underexplored topic; for efficiently and creatively responding to our queries and editorial comments; and for their patience with the editorial process, to produce with us a thought-​provoking volume that in quality and eclecticism surpasses our initial plan. We would also like to thank the editors and staff at Oxford University Press who have worked with us to see this volume through to completion, first as an Oxford Handbook Online and now as published in print. Daryl Stump’s work on this volume was partly funded by a grant from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP/​200702013/​ERC Grant Agreement No. ERCStG-​2012-​337128-​AAREA). This support is gratefully acknowledged.

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xxxiv    Daryl Stump and Christian Isendahl Redman, C. L., and Kinzig, A. P. (2003). Resilience of past landscapes: resilience theory, society, and the longue durée. Conservation Ecology 7(1): 14. Smith, M. E. (2017). Social science and archaeological enquiry. Antiquity 91(356): 520–​528. Stump, D. (2010). ‘Ancient and backward or long-​lived and sustainable?’ The role of the past in debates concerning rural livelihoods and resource conservation in Eastern Africa. World Development 38(9): 1251–​1262. Stump, D. (2013). On applied archaeology, indigenous knowledge, and the usable past. Current Anthropology 54(3): 268–​269. Tainter, J. A. (1988). The Collapse of Complex Societies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. United Nations (2015). Resolution A/​RES/​70/​1 Adopted by the General Assembly on 25 September 2015. New York: United Nations.

PA RT   I POTENTIAL AND PITFALLS

I n t rodu ction Christian Isendahl and Daryl Stump

The potential of archaeological methods, data, and interpretations to address contemporary global challenges has boosted optimism regarding the societal relevance of the discipline. This volume presents theoretical discussions, methodological outlines, and case studies describing the discursive overlap of the theoretical and methodological framework of historical ecology and the emerging subdiscipline of applied archaeology. It is designed to complement and qualify a growing and diversifying discourse spanning, at one end, developmental literature that discusses the use of ‘indigenous knowledge’ in development and conservation projects around the world and, on the other, global environmental change research that integrates the long-​term humanities and social studies perspectives of archaeology in future scenario modelling. Implementing insights drawn from the study of the past may have decisive impacts on future livelihoods and requires a critical assessment not only of the potentials but also of the pitfalls of historical ecology and applied archaeology, as well as a consideration of the ethical dimensions and political implications of applied science. This section collects seven essays that critically examine opportunities of research at the intersection of historical ecology and applied archaeology to produce relevant knowledge, all of which also point to the challenges associated with the generation and implementation of practical insights. Crumley, a key contributor to the development of the historical ecological discourse from an archaeological vantage point, is well placed to outline the field of historical ecology, and her chapter forms a point of departure to further problematize these potentials and identify some pitfalls. Among several crucial points she highlights the need to work with local ‘communities of practice’ and land managers, and cites several successful management programmes that have integrated the anthropocentric perspective of historical ecology for understanding ecosystem evolution. Crumley voices strong optimism in the scope of an integrated, transdisciplinary and trans-​sectorial historical ecology, suggesting that researchers, practitioners, and communities collectively need to form ‘clusters’ or ‘clouds’ that share the goal of safeguarding knowledge about—​as well as from—​the past in order to create an equitable and sustainable future. Her assessment points to the considerable potential of historical ecology, not only to generate the kind of

4    Christian Isendahl and Daryl Stump data and insights needed in applied research within the scholarly world, but also to connect with relevant bodies across society for implementing practical solutions. Minnis addresses the core argument of archaeology’s potential to be useful, emphasizing the need for a complementary approach to the traditional a priori focus on investigating the archaeological record to understand the past. This alternative, ‘utilitarian-​perspective archaeology’ stresses an ontology of the archaeological record as a complex source of practically useful information that can tackle contemporary challenges to sustainability. Minnis highlights the critical value of archaeology to contribute crucial information on the vast majority of the human experience, a scope simply beyond the reach of other disciplines. He discusses challenges of a ‘traditional’ archaeological approach to address human–​environment issues in the contemporary world, and shows how an alternative and complementary utilitarian perspective—​using archaeology to mine practical insights on current issues, such as challenges to food security—​ can be productive, despite the fragmentary nature of the archaeological record. A significant but under-​realized problem in inter-​and transdisciplinary research is that concepts shared among cognate disciplinary traditions may have different meanings, even if semantic discrepancy may be ever so subtle. Failing to identify the dangers of conceptual confusion is cause for concern since it may hamper robust data analysis, the credibility of interpretation, and the transfer of generated insights to practical management solutions. In their respective chapters, Doolittle and Lane highlight a range of issues pertaining to the imprecise use of shared, borrowed, and/​or invented terminology, within as well as among archaeology, cognate disciplines, and non-​academic public discourse. For instance, Doolittle highlights the ambiguities in the application of concepts such as ‘the Anthropocene’, ‘sustainability’, and ‘adaptation’; key terms that aspire to cross-​disciplinary understanding, but that when imprecisely used form paradoxical buzzwords that obscure rather than clarify. Lane makes a similar argument regarding the phrase ‘the long-​term’, a central concept to sustainability science in general and to archaeology and historical ecology in particular. The concept of the long-​term is a particularly good case to elucidate the dangers of discrepancy, not only because it is central to the historical ecological discourse, but also (as the relation between the ‘long-​ term’ to ‘short-​term’ is dependent on the temporal scale of analysis associated with each discipline) because different uses are readily demonstrable quantitatively. These necessary calls for caution and precision in the use of terms are offset by the two chapters that follow, both demonstrating the intellectual scope of a critical, anthropocentric historical ecological approach to applied archaeology. Integrating palaeoenvironmental and archaeological data to reconstruct the social-​ecological dynamics of long-​term landscape histories is an approach at the core of historical ecological research. Presenting a series of African examples, Ekblom shows how orthodox understandings of Holocene landscape evolution as a natural process are not only demonstrably misconstrued, they also impede the implementation of sustainable management institutions aiming to protect, conserve, or restore biodiversity. Emphasizing people as agents in landscape histories—​rather than as disturbance factors to ‘natural’ ecosystems—​her review highlights the potential of anthropological historical ecology to provide data

Potential and Pitfalls     5 and a frame of reference that at a broad scale can practically inform and reform current mainstream approaches to conservation and landscape management in Africa and elsewhere. A key problem in understanding landscape histories is the intentionality of human action. Are landscape transformations in the past caused by human action? Were these deliberate or unintentional? How do we determine intentionality on the basis of archaeological data? Drawing on a distinction between anthropogenic (deliberately modified) and anthropic (influenced by human action), Arroyo-​Kalin addresses these ontological, epistemological, and empirical conundrums focusing on three dimensions of landscape change in pre-​Columbian Amazonia: landscaping, landscape legacies, and landesque capital. His chapter demonstrates the persistent significance of Amazonia as a core case region and focal point for articulating, addressing, and advancing essential challenges in historical ecological inquiry. The basis of any historical ecological inquiry thus remains the meticulous recovery and recording of data in the field and the careful scientific analyses of the empirical evidence. The empiricist call for ‘data first!’—​the privileging of data over models—​ resonates loud and clear in Butzer’s chapter. Drawing on a career spanning over seven decades developing geoarchaeology and making it a centrepiece in the scientific investigation of human–​environmental relationships of the past, he offers an authoritative and yet reflexive argument for multidisciplinary data generation and interdisciplinary integration as complementary fundamentals to the goals of applied archaeology and historical ecology.

Chapter 1

New Path s i nto the Anthrop o c e ne Applying Historical Ecologies to the Human Future Carole L. Crumley

While global change scientists struggle to define the Anthropocene (Crutzen and Stoermer, 2000; Rockström et al., 2009; Steffen et al., 2015; Zalasiewicz et al., 2010; see also Doolittle, Chapter 3), archaeologists know that the record of human entry into the planetary machinery begins much earlier than the beginning of the Industrial Revolution or the end of the Second World War (see also Ruddiman, 2003, 2005, 2013; Williams, 2003). Below ground, where archaeologists focus their attention, this longer history is not entirely about the release of millennia of stored carbon into the atmosphere or the invention of ever larger tools to dig out the Earth’s resources and reconfigure its landscapes: other changes tell more about the intimate details of the human affair with Earth. For millennia people have altered their surroundings by using fire, propagating certain species of plants and animals, building dams that change the course of rivers, clearing land, and generally making themselves at home—​and in the process altering the course of human evolution. Historical ecology is a practical framework of concepts and methods for studying the past and future of the relationship between people and their environment (Balée, 1998, 2006; Balée and Erickson, 2006; Crumley, 1994, 2012, 2013a, 2013b; Crumley et al., 2018; Meyer and Crumley, 2011). While historical ecology may be applied to spatial and temporal frames at any resolution, it finds particularly rich sources of data at the ‘landscape’ scale, where human activity and cognition interact with biophysical systems, and where archaeological, historical, ethnographic, environmental, and other records are plentiful. The term historical ecology draws attention to a definition of ecology that includes humans as a component of all ecosystems and to a definition of history that goes beyond the written record to encompass both the history of the Earth system and the social and physical past of our species. Historical ecology provides tools to construct an evidence-​validated, open-​ended narrative of the evolution and

New Paths into the Anthropocene    7 transformation of specific landscapes, based on records of human activity and changing environments. Historical ecology offers insights, models, and ideas for a sustainable future of contemporary landscapes based upon this comprehensive understanding of their past.

Integrating the History of People and Earth: Landscapes, History, Heritage Several independent developments in the 1990s were products of an effort to heighten collaborative research across certain disciplines. These include the work of William Balée, who introduced historical ecology to ethnobotanists and to a broader community of cultural ecologists within anthropology (Balée, 1998, 2006; see also Balée and Nolan, Chapter 19). Anthropologists and geographers also drew on cultural ecology as they explored political ecology, which became a society and a journal in the early 1990s, with a focus on the political economy of contemporary environmental processes and practices. Political ecology resonates with historical ecology in several respects (Robbins, 2012), including the influence of Eric Wolf and Robert Netting on both fields (Netting, 1981, 1993; Wolf, 1982, 1990). Because thoughts are acted out on landscapes, the history of a landscape can be seen as ‘congealed politics’ (Crumley, 2010: 10): the physical outcome of the struggle over resources and ideas. Political ecology, which deals with shorter spans of time, can take advantage of more complete records; historical ecology, with a longer temporal perspective, can detect change that builds more slowly but may have sudden effects. As geographer David Harvey has put it, ‘ecological arguments are never socially neutral any more than socio-​political arguments are ecologically neutral’ (Harvey, 1993: 25). But how can we investigate palaeopolitics which are, by definition, politics without history? One approach is to study agency, the ability to act in society; its study explores the makers and contexts of decisions (Dobres and Robb, 2000). Any entity that solely or collectively can affect the outcome of events can be an agent: individuals, households, communities, corporations, and (some would argue) even objects (Latour, 2005) are actors with the means to elicit change. This perspective contrasts with archaeological theory of the 1960s–​1980s (e.g. Binford and Binford, 1968; Flannery, 1972), which rested on the assumption that an objective, scientific approach could alone reveal broad patterns, and which paid scant attention to the meaning of objects, the lives of individuals, and the always-​present influence of the present in interpreting the past. Contemporary archaeological theory explores agency in order to redress these ‘missing persons’ and ‘missing contexts’ problems in the rational choice and optimization models of processual archaeology. Gender and mortuary studies are among the areas that have been enriched by the analysis of agency.

8   Carole Crumley Historical ecology in archaeology derives, for the most part, from archaeological best practice, which routinely amalgamates information about the past from disparate sources (see also Butzer, Chapter 7). In this context, applied archaeology is used in heritage management, historic and environmental conservation, ecological restoration, and landscape archaeology in local and regional context. Applied archaeology aids in crafting flexible historical narratives and future scenarios and in highlighting the importance of integration with ecology in its several forms. Palaeoecology, an old friend of archaeology, offers another connection to historical ecology in integrating sources of knowledge of vanished landscapes:  vegetation dynamics, dendrochronology, disturbance history, palaeoclimatology, environmental change, wetlands hydrology, restoration, seed banks, and plant communities (Jackson, 2012; Jackson and Hobbs, 2009). Historical ecology has helped archaeologists and palaeoecologists reconstruct a remarkable span of history, from the ancient landscapes of early hominids (Cachel and Harris, 2006) and more recent agrarian landscapes (Caracuta et al., 2012; Fiorentino et al., 2012) to historic gardens (Currie, 2005; Malek, 2013). A management approach derived from forest history and restoration ecology is also termed historical ecology or applied historical ecology (e.g. Burgi, 2011; Egan and Howell, 2001; Foster and Aber, 2006; Grossinger, 2012; Szabó and Hédl, 2011). The Society for Ecological Restoration International (SER) structures its research and instructional programmes around historical ecology. For SER, restoration embraces the interrelationships between nature and culture, engages all sectors of society, and enables full and effective participation of indigenous, local, and disenfranchised communities. The United States’ National Park Service (NPS) employs historical ecology to both manage (e.g. Swetnam et al., 1999) and interpret the enormous national park system, which must respond to the often contradictory needs of many users. Among the NPS’ responsibilities is Devil’s Tower, a remarkable geologic feature that protrudes above the surrounding terrain in the Black Hills of Wyoming. It is a favourite destination of climbers, but is also a Native American sacred place. Core principles of historical ecology (e.g. equity, respect, tolerance of difference) guide the NPS mission to preserve the Tower’s cultural and environmental history, as well as the celebration of local heritage and the creation of opportunities for everyone to enjoy the outdoors. Interpretation of the site and especially the site’s periods of opening and closing to visitors accommodates sport climbers while honouring the beliefs of the Arapaho, Crow, Cheyenne, Kiowa, Lakota, and Shoshone peoples who have cultural, spiritual, and geographical ties to the site that predate the arrival of Europeans in Wyoming. The San Francisco Estuary Institute (SFEI) has pioneered the use of historical ecology to track linked biophysical and anthropogenic changes in wetlands. One of their many projects is San Francisco Bay, which is surrounded by densely populated municipalities and has particularly complex management needs. Combining environmental methods with maps, documents, photographs, and enthusiastic public participation, the Bay historical ecology project assessed watershed conditions prior to significant Euro-​ American modification. This assessment provided a basis for understanding subsequent

New Paths into the Anthropocene    9 changes in watershed structure and function, and permitted assessment of options for future environmental management. Throughout the region SFEI helps define environmental problems, advance public debate about them through sound science, and support consensus-​based solutions that improve environmental planning, management, and policy development (). The mission of the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL; ) is to provide clear benefits for society and the public in Switzerland by guiding the use, development, and protection of natural and urban spaces. WSL focuses on the responsible use of mountainous landscapes and forests and a prudent approach to natural hazards; its research provides the basis for sustainable environmental policies in Switzerland. Historical ecology guides the preservation of these landscapes’ cultural heritage by tracing their historical trajectories, and informs their management by ensuring that this information is available to understand a landscape’s potential and constraints. For example, rare species dwelling on soils with low levels of nutrients and high levels of light availability have become extinct in many forest stands; using evidence for historic litter removal, Burgi and Gimmi (2007) studied the nutrient impact of this historic use on contemporary forest stands. In addition to its use of historical ecology in research, WSL hosted the international conference ‘Frontiers in Historical Ecology’ in 2011, attracting environmental historians, archaeologists, ecologists, palaeoecologists, and managers. The integrated framework of historical ecology makes it possible to understand and manage historic and current-​day ecosystems and landscapes and it supports planning their future. In multiple-​use landscapes such as public lands and urban spaces, managers must understand the combined physical and social history of the ecosystems and landscapes in their charge, and provide for the participation of diverse stakeholders. Historical ecology plays an important part both in fundamental research and in developing new strategies for integrated and equitable landscape management. With a distinguished record of recording and reflecting on environmental change dating back to antiquity, environmental history was taken up by historians as a field of study during the 1970s. Donald Worster captures its core narrative and reflexive strengths when he characterizes environmental history as the exploration of ‘the ways in which the biophysical world has influenced the course of human history and the ways in which people have thought about and tried to transform their surroundings’ (1993: 20). An important but understated critical and questioning thread winds its way through environmental history, whether it is highlighting the results of disastrous policies (e.g. Chase, 1987; see also Herrera, Chapter 24; Minnis, Chapter 2) or finding recent strength in the investigation of social and political theory in policy (Sörlin and Warde, 2009). All these strands of history, politics, landscape, and culture, as they relate to the physical world, have been informed by the French tradition in historical analysis termed Annales (Burke, 1990; Knapp, 1992). In the 1920s a group of young historians in France broke with their discipline by emphasizing the context of events: geography, ethnography, folklore, geology, and climate. The Annalistes’ humanistic and dialectical

10   Carole Crumley approach provided a new collaborative framework for the study of regional history (e.g. the work of Braudel, 1996; Duby, 1968; Le Roy Ladurie, 1988; and many others). Their analysis of processes that vary along temporal scales of duration, intensity, and periodicity has proven especially fruitful: they conceived of historical processes in terms of événement (event), conjoncture (their cultural and historical context), and longue durée (long-​term trends). Interpretation relies on all three: an account must be set in immediate and more distant contexts, whether found in a cleric’s records of famine victims or deep in a glacier half a world away. Broad temporal frameworks guide many historical sciences and conform to a holistic view of the multivalent and permeable Earth system. For example, geological interpretation deftly combines structures (e.g. crystallography, stratigraphy) and processes (weathering, uplift), linking scales of time and space (De Landa, 1997). A fundamental Annales concept, paysage (landscape), is widely deployed in historical ecology and allied fields of study. Broadened to include old and new sciences of the environment, inclusive ethics, and reflexive practice, this heterarchy of approaches allows researchers to address time and space simultaneously, follow intentional and unintentional acts, study human modification of the global ecosystem, and assess past events in shaping human thought and action. We shall return to heterarchy, a useful concept in the characterization of diversity, in the next section.

Integrating the History of People and Earth: Ecology, Systems, Complexity, and Change Ecology is itself an amalgamated field of study that focuses on relationships among organisms and with their environments. Ecology and archaeology share a long intellectual history in the study of systems (Bateson, 1972; Clarke, 1972; Golley, 1993; Odum, 1953). Recent research in ecology has abandoned earlier assumptions about equilibrium states and, since the 1990s, increasingly includes human activity (e.g. Berkes et al., 1998). The pairing of ecology with economics began in the 1980s, but has recently succeeded in raising many political and ethical issues both within and beyond both fields (e.g. Norgaard, 2010). The integration of mainstream ecology with the humanities and other social sciences has been slower to develop. It is still the case that a more nuanced account of human presence in the study of ecosystems emanates from the social sciences (e.g. human, cultural, and social ecologies). Levin (1998) defines ecosystems as complex adaptive systems in which the interactions of life processes form self-​organizing patterns across different scales of time and space. Complexity science is the transdisciplinary study of complex adaptive systems (CAS): dynamic, nonlinear systems that are not in equilibrium and do not act predictably. A CAS has no overarching hierarchy of dominant/​determining ‘stimulators’ and

New Paths into the Anthropocene    11 subordinate ‘responders’. Rather, it is a complex heterarchy of interacting elements that may sometimes dominate the system and at other times may be subordinate to it. These key features distinguish contemporary complex systems thinking from earlier systems theory, which, following Clements (1928), assumed that ‘natural’ systems could be modelled with a few key variables and would return to equilibrium after being disturbed. While both the systems theory of the mid-​twentieth century (roughly the 1930s through the 1970s) and the new complex systems thinking address the organization of information, an important contrast between them should be noted. The earlier paradigm—​a cornerstone of the New Archaeology during the 1960s and 1970s—​held the tantalizing possibility for many archaeologists that a predictive science of human behaviour could be framed in the language of mathematics and philosophy (Binford and Binford, 1968; Flannery, 1972; Watson et al., 1971). Parallel trends developed in ecology and elsewhere in the biological sciences (Ellen, 1982). Contemporary CAS research is not a single theory but a highly transdisciplinary aggregate of several strands of investigation that are widely applied in the biological, physical, and social sciences. CAS brings concepts such as nonlinearity, initial conditions, emergence, basins of attraction, and path dependence to the analysis of systems; these intriguing ideas, applied to human societies, can broaden the archaeological study of change across time and space and into the future (Beekman and Baden, 2005; Crumley, 2005; Redman, 2005; van der Leeuw, 2009; van der Leeuw et al., 2009). As an antidote to Clementsian equilibrium models in ecology noted above, C. S. Holling (1973) introduced a different framework for the study of human–​environment dynamics that is based on the concepts of resilience and the adaptive cycle (Gunderson and Holling, 2002). Now designated resilience (Walker and Salt, 2006), the approach has been widely incorporated into the larger discourse on global environmental issues. In the last decade the concept of socioecological systems (SES) was introduced to incorporate human activity in ecosystems into the framework (Folke et al., 2002). Resilience has met with its share of criticism, even within ecology and ecological economics (Norgaard, 2010). The social science and humanities research community working at the human–​environment interface has been hesitant to embrace this approach, in part due to an historic unwillingness to accept biological models for cultural behaviour (see Descola and Palsson, 1996; Ellen, 1982 for the long history of this debate). Despite some successful applications of resilience thinking to ancient societies (e.g. Hegmon et al., 2008), a number of issues of particular importance for historical ecology, applied archaeology, anthropology, and human geography have not been resolved (for a balanced treatment, see Plieninger and Bieling, 2012). In the resilience framework the central model of a system is the ‘adaptive cycle’: exploitation, conservation, release, and reorganization. An understanding of the character and dynamics of cycles at various scales—​e.g. the rise and demise of Maya polities—​ entails an examination on a long time scale; for example, the Maya case covers approximately 2,500 years. Resilience practitioners, mostly ecologists, work with time scales of a few decades (see Lane, Chapter 4). While the long-​term human–​environment dialectic is understandably beyond the scope of some strains of ecology, that should not

12   Carole Crumley obviate the significance of the past. Landscapes are not stable and timeless: impacts on land use, culture, politics, and environments matter, at time scales both short and long. Archaeologists are acutely aware of the second law of thermodynamics: everything, and every system, decays, falls down, dies, is forgotten. The standard model of the adaptive cycle (growth, conservation, collapse, reorganization) reflects that fact. By defining resilience as the ability to absorb disturbance, be reorganized, and retain the same basic structure and ways of functioning, resilience thinking is stuck in the ‘K’ (conservation) phase. Thus we are encouraged to think that it is possible to engineer a future that is not so different from the present. But the Anthropocene demurs: enormous changes will be necessary to alter the path we are on. Almost by definition, landscapes are theatres of conflict over resources and values. While Elinor Ostrom’s admirable global examination of collaborative management is much cited (e.g. Ostrom and Hess, 2006), and adaptive governance is a recurrent theme in resilience research, there has been little engagement with community building, multi-​ level politics, or ethical issues such as indigenous rights (Cote and Nightingale, 2012; Doubleday, 2007; Hatt, 2012; Nadasdy, 2007; Welsh, 2013). To be politically feasible and equitable, planning must engage diverse stakeholders; its implementation must adapt when conditions change. Flexible and resilient local and regional management requires understanding the region’s past; that understanding requires a more comprehensive grasp of the social, historical, cultural, and political aspects of complex adaptive systems than is apparent in resilience theory (Çambel 1993). The larger, more flexible complex systems framework offers some lively and intriguing avenues of investigation that are not yet incorporated into resilience thinking. For example, archaeologists pay close attention to scales of time and space. Historical ecology, with its deep-​time perspective and regional context, enables archaeologists to take into account not only rapid variables, but also slower, more obscure features of what would appear to be stable systems. Archaeologists, historians, and palaeoscientists can therefore make sense not just of the traditional periods of seeming stability—​phases, periods, epochs—​but of periods of transition as well, with the possibility of deriving valuable lessons for the future. A region’s history reveals how that place has responded to extreme events: harsh climate, war, shortage of essential resources, pestilence, and mismanagement. In mediating these events, successful adjustments to fit changing circumstances have accumulated. Following complex systems terminology, there may be particular economic and social strategies—​‘basins of attraction’—​whose strength fluctuates over time. Knowledge of a particular landscape’s past management strategies can help to avoid earlier mistakes, or, in the case of good results, offer viable alternatives to a similar contemporary challenge. These ‘old-​and-​new’ solutions stimulate ‘tinkering’—​trying to improve on an old idea or material—​leading to hybrid innovations. That a technique dates to prehistory does not necessarily mean it is sustainable today, but its longevity certainly demonstrates its utility. ‘Old ways’ of doing things can have advantages that go beyond nostalgia and tourism. Future climate change will likely increase the frequency, intensity, and duration of extreme temperature and precipitation anomalies and have severe economic and

New Paths into the Anthropocene    13 social impacts. The long-​term records of regional climate reveal many such anomalies, termed excursions. Such records are particularly valuable, as they point to how the regional system responds to specific conditions. I  have worked for several decades in Burgundy, in central France, usually a region of plentiful springs and abundant rainfall (Crumley, 2012; Crumley and Marquardt, 1987, 1990). In August 2003 a 14-​day heat wave in France left over 15,000 people dead (Vandentorren et al., 2006). Already suffering from two years of drought, Burgundy was at the centre of the extreme conditions map of Europe. This was the hottest year recorded in France since modern record keeping began in 1873; based on historical records, 2003 has been compared with the disastrous drought and heat wave of 1540 which led to widespread famine and loss of life (Wetter and Pfister, 2012). In 2003 Burgundy’s early August temperatures remained above 40°C/​104°F around the clock; springs began to run dry. Due in large part to European Union and French government policies, farms in the rolling, granitic landscape of the commune of Uxeau are almost exclusively pastureland for the historic breed of Charolais beef cattle. In 2003 farmers lost great numbers of cattle, had their breeding programmes demolished, and saw their pastures become deserts. The 1540 and 2003 climate excursions were hundreds of years apart, but future climate projections indicate that such events in the region will be much more likely. There are solutions to be found in the region’s landscape history that could ameliorate similar situations. For example, in the nineteenth century Uxeau had dozens of farm ponds that watered cattle (an adult Charolais drinks 200 litres of water a day) and served a more diverse rural economy in which cattle played a much more modest role; today, with five times as many cattle as were pastured even 30 years ago, only a few ponds remain (Madry et al., 2011). The most significant differences between 1540 and today are telling. Today there is much greater ability to transport necessities to stricken regions, but that only serves to increase many economic and social costs (Wetter et al., 2014). The dangers today include lost resilience in many farming contexts (e.g. domestic and wild species diversity, social networks, reservoirs of water and knowledge), farmers’ extreme economic and environmental vulnerability, and their entanglement in a ‘rigidity trap’ wherein subsidies and indebtedness are intertwined (Crumley, 2012).

Paths into the Anthropocene The emergent, collaborative, transdisciplinary research environment of historical ecology draws on a broad spectrum of concepts, methods, theories, and evidence taken from the biological and physical sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities. It is not a new discipline so much as a ‘cluster’ or ‘cloud’ of mutually compatible questions, concepts, methods, and values that are germane to diverse challenges. As such, it is a rich environment within which to find common cause with other initiatives. Such communities are taking shape and broadening their inclusivity.

14   Carole Crumley One exciting possibility is that organizations, particularly international non-​ governmental organizations (NGOs) that garner support for environmental action or for heritage preservation, might realize that their goals are intertwined and pool resources. At the local/​regional scale, many communities already understand this biocultural heritage link and work together (Barthel et  al., 2013). As several historical ecology studies have demonstrated, much of the biodiversity found in these landscapes has emerged as a direct result of the presence of humans and the patterns of ecological mutualism that have evolved between humans and non-​human species over the longue durée (Arroyo-​Kalin, Chapter 6; Balée and Erickson, 2006; Ford and Nigh, 2009; see also Arroyo-​Kalin, this volume; Balée and Nolan, Chapter 19; Ford and Clarke, Chapter 9). For example, the Yucatan Peninsula and the Amazon basin are regions of great biodiversity that warrant cultural, linguistic, and heritage conservation (see Maffi and Woodley, 2010). Terralingua () and the Maya Forest group Exploring Solutions Past () are examples of organizations that promote the preservation of biocultural diversity. The Integrated History and Future of People on Earth (IHOPE; ) is a global network of researchers (many of them archaeologists) and research projects using historical ecology’s integrated approach to study combined human and Earth system history (Chase and Scarborough, 2014; Costanza et al., 2012; Sinclair et  al., 2010; van der Leeuw et  al., 2009, 2011). IHOPE’s long-​term, human-​ scale perspective is intended as a corrective to models based on Earth system science that exclude knowledge of the world drawn from the social sciences and humanities and from communities of practice. Global-​scale models of change cannot point to viable modes of living on Earth without comprehending human history and cognition and incorporating regional diversity. IHOPE aims to critically evaluate Earth system models’ portrayal of past human activities, demonstrate the contemporary relevance of the past, and find useful paths into our future by focusing on the human scale of landscapes and regions. Now a global phenomenon, urbanism has unfolded over millennia, taking radically different forms in different times and places, with widely varying consequences. Many archaeologists now focus on the infrastructure of ancient agglomerations in an effort to learn about place-​based management solutions that are sturdy, inexpensive, relatively easy to maintain, and applicable to contemporary problems. Two IHOPE activities take this approach. Vernon Scarborough and his Mayanist colleagues collaborate on a Yucatan-​wide project where they demonstrate the contemporary utility of ancient water management systems (Chase and Scarborough, 2014; Isendahl et al., Chapter 26; Scarborough et al., 2012). Uppsala University’s Urban Mind project has studied the resilience of ancient and historic cities’ infrastructure (Sinclair et al., 2010; see also Sinclair et al., Chapter 27). The North Atlantic Biocultural Organization (NABO) was founded in 1992 to improve communication and collaboration among scholars with interests in the North Atlantic region (McGovern et  al., 2007). Initially focused upon the archaeology and palaeoecology of Viking Age colonization, the NABO group studies the region from

New Paths into the Anthropocene    15 prehistory through the early modern period, from Labrador to Finnmark. NABO cross-​ cuts national and disciplinary boundaries and helps North Atlantic scholars engage the immense research potential of the region, improving data comparability and supporting fieldwork, student training, and outreach to other scholars, communities, and the general public. NABO contributes solutions to contemporary problems (e.g. Dugmore et al., 2013), and has attracted substantial funding from sources on both sides of the Atlantic. Recently NABO and its sister organization the Global Human Ecodynamics Alliance (GHEA) have begun collaborating with the Nordic Network for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies (NIES). NABO practises historical ecology, GHEA focuses on long-​term dynamics of coupled human and natural systems, and NIES coordinates member institutions and research groups in the study of literary texts, historical documents, and other textual artefacts, among other things Icelandic sagas, with a view to qualitatively analysing environmental information and representation. NIES fosters the development of aesthetically and ethically orientated historians, philosophers, and literary scholars, helping them to become the next generation of environmental humanists. Together these organizations have constructed a formidable regional network for circumpolar study, exactly the collaborative regional goals IHOPE wishes to foster. Each of these entities is autonomous, employs diverse but compatible competencies to take up key research questions, and embraces several communities of knowledge and practice. In addition, such collaborations have permeable geographical and research frontiers, respect for established methodological expertise, and tolerance for differences in theoretical orientation. The framework of historical ecology offers a holistic, ethical, and place-​based approach which can ‘grow’ regional expertise in managing the future. Archaeology shares these values, and has strong ties to groups that safeguard biological and cultural heritage, and knowledge of the myriad experiments that are part of our human past. Researchers, practitioners, and communities in this growing ‘cluster’ or ‘cloud’ of shared goals can play an important role in safeguarding knowledge from the past while making an equitable and secure future possible. It is timely that these clusters are forming, given the enormous challenges that humanity faces as it fashions new paths into the human-​driven, less predictable world of the Anthropocene.

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Chapter 2

Thinking L i k e A n Archaeol o g i st a nd Thinking L i k e a n Enginee r A Utilitarian-​Perspective Archaeology Paul E. Minnis

Introduction Ancient humanity has lessons for building a sustainable future. Here I will emphasize one relevancy, how ancient crops and farming can contribute to building an adequate and sustainable food supply. There are other modern problems, such as poverty, pathological social and economic relations, climate change, and resource depletion, that archaeology can help address (e.g. Downum and Price, 1999; Little, 2002; Sabloff, 2008). I do not minimize these other issues and the other practical uses of archaeology but simply want to focus on a topic I find especially critical (Minnis, 2001, 2004, 2006, 2013, 2014). There are two problems with the typical use of the archaeological record for dealing with modern ecological problems. I outline a utilitarian-​perspective archaeology that minimizes these constraints, but it is also complementary with a more traditional use of archaeology. Archaeology has special value for at least two reasons. First, given the great depth of human history, archaeology studies the majority of the human experience; for some regions of the world it is the primary way to study the ancient past. For North America, for example, the archaeological record constitutes well over 90 per cent of the time of human occupation. The historical record covers just the last 500  years of a human history that spans more than ten millennia. And even for the most recent half-​millennium the lives and accomplishments of many groups are largely absent in the historical and

22   Paul E. Minnis archival records. For other part of the world with longer human occupation, prehistory represents an even greater percentage of humanity’s past. Second, ethnographic and historical records of recent societies do not describe the full range of human behaviours. Human culture is not simply additive, being simply the sum of its history; that is, behaviours, strategies, and knowledge can be lost through culture change, ethnogenesis, and community ‘extinction’. The archaeological record, therefore, becomes a critical source of understanding the majority of humanity’s past and especially for documenting novel human actions available no other way. In short, ‘archaeology matters’ as Sabloff (2008) titled a recent volume. Here, I briefly examine one example of a utilitarian-​perspective archaeology, namely, that of helping to assure a sustainable food supply for humans by improving farming. There is a renewed concern about global food sufficiency because of accelerating climate change, increased global trade, more political instability, and greater industrial uses of crops. Research in various disciplines is working towards improving the food supply in at least three ways: (1) using new crops and cultigens and preserving genetic diversity, (2) finding new ways to grow crops, and (3) extending the geographic range of farming. Archaeology has the potential to be useful in all three categories. Before discussing these, let us consider when a utilitarian-​perspective archaeology is advantageous.

Two Complementary Perspectives of Archaeology and Sustainability Most archaeologists, I assume, see their goal as understanding the past; the more detailed the understanding, the better. How this goal is achieved differs based on a variety of specific objectives, theoretical underpinnings, methodologies, and regional/​historical approaches. Such diversity should be appreciated, applauded, and encouraged. This traditional goal of archaeology starts with the past and uses the present to help inform us about the past. Understanding the past in whatever detail possible is the most important goal of archaeology and should remain so. The resulting archaeological narratives then often provide amorphous lessons about how ancient humans related to their environments. These lessons inform us about how people made a living and what impact they had on their environments. Normally, they provide cautionary tales about the effects of human–​environmental interactions over long time periods and document the fragility of human institutions. Such lessons are important and can be in scientific or humanistic frames. Archaeologists, then, and not surprisingly, think like archaeologists. Is understanding the past in as great a detail as possible the only perspective for applying archaeological information to current and acute problems, especially issues involved with a sustainable future? Perhaps so, but let us explore another perspective, one I will call utilitarian-​perspective archaeology. Here the goal is not understanding the past in as great a detail as possible but rather gleaning or ‘mining’ the archaeological

A Utilitarian-Perspective Archaeology    23 record for specific information relevant to specific problems regardless of how well or poorly known the archaeological record is. A utilitarian-​perspective archaeology requires a change in perspective from the traditional archaeology by starting with the present (the problem) and then examining the past (the archaeological record) for useful specific information that might be relevant for solving or addressing the problem. Furthermore, a utilitarian-​perspective archaeology is most useful when it is alert to documenting novel human behaviours not present in the ethnographic or historical records, thus increasing our source of potential solutions to modern problems. In sum, there may be value in archaeologists thinking like engineers as well as archaeologists.

Problems with Traditional Archaeology for Building Sustainability A utilitarian-​perspective archaeology is particularly valuable when one or two problems with traditional archaeological narratives are present. The first problem is a question of the detail of the archaeological record. The second is the sufficiency of archaeological interpretations for policy formulation.

Narrative Precision I suggest that in many—​and perhaps most—​cases the archaeological record is insufficiently detailed to offer robust and unambiguous models for human–​environmental interactions. ‘Insufficiency’ in this case is not merely measured by how well the archaeological interpretation matches the archaeological data but also by how well it can be used to solve problems. The general insufficiency is based largely on two factors: chronology imprecision and basic variable definition. In some regions, the resolution of the archaeological record is more precise whereas in others it is far less so. On one extreme are some areas of the North American Southwest/​ Northwest Mexico, my research area, where chronological control can be in 25-​year intervals. On the other are regions and time periods calibrated in hundreds if not thousands of years. One can seriously question whether the typical chronological control of prehistory is precise enough to understand the relationships between human behaviour and environmental dynamics in a way sufficiently useful for policy decisions. No doubt chronological precision will improve in the future as archaeologists and allied technical specialists develop more accurate dating techniques, and we need to work towards this goal. Still, archaeological information may well be valuable even if we do not well understand the chronology.

24   Paul E. Minnis Perhaps the greatest issue with archaeological interpretation is the great difficulty in calculating the value of critical variables. Basic variables important for explaining or modelling human–​environmental relationships, such as population size, settlement locations, economic mix, and environmental structure and dynamics, are often difficult to determine to the level of precision needed. Prehistoric population numbers, as an example, are especially difficult to estimate. We have great difficulty establishing contemporaneity of structures and communities, often used as a proxy of population size. The consequence can be wildly different estimates of human population size. The wide range of variable estimates may not be a problem in a utilitarian-​perspective archaeology because these variables may not be necessary in order to use other archaeological information.

Archaeology, Policy, and Politics The second issue—​the adequacy of archaeologically generated knowledge for policy formulation—​is more difficult, if for no other reason than that it is largely outside our normal activities and expertise. Once archaeological research becomes involved in policy formulation it enters the realm of politics, and the arena for our research then changes dramatically. Academic disagreements can become vicious at times, but politics is often a blood sport. Therefore, we need to be prepared to defend the quality and integrity of our interpretations to a degree that we rarely have to in the academic setting. The role of climate change research in the modern politics of mitigating anthropogenic climate change should give us pause. Within the past decade, several influential climate change scholars, not least in the United States and United Kingdom, but also elsewhere, have been attacked, with their integrity and work questioned for political purposes. When thinking about the relationships between politics and academic study, let us keep in mind three words, Trofim Denisovich Lysenko, an instructive although extreme example from the Stalinist-​period Soviet Union where crude politics dictated science leading to destruction of science and the literal destruction of rival scientists. I hope I am wrong about the two nagging and basic problems with using traditional archaeological research to address modern human–​environmental interaction. Even if my two points are not correct for some areas of the world, it is unlikely our understanding of the archaeological record will be sufficient within a reasonable time period for most areas of the world to model human history for policy decision-​making. If so, is there an additional useful approach, one that is complementary to the dominant way of thinking about archaeology?

An Example of a Utilitarian-​ Perspective Archaeology Here I  outline one example of a utilitarian-​perspective archaeology, discussing how ancient farming known from the archaeological record can be useful even where our

A Utilitarian-Perspective Archaeology    25 understanding of how farming fits within its environmental and cultural contexts is poor. One of the greatest legacies of ancient peoples is agriculture. Over the past ten millennia several thousands of plants and tens of thousands of crop varieties have been domesticated that are/​were adapted to a wide range of environmental conditions. Ancient farmers developed some remarkably creative ways for growing these plants in a variety of environmental settings. Agriculture is one of the greatest legacies of humanity and is the foundation of the world’s economy. Specifically, I will briefly discuss how ancient crops, even those that are now extinct, can have value for expanding the modern larder. Then the value of archaeological knowledge about farming techniques and the distribution of farming will be considered.

Extinct and Obscure Crops The modern world’s food economy is narrowing; out of the thousands of domesticates humanity is now dependent on a literal handful of plants. These include rice, wheat, maize, yams, and sugar cane, among others. Recognizing the danger of being dependent on a few foods, scholars and governments have expended much effort to collect and maintain the diversity of genetic material available for modern farming, not just of well-​known crops but also including little-​known crops throughout the world. Nearly every issue of the Economic Botany journal, for example, has at least one article on an obscure crop, and there are descriptions of little-​known crops of various regions of the world (e.g. Barrau, 1965; Hernández and León, 1992; National Academy of Sciences, 1975; National Research Council, 1989; Ritchie, 1979). There has been an extraordinary amount of cooperation among nations and non-​ governmental organizations to preserve the genetic diversity of crops through a variety of both in situ (local farming settings) and ex situ (‘seed’ banks) strategies. Maintaining crop germplasm has not extended, however, to the gene pool of wild relatives of now extinct crops documented in the archaeological record. Does knowledge of these extinct plants have value? Documentation of these ancient crops may be useful for expanding the range of foods available (e.g. Minnis, 2014). Some now extinct crops may be redomesticated through genetic manipulation of the wild plants. After all, we know they are capable of domestication by the best evidence: they once were crops. In addition, some of their specific genes might be as usefully employed through recombinant manipulation (genetic engineering) as they once were for past populations through traditional breeding. The number of extinct crops in the archaeological record could be much greater than we might expect and thus expand the list of crops available to feed humans. Archaeological research throughout the world demonstrates the presence of crops grown in the past that are now extinct. New examples are being found even in areas with a history of long and intense archaeological research. Perhaps the best region to examine this phenomenon is eastern North America. Over a half-​century of extensive archaeological research has documented a whole range of

26   Paul E. Minnis local plants first domesticated thousands of years ago (e.g. Smith and Cowan, 2003) even though eastern North America is not considered a centre of domestication. Minimally, these include marshelder (Iva annua var. macrocarpa), chenopod (Chenopodium berlandieri var. jonesianum), sunflower (Helianthus annuus var. macrocarpa), Jerusalem artichoke/​sunchoke (Helianthus tuberosus), and a squash (Cucurbita pepo var. ovifera). In addition, there are other native plants that may have been domesticated, including maygrass (Phalaris caroliniana), erect knotweed (Polygonum erectum), and little barley (Hordeum pusillum). Not until late in prehistory, around Ad 900, did Mesoamerican-​ derived crops—​mostly, maize, beans, and cucurbits—​become the economic mainstays. Most of these indigenous eastern North American crops then became extinct with only their wild ancestors remaining today. While an especially instructive example, eastern North America is not the only area with now extinct crops. Emergent work in the North American Southwest has identified a number of possible ancient cultigens (e.g. Fish, 2004). The agave (also known as century plant, mescal, and maguey in the genus, Agave) in the Sonoran Desert is an interesting case study. Agave is a well-​known cultigen in Mesoamerica, but until about a quarter-​century ago, it was assumed that only uncultivated Agave species were used in the North American Southwest. Innovative work in the region over the past 25 years has documented widespread cultivation of at least one domesticated agave (Fish et al., 1985) which, it appears, was a major crop. These archaeologists documented extensive fields in the foothills of mountains with tens of thousands of rock mulch features, a specialized toolkit specific to agave processing, and large earthen ovens containing the remains of agave. It is clear from this research that agave cultivation was a major economic activity for the ancient people of the Sonoran Desert that complemented their well-​known and massive irrigation systems. The recognition that agave was widely cultivated in the Sonoran Desert of North America occurred only after decades of very intensive archaeological research. There may be even more examples in the North American Southwest as Bohrer (1991) enumerates native plants significantly manipulated by humans so that they might be possible indigenous crop plants (also see Adams, 2004; Fish, 2004). Archaeology in North America is very active; many archaeologists over the past century have conducted research, and national cultural preservation laws have accelerated the pace of archaeological study. Yet, only within the past half-​century have archaeologists recognized the diversity of ancient indigenous crops. The relatively recent discovery of ancient crops in areas with long histories of intense archaeological research suggests that we can anticipate many more previously unknown crops to be discovered in less intensively investigated regions of the world. Unless North America is unique, and there is no obvious reason to believe it to be so, we should expect a dramatic increase in the number of indigenous crops to be recognized in the archaeological record in other regions. We just need to look for them. Indicators of such plants could include morphological changes, unusual abundance in archaeological assemblages not explainable by simple environmental changes, presence of specialized toolkits for growing or processing specific plants, and ancient plant distributions far different from their

A Utilitarian-Perspective Archaeology    27 modern ecological range. The greatly expanding study of prehistoric DNA may well offer some of the best new ways of documenting cultigens.

Prehistoric Farming Techniques Prehistoric peoples developed a wide range of farming techniques (e.g. Denevan, 2001; Doolittle, 2000). Some of these are known only or largely from the archaeological record. Therefore, our knowledge of ancient farming may provide information about ecologically sustainable farming and gardening. Knowledge of ancient farming can be useful in a variety of ways, and two will be outlined: distribution of crops and farming strategies. Expanding the potential number of crops is only one way to increase the food supply. Another is to bring more land into cultivation. In the broadest sense, land mass is not increasing significantly, so more agriculturally marginal land likely will need to be cultivated. In many cases, ancient peoples farmed locations not now being farmed; how many such locations will need to be brought into agriculture to feed the world in the future? Which agroecological strategies and techniques are most suitable for marginal farming locations? The archaeological record may provide information about farming in these areas. Ancient peoples developed ways to farm locations now deemed ‘marginal’. Examples extend from the farming of swamps, such as the chinampas raised fields of Latin America (Denevan, 1970) to deserts, such as terracing to maximize limited moisture in the North American Southwest and northern Mexico. One of the best-​known examples is raised fields in South America which have inspired attempts to adapt this strategy to modern farming (e.g. Erickson, 1988; see also Herrera, Chapter 24; Kendall and Drew, Chapter 22; cf. Spriggs, Chapter 20). Another example is rock mulching, because, as with other mulching material, rocks can help conserve moisture and can reduce predation on crops. The use of lithic mulching has a limited distribution today but was more widely used in the past (Doolittle, 2000; Lightfoot, 1984). In fact, the Hokokam of the Sonoran Desert in North America used extensive rock mulch fields primarily to grow agave (e.g. Fish, 2004; Fish et al., 1985). As a natural and widely available resource, stone or rock mulching may be adapted to modern cultivation. If it is not adaptable to large-​scale industrial farming then it might be used in house gardens, as might other techniques documented in the archaeological record (for example, see Nabhan and McKibben, 2013).

Discussion and Conclusions Knowing that oil-​rich plants such as marshelder were ancient crops might be used to increase the human food supply, even with an opaque archaeological record where we may not know the details of how the plants were used in the past. Similarly, knowing the

28   Paul E. Minnis archaeological distribution of lithic mulch farming could be useful, again even if we do not know the details about how it was used. The more we know about the past, the better, but an incomplete archaeological record may still provide solutions to pressing modern problems. One advantage of a utilitarian-​perspective archaeology is that it encourages us to look at the archaeological record in a different way, to look for practically useful information. For example, a new look at another North American region, California, might be helpful. Emergent information documents an astonishing range of environmental manipulations by indigenous peoples of that area. Anderson (2005), for example, devoted over 500 pages describing widespread manipulation of indigenous plants recorded in the ethnographic record. Fowler’s (2000) essay about Timbisha Shoshone in Death Valley is instructive. Here is an example of a low density non-​agricultural human group in a very arid and harsh environment, the kind of location one would expect the most minimal human–​environmental effects. Contrary to this expectation, the Shoshone were very active manipulators of their environment. They tended mesquite trees, managed springs, and burned vegetation, among other actions. Given the high level of environmental management by groups traditionally characterized as hunter-​gatherers or foragers, we should not be surprised if more research demonstrates that a number of these manipulated plants could have become indigenous crops cultivated in ancient California. Let me be as clear as possible, I do not see a utilitarian-​perspective archaeology as replacing a more traditional archaeology. Rather the two are complementary; the more we know about the past, the more we accumulate information that can be ‘mined’ to address practical problems. Still, our understanding of the record of ancient humanity is limited, often gravely so, and likely will continue so for the foreseeable future. The value of a utilitarian-​perspective archaeology is not limited to ancient crops and farming as outlined here. More widely known and perhaps more important is the value of archaeological information in ecological conservation (see e.g. Ekblom, Chapter 25; Lyman, Chapter 10). The abundance and distribution of various plants and animals documented in the archaeological record provides information about ecological dynamics. Archaeological data especially can provide information about anthropogenic effects, important aspects of ecological history (e.g. Chew, 2001; Dean, 2010; Lentz, 2000; Lyman and Cannon, 2004; Minnis and Elisens, 2000; Redman, 1999; Redman et al., 2004; Wilkinson, 2003). Beyond environmental issues, archaeological data about architecture and other aspects of material culture might be useful. The potential of archaeology to add to our understanding of current and serious problems, such as food provisioning, is only limited by the quality of our data and our cleverness in extracting useful information from that data. A  utilitarian-​ perspective archaeology is an additional approach helping us focus on how we can best use archaeological information, even from poorly documented regions, to work towards a more sustainable future.

A Utilitarian-Perspective Archaeology    29

Acknowledgements Numerous people have provided much-​ appreciated comments and assistance. Minimally, these include Patricia Gilman, Patrick Kirsch, Margaret Nelson, and Stephen Plog. An earlier draft of this chapter was prepared in association with a meeting, ‘Archaeology and Sustainability’, held at the Academia Sinica in Taipei. The organizer, Cheng-​wa Tang, is thanked for an excellent seminar.

References Adams, K. R. (2004). Anthropogenic ecology of the North American Southwest. In P. Minnis (ed.), People and Plants in Ancient Western North America. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 167–​204. Anderson, M. K. (2005). Tending the Wild: Native American Knowledge and the Management of California’s Natural Resources. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Barrau, J. (1965). Witnesses of the past:  notes on some food plants of Oceania. Ethnology 4(3): 282–​294. Bohrer, V. L. (1991). Recently recognized cultivated and encouraged plants among the Hohokam. Kiva 56(3): 227–​235. Chew, S. C. (2001). World Ecological Degradation:  Accumulation, Urbanization, and Deforestation 3000 B.C.–​A.D. 2000. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press. Dean, R. M. (2010). The Archaeology of Anthropogenic Environments. Occasional Papers 37, Center for Archaeological Investigations. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University. Denevan, W. M. (1970). Aboriginal drained-​ field cultivation in the Americas. Science 169(3946): 647–​654. Denevan, W. M. (2001). Cultivated Landscapes of Native Amazonia and the Andes. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Doolittle, W. E. (2000). Cultivated Landscapes of Native North America. Oxford:  Oxford University Press. Downum, C. E., and Price, L. J. (1999). Applied archaeology. Human Organization 58: 226–​239. Erickson, C. L. (1988). Raised field agriculture in the Titicaca basin: putting ancient agriculture back to work. Expedition 30(1): 8–​16. Fish, S. K. (2004). Crops, corn, and cultivation in the North American Southwest. In P. Minnis (ed.), People and Plants in Ancient Western North America. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 150–​166. Fish, S. K., Fish, P. R., and Madsen, J. (1985). Prehistoric agave cultivation in southern Arizona. Desert Plants 7: 107–​113. Fowler, C. S. (2000). ‘We live by them’: native knowledge of biodiversity in the Great Basin of western North America. In P. Minnis and W. Elisens (eds), Biodiversity and Native America. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 99–​132. Hernández Bermejo, J. E., and León, J. (1992). Neglected Crops: 1942 from a Different Perspective. Rome: UN FAO. Lentz, D. L. (2000). Imperfect Balance:  Landscape Transformation in the Precolumbian Americas. New York: Columbia University Press.

30   Paul E. Minnis Lightfoot, D. (1984). The nature, history, and distribution of lithic mulch agriculture: an ancient technique of dryland agriculture. Agricultural History Review 44(2): 206–​222. Little, B. J. (2002). Public Benefits of Archaeology. Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press. Lyman, R. L., and Cannon, K. P. (2004). Zooarchaeology and Conservation Biology. Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press. Minnis, P. E. (2001). One possible future of paleoethnobotany. In R. I. Ford (ed.), Ethnobotany at the Millennium:  Past Promises and Future Prospects. Museum of Anthropology Anthropological Papers No. 91. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 35–​48. Minnis, P. E. (2004). Extinction isn’t always forever: biodiversity and archaeology. In C. Redman, S. James, P. Fish, and J. Rogers (eds), The Archaeology of Global Change. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 249–​256. Minnis, P. E. (2006). Answering the skeptic’s question. The SAA Archaeological Record 6(5): 17–​20. Minnis, P. E. (2013). Utilitarian archaeology: mining the past for the future. In S. Chiu and C.-​H. Tsang (eds), Archaeology and Sustainability. Center for Archaeological Sciences, Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences. Taiwan: Academia Sinica, 49–​62. Minnis, P. E. (2014). New Lives for Ancient and Extinct Crops. Tucson, AZ:  University of Arizona Press. Minnis, P. E., and Elisens, W. J. (2000). Biodiversity and Native America. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press. Nabhan, G. P., and Mckibben, B. (2013). Growing Food in a Hotter, Drier Land: Lessons from Desert Farming on Adapting to Climate Uncertainty. White River Junction, VT:  Chelsea Green Publishing. National Academy of Sciences (USA) (1975). Underexploited Tropical Plants with Economic Promise. Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences. National Research Council (USA) (1989). Lost Crops of the Incas. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. Redman, C. L. (1999). Human Impact on Ancient Environments. Tucson, AZ:  University of Arizona Press. Redman, C. L., James, S. R., Fish. P. R., and Rogers, J. D. (2004). The Archaeology of Global Change: The Impact of Humans on Their Environment. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books. Ritchie, G. A. (ed.) (1979). New Agricultural Crops. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Sabloff, J. A. (2008). Archaeology Matters: Action Archaeology in the Modern World. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press. Smith, B. D., and Cowan, C. W. (2003). Domesticated crop plants and the evolution of food production economics in eastern North America. In P. Minnis (ed.), People and Plants in Ancient Eastern North America. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 105–​126. Wilkinson, T. J. (2003). Archaeological Landscapes of the Near East. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press.

Chapter 3

Expedie nc e , Impermanenc e , a nd Unpl anned Obs ol e s c e nc e The Coming-​About of Agricultural Features and Landscapes William E. Doolittle

Several years ago, Linda S. Cordell and Fred Plog (1979) published an article with the intriguing title ‘Escaping the Confines of Normative Thought’. In it they argued that the conceptual framework traditionally employed to organize archaeological data is inadequate and inappropriate. By using a chronological classification scheme first outlined in 1927, archaeologists of the American Southwest were ‘carrying outmoded intellectual baggage’ (1979: 408). New and detailed data, they argued, were constantly being forced into a scheme that was too general and too simple. To correct this situation, Cordell and Plog, both products of the New Archaeology of the 1960s, reiterated the call for an approach that is process-​oriented, and they suggested a new way of thinking about ancient people. Although they did not draw a direct parallel with earth science (one that is raised later in this chapter), they were in essence making a distinction similar to that in historical and processual geomorphology. Even more importantly, they also envisaged prehistoric people as having behaved expediently, as individuals and local groups, in order to cope with a variety of continually changing natural and social environments. In effect, they argued that ancient people behaved pretty much as humans do today—​‘keep on keepin’ on’ as per the Bob Dylan song ‘Tangled Up in Blue’. Prehistoric people did not conform to some overarching cultural standards any more than their cultures were the cumulative results of individual and small group actions. Stated another way, culture is just as much a product of people, as people are a product of culture.

32   William E. Doolittle Unfortunately, at least as far as Cordell (personal communication, 2012) and myself are concerned, that article seems to have had little impact. Thirty-​five years later, the same classification scheme continues to be used. Attempts are continually made to understand culture and society without first understanding, or at least attempting to understand, the people (Cordell, 2012). Equally problematic, environments continue to be perceived as relatively static with people living in them. Humans are increasingly recognized as agents of environmental change (e.g. timber harvesting, agricultural expansion), but overwhelmingly they continue to be viewed as members of groups that respond to environmental events of exceptional magnitude, frequency, duration, or novelty (e.g. volcanic eruptions, droughts; see for example Panich, 2013). Human–​environmental interactions are not normally thought of as series of small, continuous actions—​‘intrinsic interactive processes’—​as my friend and colleague Karl Butzer (1982: 280) would say. They should be, as they were after all ‘ordinary people’ (Smith, 2010). In honour and memory of Linda Cordell, a prominent thinker among archaeologists of the American Southwest who died in 2013, this chapter reintroduces her ideas with a few new twists. With a title that is hopefully as evocative as her and Plog’s, the chapter is divided into five sections, all of which draw examples primarily from archaeological, historical, and present-​day studies of agricultural systems. The first is a brief discussion of terminology in general, as words, after all, are intended to communicate ideas, and often they fail. The second section examines a few fashionable concepts—​the complex ideas that humans attempt to present through terminology. The third section reframes some perspectives on present-​day hazards with those of Cordell and Plog in order to show similarities between archaeology and geomorphology in the context of Western and modern thinking. The fourth section explores the non-​Western notion of anicca, or impermanence, and proffers its advantages for future studies of the past. The final section takes the opposite perspective, blending archaeology and development, to outline an approach to thinking about and contributing to the future.

A Word on Words Everyone uses simple terms in discussing complex issues. This is every bit as much the case with professional jargon as it is with popular lingo. Some terms are widely understood and generally accepted with little confusion. Growth and density, referring to increase in size, and number per area, respectively, are two such examples. Other terms, however, are used differently depending on discipline, and, conversely, different terms are used by scholars in various fields to refer to a common phenomenon. To illustrate the former situation, climate is a common term, but it resonates one meaning to meteorologists, and another to business analysts. A good example of the latter is what most people think of as dirt, but which geologists call overburden, soil scientists call soil, geomorphologists call sediment, and archaeologists call strata.

Expedience, Impermanence, and Unplanned Obsolescence    33 Of the many problems with terminology, four are particularly common. The first is the presumption that the reader or listener knows exactly what the speaker or writer means. ‘Landscape’ is a perfect example. Mere mention of the term will conjure up images of paintings of the American West to some, regions to others, and lawns and gardens to yet others. The biases of listeners and readers can, of course, distort the intended meaning of the speaker or writer, so this problem is not always the fault of the presenter. That said the presenter has the responsibility to be specific and explicit. The second problem with terminology is inventing terms or using local terms in a language other than that of science, English. Far too often we have all read passages that say something like: ‘For this study, _​_​_​_​_​_​_​(fill-​in the blank with a word of your own choosing) is defined as _​_​_​_​_​_​_​.’ Or, we read about an azud rather than a diversion dam simply because the writer happens to be working in Spain. These practices should be avoided. Borrowing terminology without adequate contextual research is the third problem. Scholars working in a particular field of specialization should use standard terminology and definitions developed in that discipline. For example, studies involving the movement of water should use terms developed in the field of hydrology (Widgren, 2014). Channels are natural features (e.g. streams). Canals are for transportation (e.g. the Suez Canal) or to move water to a place (e.g. irrigate a field). Ditches are to move water away from a place (e.g. drainage). To turn the tables for illustrative purposes, no serious Peruvian archaeologist would give credence to an article on Moche ceramics published by an accountant who classified one type as ‘Pervert Pottery’. The fourth terminological problem is that of conflating form and function. One archaeologist’s terrace is often another’s check dam and yet another’s row of rocks. Deciding how something worked prior to describing its shape, location, and setting, and analysing associated data, is tantamount to putting the proverbial cart before the horse. Related to this is the issue of parts and the whole. In the way of illustration, picking up a single small piece of chipped stone and calling it a spear point would be poor scholarship at best and unacceptable science at worst. This holds true even if the observer had seen thousands of rock alignments/​check dams or flakes/​points. In the overall scheme of things, terms are simply words and as such are not at fault for their use, misuse, implied understanding, and misunderstanding. They are neither real nor immutable, but rather human constructions, with scholars being particularly skilled at fabricating them (Baudrillard, 1981; Simon, 1972). Furthermore, the creation of terminology does not always facilitate clear communication. It can also result in distortion (Symanski, 1976).

Academic Vogue Far too much jargon is being used today, and as a result scholars are continuing to fall victim to the fallacy of misplaced concreteness (Whitehead, 1925). Some scholars are so

34   William E. Doolittle accustomed to thinking within the discourse style of their profession that they are not even aware of doing so. For many scholars, technical jargon is like water is to fish. They are so immersed in it that they are unaware of it (Tainter, 2014). Bombast should not be used in lieu of clear thinking. In the context of historical ecology and applied archaeology three terms/​concepts stand out as generating as much proverbial heat as light, perhaps more, and as such deserve consideration. In reverse age-​order, from newest and most fashionable, back through the hackneyed, to oldest and threadbare, these are the Anthropocene, sustainability, and adaptation.

Anthropocene The notion that we are living in a new geological epoch called the Anthropocene was first raised in the 1980s by Stoermer (Crutzen and Stoermer, 2000). It was not, however, until the beginning of the millennium (Crutzen, 2002) that it became a hot topic, and initiated much discussion. Briefly, the argument is that human populations have grown recently in such large numbers, and created such complex technologies, that people are now the dominant force of not only environmental, but geological change on the planet. Debate has thus far pivoted around important but mundane matters such as: when it began—​with the origins of agriculture, the Industrial Revolution, the end of the Second World War (Foley et al., 2013; Zalasiewicz et al., 2015); its comparison to other geologic time periods, brevity, and lack of termination (Zalasiewicz et al., 2010); and the scale and spatial and temporal variability of human impacts—​what will and will not survive to appear in the future geologic record (Vince, 2011). It has only been during the past year or so that conceptual—​intellectual—​matters pertaining to the Anthropocene are coming to the fore. Narratives and contingencies are seen to be as important as data (e.g. Head, 2014; Malm and Hornborg, 2014). Dealing with time in discrete, linear units (e.g. phases, periods, epochs), and understanding what labels (e.g. Anthropocene) mean to different scholars (e.g. earth scientists, social scientists) and convey to others (e.g. scholars, the lay public) are important considerations. The last point, what intellectual concepts and terms mean to the general populace is particularly relevant. The term ‘Anthropocene’ is as vivid to the public as it is to scientists. Accordingly, both the label itself and the concept underlying it are subject to being exploited to a variety of ends (Zalasiewicz et al., 2010: 2228, 2231; see also Isendahl, 2010). In one recent example, Dirzo et al. (2014) accepted the term uncritically and used it only in the brief title of an article on decreasing fauna. But such is nothing new. One need not look any farther than the next term to understand how ideas get appropriated and misappropriated by different people for different reasons.

Expedience, Impermanence, and Unplanned Obsolescence    35

Sustainability This is a term that is simultaneously meaningful and meaningless. It is meaningful in that it can mean just about anything one wants it to mean, and as a result means absolutely nothing. This is not merely a play on words (see the four problems outlined earlier). Priceless and worthless, for example, are commonly understood to mean very different things, but given that price reflects worth, they can be synonymous. The term ‘sustainability’ is derived from the Latin sustinēre, to uphold. Ambiguity, if not outright corruption, stems from it being a verb that morphed into a noun—​the ability to be upheld, sustained—​that gets used far too casually, especially in agricultural and environmental contexts. To wit, ‘sustainable agriculture’ is the proclaimed goal of both environmentalist Wes Jackson (2010) and the Monsanto Corporation (http://​www. monsanto.com). Their respective premises and approaches could not be more different, despite a common linguistic heritage. Ecology and economics share the root oiκoς (eco), Greek for house; but differ in -​λoγίά (-​ology), the study of, and—​νόμος (-​nomos), the law or management of. Jackson’s approach is based on systems and the notion of carrying capacity, whereas Monsanto’s is based on processes and inputs. Can agriculture dependent on petrochemicals be considered sustainable? Yes, as long as petrochemicals can be supplied. Applying the term coined by Hirt (1994), this is clearly a ‘conspiracy of optimism’. Somewhat paradoxically, this conflation originated with the 1987 Brundtland Commission of the United Nations. For all its positive contributions, it muddied the semiotic waters when it tied another ambiguous word to sustainable, that of development. Given that development—​improvement—​requires change and that sustainable implies maintenance, it can be concluded that sustainability involves maintaining what is being changed while changing what is being maintained. On the bases of lexicology and epistemology, this is a classic Catch-​22, not unlike one we have seen before.

Adaptation Originating in anthropology (Alland, 1970), the notion of adaptation as applied to humans came of age in geography during the 1980s. In a broad sense, it involved culture and environment, especially the former: ‘ “Cultural adaptation” . . . is the process of change in response to a change . . . “[A]‌daptability” is the capacity to adapt’ (Denevan, 1983: 401). Parallels were drawn from systems theory and ecology, but ideas such as equilibrium and stability were rejected as few if any cultures have become completely adapted. Adaptation was understood to be nonlinear. Some cultures prospered and may be considered ‘civilizations’ (Butzer, 1980). Conversely, some have ‘collapsed’ and therefore might be interpreted as ‘maladapted’ (Butzer, 2012; Denevan, 1995).

36   William E. Doolittle In adaptation terms, culture was a mechanism for resilience and risk-​minimization rather than benefit-​maximization. Unlike sustainability, a concept that is forward-​ looking or oriented towards the future, adaptation was reflective and inward-​looking (see Isendahl, 2010). Individual actions were recognized to be as important as the superorganic (Duncan, 1980), but they were seen principally as deliberate choices made in response to specific events or perturbations in conditions, most often of an environmental nature and usually as members of groups. This was particularly true in geoarchaeological contexts. The very nature of the data favours cases of people and cultures being affected by their environments. They are visual and relatively discrete (e.g. flood deposits). Evidence of humans affecting their environments is not as clear, but instead is subtle and nuanced (e.g. pollen assemblages). It should not be surprising, therefore, that environmental impacts on humans have been seen as sudden, disastrous, and even catastrophic, while human alterations of the environment are typically portrayed as gradual and slow—​transformations. The concept of adaptation was deficient in its implicit reliance on culture and deliberate actions (Widgren, 2012: 128). Cultures do not think and act. Individuals do; and they do not attempt to adapt. They try to survive. The archaeological record, as constructed, does not reflect this. It reflects instead, for the most part, the cumulative and inseparable actions of numerous individuals over scores of years. For convenience these data are categorized into cultural phases or periods. Data so organized present a conundrum. It is easy to envision phases as times when conditions were relatively stable and unchanging, and interpret boundaries between phases as events that precipitated change. Stated another way, stasis appears as the norm, with change being an aberration. In contrast, archaeologists have known since the advent of New Archaeology that change was constantly occurring throughout phases, and the phases and their boundaries are not real, but arbitrary designations. Recognizing this is rather simple. Actually dealing with it has proven to another matter (Smith, 2010: 16, 23). Cordell and Plog (1979) recognized this and provided a perspective that remains remarkably unappreciated to this day.

Expedience, Coping, and Hazards In addition to arguing that most archaeological material is ‘the product of more expedient behavior’ (1979: 409), Cordell and Plog (1979: 409) made two other provocative statements. Change is a continual aspect of the environment of every humans society. On a relatively continual basis, prehistoric people sought to cope with changing circumstances.

Expedience, Impermanence, and Unplanned Obsolescence    37 These passages seem to say the same thing at first glance, but careful examination reveals an important difference. The first refers to environments and the second refers to humans. Environments are continually changing. So too are the actions of humans. Coping should not be confused with adapting or even adjusting, as it connotes implicitly an attempt to return to equilibrium. Coping is short-​term and immediate, whereas adapting is long-​term. Placing this distinction in first-​hand context, each of us, individually, knows that we are always coping with something. None of us, however, think of ourselves as members of a group that is adapting. In contrast, a large number of people think of their culture apocalyptically, as evident by the continued fascination with Nostradamus. Scholars do not necessarily maintain such a perspective, but hazards, especially those of an environmental nature, have been a topic of study for some time (White, 1974). Particularly germane for geoarchaeology are geomorphic hazards, of which Stanley Schumm (1988) identified three general types. They are those that involve: (1) an abrupt change that produces a catastrophic event (e.g. 100-​year floods that destroy farmland); (2) a progressive change that leads to an abrupt event (e.g. 5-​year floods that eventually lead to avulsion); (3) a progressive change that has slow but cumulative results (e.g. irregular flows resulting in stream bed aggradation or degradation). These categories were later reframed by Olav Slaymaker (1996) as simply those hazards of: (1) high magnitude and low frequency; (2) low magnitude and high frequency; (3) low magnitude and continuous. Slaymaker (2003) subsequently noted that the third type of hazard remains understudied in large part because it is under-​appreciated. This situation may be a function of two factors. First, low magnitude and continuous changes are not very spectacular. Soil creep is simply not as captivating as mass wasting. Second, they are not readily apparent, can be imperceptible, and hence do not register in episodic memory (Hasselmo, 2012). To wit, everyone who has looked at old photographs of familiar places has been surprised to see the changes that took place gradually, over the years. Schumm’s and Slaymaker’s third type of hazard and Cordell and Plog’s comments about expedience appear different in some respects. Indeed, the former focus on deliberate human reactions to environmental conditions or events—​that need to be addressed in new and creative ways (Walters, 2012)—​while the latter emphasize human actions that may not involve long-​term planning (Doolittle, 2003). An excellent archaeological example melding these two seemingly different perspectives is the work of

38   William E. Doolittle Briggs and Schaafsma (2007) on silt fields along Cave Creek, north of Phoenix, Arizona. There, ancient farmers were confronted with two environmental conditions, aridity and floodwaters. To compensate for the former they excavated canals to carry water diverted out of the ephemeral stream. These waters then flooded the fields, thereby irrigating crops. However, these waters often flowed at high velocities and needed to be slowed and distributed evenly over field surfaces. To do this, ancient farmers cut brush, stacked it in parallel rows across their fields, and weighted it down with large rocks. The brush dissipated the energy of floodwaters, thereby resulting in the deposition of fertile silt on field surfaces. Each year the desiccated brush would disintegrate, requiring new brush to be cut and stacked. Rocks used as weights the previous year would simply be picked up and set upon the new brush. Over the course of a century or more the field surface built up more than a metre of fine, rock-​free sediment (Fig. 3.1), topped by rows of widely-​spaced rocks on the surface (Fig. 3.2). Every few years newer, longer canals would have to be dug to accommodate the increased surface elevation. The gradual build-​up of the field surface was not planned; it was an unintended consequence. These farmers were simply acting expediently to environmental conditions. Cutting and stacking brush, setting rocks, and even digging canals were simply common, routine activities carried out with little thought about the long-​term future. Nothing was being built as permanent landscape modifications. Instead, things were just being done, quite in contrast to conventional Western thinking. Another good example is the ‘inevitable’ formation of dark earths (see Arroyo-​Kalin, Chapter 6; Fraser et al., 2014). Scholarship as we know it is Western and modern, originating with the Enlightenment, a movement rooted in the notion that humans can aspire to greatness, and do so through writing, music, art, and architecture. Implicit in this line of thinking is that whatever is done at one time will last for generations or centuries (e.g. Michelangelo carving the statue of David). This was perhaps no better stated than by Thorstein Veblen who received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science for his theory on the leisure class. As a matter of selective necessity man is an agent. He is in his own apprehension, a centre of unfolding impulsive activity—​‘teleological’ activity. He is an agent seeking in every act the accomplishment of some concrete, objective, impersonal end. By force of his being such an agent, he is possessed of a taste for effective work, and a distaste for futile effort. He has a sense of the merit of serviceability or efficiency, and of the demerit of futility, waste or incapacity. This aptitude or propensity may be called the instinct of workmanship. Wherever the circumstances or traditions of life lead to a habitual comparison of one person with another, in point of efficiency, the instinct of workmanship works out in an emulative or invidious comparison of persons. (Veblen, 2007: 68)

Western thought emphasizes permanence because it is linear. Non-​Western thinking, in contrast, embraces impermanence because it is nonlinear (see De Landa, 1997: 15–​ 16). Accordingly, it provides an alternative perspective for historical ecology and applied archaeology.

Expedience, Impermanence, and Unplanned Obsolescence    39

Figure 3.1  Cut bank at the edge of an ancient silt field along Cave Creek, north of Phoenix in southern Arizona. Note the upper metre of fine sediment and the normally dry stream channel. Photograph by author.

Impermanence The difference between permanent and temporary is more than simply a matter of time scale; formerly cultivated but now unused land is not abandoned. Buddhism accepts that all things in the universe are characterized by three doctrines or marks of existence;

40   William E. Doolittle

Figure 3.2  The surface of an ancient silt field (Fig. 3.1). Note the rows of widely-​spaced rocks used to anchor cut brush when this field was cultivated. Photograph by author.

anatta or non-​selfhood, dukkha or unsatisfactoriness, and annica or impermanence. According to the doctrine of annica, all forms of life and their environments embody flux in the ageing process, the cycle of samsara or birth and rebirth, and in the experience of loss. Because conditioned phenomena—​things that are compounded, constructed, or fabricated—​are impermanent, attachment to them becomes the cause for dukkha. This is in contrast to nirvana, the reality that is unconditioned, and therefore knows no change, decay, or death. Annica expresses the notion that all of conditioned existence, without exception, is transient. The mutability of life—​that time passes on no matter what happens—​is fundamental. Impermanence is intimately associated with the doctrine of anatta, according to which things have no fixed nature, essence, or self. Because all phenomena are impermanent—​in a state of flux—​they are understood as shunyata or empty of an intrinsic self. The notion of impermanence was perhaps elucidated best by the fourteenth-​century Shintō priest Urabe (aka Yoshida) no Kaneyoshi, more commonly known as Kenkō (1998). His ‘Notes from Leisure Hours’, admittedly written to alleviate boredom, involved jotting down whatever came to mind in the zuihitsu or follow-​the-​brush

Expedience, Impermanence, and Unplanned Obsolescence    41 stream-​of-​consciousness style of writing. They are thus ‘a work of timeless relevance . . . a splendid example of Japanese meditative style’ (Keene in Kenkō, 1998: xvii). The work provides insights into the nature of Japanese aesthetics, evoking the author’s appreciation of the world around him, especially his insistence on its uncertainty. His exposition of this-​worldly interests reflects not only his personal preferences and those of his contemporaries, but also the preferences of most Japanese today who have the leisure to think of aesthetic matters (Keene in Kenkō, 1998: vii). As Kenkō recognized so eloquently: The world is as unstable as the pools and shallows of [a]‌river. Times change and things disappear  . . .  a place that once thrived turns into an uninhibited moor . . . (1998: 25) I feel this sense of impermanence even more sharply when I see the remains of a home which long ago, before I knew it, must have been imposing. Whenever I pass by . . . ruins . . . it moves me to think that the aspiration of the builders still lingers on, though the edifices themselves have changed completely. (1998: 26)

A modern example of this exists at http://​goobingdetroit.com​ (Greig, 2014). It illustrates how archaeologists will be well-​served to not only recognize and appreciate impermanence, but accept it as their modus operandi. Two recent studies by Swedish archaeologists working in Laos demonstrate this convincingly (Källén, 2004; Karlström, 2009). Subscribers to Western science have found a convenient way to circumvent the inevitability of impermanence. We label it entropy and we combat it with maintenance. Nothing in our human environment improves or even retains its status without our constant oversight and energy (Steffensen, 2012: 79–​81). And, even then, change occurs. This is evident in rock terrace risers (Fig. 3.3). Farmers probably think the terraces they build will last forever, or at least their lifetimes. They recognize the need for maintenance, but doubtless think in terms of permanence. Despite their constant attention, from time to time portions of risers collapse, requiring farmers to rebuild damaged sections. Try as they might to repair terraces to their original appearance, reconstructed risers will be different (Figs. 3.4 and 3.5). They might be slightly higher or lower, perhaps a bit more protruding or recessed, at a slightly different angle, or maybe different in masonry details, but different they will be. To the casual observer, and perhaps even farmers themselves, the landscape might seem unchanged. At first glance, two photographs of a terraced landscape, taken from the same location 100 years apart may seem identical. On closer inspection, however, substantial transformations will present themselves (e.g. Pennisi, 2013). Be they farmers or scholars, lived centuries ago or today, one person’s long-​term or future is but a momentary blip in a culture’s landscape history. Perhaps the time has come to stop using, and indeed inventing, vacuous terms that fail to capture the essence of continually changing conditions.

42   William E. Doolittle

Figure  3.3  Terraces in various states of use and disuse near Corniglia in the Cinque Terra of Italy. Terraces currently used for the cultivation of grapes and annual crops are on the left. Terraces not in use are on the right and are overgrown. Particularly striking is the terrace in the centre that has a recently rebuilt riser the details of which (Fig. 3.4) are different than adjacent risers. Photograph by author.

Going Forward, or Not Scholars investigating past conditions, events, and processes often claim that doing so helps them understand humanity’s present situations, and may offer insights for anticipating, if not directing, future developments. So far this has been a largely an unfulfilled promise. Scholarship about the past is usually just that; about the past, conventional history or archaeology. There have been, and continue to be, impressive research projects conducted in fascinating places, using the latest technologies, sophisticated analyses, simulations, and modelling, all resulting in stunning presentations and publications. Rarely, however, do they tie the past to the present, and they almost never link the past to the future (Tainter, 2014). The reason for this may well be a function of too few scholars willing to think outside the proverbial box. Most, of course, would argue otherwise, but in reality they may be deluding themselves, not realizing or admitting they have small boxes. Thinking

Expedience, Impermanence, and Unplanned Obsolescence    43

Figure 3.4  A close-​up view of the recently rebuilt terrace riser (Fig. 3.3). Photograph by author.

towards the future requires rethinking how we think about the past (Cornell et al., 2010; Sejersen et al., 2012; van der Leeuw et al., 2011). It is easy to think in terms of stability with change being an aberration, for example. The existence of archaeological periods and phases stands as evidence. Thinking in terms of change being constant and stasis

44   William E. Doolittle

Figure 3.5  A close-​up view of a nearby terrace riser. Note the differences between it and the one in Fig. 3.4. Photograph by author.

being disruptive is another story, one that Cordell and Plog advocated long ago. The paucity of their idea’s acceptance stands as evidence of the intellectual complexities not easily grasped. So we are back where we started, with overly simplistic terms for gossamer concepts, an arrogant attitude about cultures that does not even want to consider the possible importance of individuals’ expedient behaviour, doubtless because of impermanence. Picking up on an idea that was the underpinnings of the US automobile industry since the 1920s, Bernard London (1932) published a pamphlet in which he coined the term ‘planned obsolescence’ for the policy and practice of designing a product with an artificially limited useful life. The marketing angle aside, we nevertheless think that products should last a long time. Are we fooling ourselves? Are our desires only pipe dreams? At the very least it behoves us, especially archaeologists, to consider the possibility of unplanned obsolescence. Time is paramount in archaeology. It is linear in Western minds, and nonlinear elsewhere. Every Western archaeologist knows, however, that culture history is not linear, thereby creating yet another intellectual if not classificatory conundrum. But we struggle on, creating new terms and concepts.

Expedience, Impermanence, and Unplanned Obsolescence    45 The concept of the Anthropocene may have emerged out of palaeoecological, archaeological, and historical perspectives on earth systems, but there is great uncertainty about the future, and how we can apply any lessons from the past (Head, 2014: 1; Lovelock, 2014). Malm and Hornborg (2014: 67) were probably correct in concluding the Anthropocene is an ideology more by default than by design, and only one of several theoretical frameworks that happen to be not only analytically defective, but also inimical to action. Humans are after all parts of a dynamic and uncontrollable earth system from which we cannot escape and in whose service we labour (Haff, 2014: 135). If, despite their problems, concepts/​terms such as ‘sustainability’ and ‘adaptation’ continue to be used, they should involve an extended time frame (Cornell et al., 2010). Factors that influence societies evolve over periods of decades and centuries. Any statements about ‘sustainability’ not based on long-​term observations must be viewed with scepticism (Tainter, 2014). David Biggs (2010) has demonstrated the benefits of this approach in his recent study of the environmental history of the Mekong Delta. One of his conclusions is that local residents—​individuals—​are active participants in environmental transformations. They not only live on a landscape ‘born of the masses’ (Biggs 2010: 109), but their survival ‘demands movement, negotiation, and experience’ (Biggs 2010: 13). Much like the never-​ending work of Penelope, the delta reflects the tension between a series of attempts by the state to concretize its final form and the dynamic fluvial processes of the river itself. It also reflects tension between the governed and the government. Haff ’s (2014: 131) rule of impotence—​that large systems are generally unresponsive to the behaviour of most of the smaller constituent subsystem parts by virtue of constraints applied to enforce the organization of the parts—​is applicable here. Thus, as much as we might like to think otherwise, it might be ‘a futile business attempting to plan for a future one will never know’ (Kenkō, 1998: 26).

References Alland, A. (1970). Adaptation in Cultural Evolution: An Approach to Medical Anthropology. New York: Columbia University Press. Baudrillard, J. (1981). Simulacra and Simulation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Biggs, D. (2010). Quagmire: Nation-​Building and Nature in the Mekong Delta. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Briggs, J. M., and Schaafsma, H. (2007). Hohokam field building: silt fields in the northern Phoenix Basin. Kiva 72(4): 431–​457. Butzer, K. W. (1980). Civilizations: organisms or systems? American Scientist 68(5): 517–​523. Butzer, K. W. (1982). Archaeology as Human Ecology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Butzer, K. W. (2012). Collapse, environment, and society. Proceedings of the National Academy of the United States of America 109(10): 3632–​3639. Cordell, L. S. (2012). Creating, re-​creating and decoding active landscapes in the prehispanic Pueblo Indian Southwest. Paper presented at the 54th International Congress of Americanists, Vienna, Austria.

46   William E. Doolittle Cordell, L. S., and Plog, F. (1979). Escaping the confines of normative thought: a reevaluation of Puebloan prehistory. American Antiquity 44(3): 405–​429. Cornell, S., Costanza, R., Sörlin, S., and van der Leeuw, S. (2010). Developing a systematic ‘science of the past’ to create our future. Global Environmental Change 20(3): 426–​427. Crutzen, P. J. (2002). The geology of mankind. Nature 415(6867): 23. Crutzen, P. J., and Stoermer, E. F. (2000). The ‘Anthropocene’. Global Change Newsletter 41: 17–​18. De Landa, M. (1997). A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History. New York: Swerve Editions. Denevan, W. M. (1983). Adaptation, variation, and cultural geography. Professional Geographer 35(4): 399–​407. Denevan, W. M. (1995). Prehistorical agricultural methods as models for sustainability. Advances in Plant Pathology 11: 21–​43. Dirzo, R., Young, H. S., Galetti, M., Ceballos, G., Isaac, N. J.  B., and Collen, B. (2014). Defaunation in the Anthropocene. Science 345(6195): 401–​406. Doolittle, W. E. (2003). Dynamism and irrigation landscapes. Keynote address at the 36th Chacmool Conference, University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada, 15 November. Duncan, J. S. (1980). The superorganic in American cultural geography. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 70(2): 181–​198. Foley, S. F., Gronenborn, D., Andreae, M. O., Kadereit, J. W., Esper, J., Scholz, D., Pöschel, U., Jacob, D. E., Schöne, B. R., Schreg, R., Vött, A., Jordan, D., Lelieveld, J., Seller, C. G., Alt, K. W., Gaudzinski-​Windheuser, S., Bruhn, K.-​C., Tost, H., Sirocko, F., and Crutzen, P. J. (2013). The palaeoanthropocene: the beginnings of anthropogenic environmental change. Anthropocene 3: 83–​88. Fraser, J. A., Leach, M., and Fairhead, J. (2014). Anthropogenic dark earths in the landscapes of Upper Guinea, West Africa: intentional or inevitable? Annals of the Association of American Geographers 104(6): 1222–​1238. Greig, A. (2014). Detroit fades away: the decline of motor city as seen through Google street view. Mail Online article 2652034. Haff, P. (2014). Humans and technology in the Anthropocene:  six rules. The Anthropocene Review 1(2): 126–​136. Hasselmo, M. E. (2012). How We Remember:  Brain Mechanisms of Episodic Memory. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Head, L. (2014). Contingencies of the Anthropocene:  lessons from the Neolithic. The Anthropocene Review 1(2): 113–​125. Hirt, P. W. (1994). A Conspiracy of Optimism: Management of the National Forests Since World War II. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. Isendahl, C. (2010). The Anthropocene forces us to reconsider adaptationist models of human–​ environment interactions. Environmental Science and Technology 44: 1607. Jackson, W. (2010). Consulting the Genius of the Place:  An Ecological Approach to a New Agriculture. Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint. Källén, A. (2004). And Through Flows the River: Archaeology and the Pasts of Lao Pako. Studies in Global Archaeology 6. Uppsala: Uppsala University. Karlström, A. (2009) Preserving Impermanence: The Creation of Heritage in Vientiane, Laos. Studies in Global Archaeology 13. Uppsala: Uppsala University. Kenkō (1998). Essays in Idleness:  Tsurezuregusa of Kenkō. Translated by Donald Keene. New York: Columbia University Press.

Expedience, Impermanence, and Unplanned Obsolescence    47 London, B. (1932). Ending the Depression through Planned Obsolescence. . Lovelock, J. (2014). A Rough Ride to the Future. London: Allen Lane. Malm, A., and Hornborg, A. (2014). The geology of mankind? A critique of the Anthropocene narrative. The Anthropocene Review 1(1): 62–​69. Panich, L. M. (2013). Archaeologies of persistence: reconsidering the legacies of colonialism in native North America. American Antiquity 78: 105–​122. Pennisi, E. (2013). Worth a thousand words. Science 341(6145): 482–​485. Schumm, S. (1988). Geomorphic hazards:  problems of prediction. Zeitschrift für Geomorphologie Supplementband 67: 17–​24. Sejersen, F., Hastrup, K., Brooks, N., Widgren, M., Vang Rasmussen, L., and Borg Rasmussen, M. (2012). Environmental history and the understanding of causal relations. Geografisk Tidsskrift 112: 203–​205. Simon, H. (1972). Economics, Bounded Rationality and the Cognitive Revolution. Brookfield, VT: Edward Elgar Publishing. Slaymaker, O. (1996). Introduction. In O. Slaymaker (ed.), Geomorphic Hazards. New York: John Wiley, 1–​7. Slaymaker, O. (2003). What is a geomorphic hazard? In Geomorphic Hazards:  Towards the Prevention of Disasters. Abstracts, Regional Geomorphology Conference, Mexico 2003. International Association of Geomorphologists. Mexico City:  Mexican Society of Geomorphology and Institute of Geography, UNAM, 3. Smith, M. L. (2010). A Prehistory of Ordinary People. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press. Steffensen, I. (2012). Fast Girl: Don’t Break Until You See the Face of God and Other Good Advice from the Racetrack. Berkeley, CA: Seal Press. Symanski, R. (1976). The manipulation of ordinary language. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 66(4): 605–​614. Tainter, J. A. (2014). Comments on the Symposium Integrated Historical Ecology of Human Ecodynamics: An Applied Archaeology for Future Earth, presented at the annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Austin, Texas. van der Leeuw, S., Costanza, R., Aulenbach, S., Brewer, S., Burek, M., Cornell, S., Crumley, C., Dearing, J. A., Downy, C., Graumlach, L. J., Heckbert, S., Hegmon, M., Hibbard, K., Jackson, S. T., Kubiszewski, I., Sinclair, P., Sörlin, S., and Steffen, W. (2011). Toward an integrated history to guide the future. Ecology and Society 16(4): 2. Veblen, T. (2007). The Theory of the Leisure Class. Oxford: Oxford University Press [orig. pub. New York: Macmillan, 1899]. Vince, G. (2011). An epoch debate. Science 334(6052): 32–​37. Walters, B. B. (2012). An event-​based methodology for climate change and human environmental research. Geografisk Tidsskrift 112: 135–​143. White, G. F. (ed.) (1974). Natural Hazards:  Local, National, Global. New  York:  Oxford University Press. Whitehead, A. N. (1925). An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Widgren, M. (2012). Climate and causation in the Swedish Iron Age: learning from the present to understand the past. Geografisk Tidsskrift 112: 126–​134. Widgren, M. (2014). Furrows in Africa: canals in the Americas? Azania 49: 524–​529.

48   William E. Doolittle Zalasiewicz, J., Waters, C. N., Williams, M., Barnosky, A. D., Cearreta, A., Crutzen, P., Ellis, E., Ellis, M. A., Fairchild, I. J., Grinevald, J., Haff, P. K., Hajdas, I., Leinfelder, R., McNeill, J., Odada, E. O., Poirier, C., Richter, D., Steffen, W., Summerhayes, C., and Oreskes, N. (2015). When did the Anthropocene begin? A mid-​twentieth century boundary level is stratigraphically optimal. Quaternary International. doi:10.1016/​j.quaint.2014.11.045. Published online 15 January. Zalasiewicz, J., Williams, M., Steffen, W., and Crutzen, P. (2010). The new world of the Anthropocene. Environmental Science and Technology 44: 2228–​2231.

Chapter 4

J ust How L ong D oe s ‘L ong-​T erm ’ Hav e to Be ? Matters of Temporal Scale as Impediments to Interdisciplinary Understanding in Historical Ecology Paul J. Lane

The several, subdisciplinary genres of environmental history offer different criteria for ‘change’, and may embed alternative views of causation, response and long-​term implications. (Butzer, 2005: 1775)

Introduction It is hard, these days, to escape the notion of ‘sustainability’. Almost daily, governments, environmental agencies, sections of the media, and a host of scholars from across the disciplines urge us, as individuals, as communities, and as global citizens to consider the ‘environmental impact’ of our activities and to seek more ‘sustainable’ ways of going about our lives. We are encouraged to ‘plan for an uncertain future’ because of the enhanced ‘vulnerability’ of our respective economies and environments to current climate variability and ‘long-​term’ climate change, growing populations, and declining biodiversity and natural resource bases, which, collectively, are considered to pose major threats to future ‘sustainable growth and development’. These have been some of the most dominant messages of the first two decades of the twenty-​first century, and their iteration seems unlikely to diminish in the near future. One set of responses to such messages has been to consider ways to mitigate some of the impacts of current processes and predicted future environmental changes, such as through various policy measures, technological developments, and individual actions aimed at creating low carbon systems for the provision and delivery of essential services

50   Paul J. Lane (e.g. Goodall, 2007). The mantra ‘recycle, reuse, and reduce’ is part of this focus on mitigation and has become a powerful one across the globe influencing the actions of individuals, communities, and governments alike. Another strategy, which has developed in tandem with the first, has been to identify ways in which societies and ecosystems might adapt to predicted future changes (e.g. Adger et al., 2010). A critical part of this entails identification of those aspects of current processes and practices that are ‘resilient’, i.e. capable of self-​organization and absorbing disturbance while maintaining their basic function and structure, and having an ability to adapt to change (Holling, 1973, 1986). As the concept of ‘resilience’ has gained traction within the scholarly literature (Xu and Marinova, 2013), it has become increasingly employed to explain elements of the collapse and reorganization of social-​ecological systems at different scales, as well as their persistence. Particularly influential has been the notion of ‘adaptive cycles’ (Gunderson and Holling, 2002), which describe the progression of social-​ecological systems through successive phases of rapid growth, conservation, release, and reorganization. The resilience of a system is also intimately related to its sustainability, in the literal sense of implying its capacity to ‘endure’ and deal with change. The greater the resilience of a system, the more sustainable it is said to be, although more specifically, resilience is a measure of a system’s potential to endure, whereas the sustainability of a system is a measure of either its actual lifetime, or its predicted future lifetime under specified conditions. All of the terms ‘sustainability’, ‘resilience’, and ‘adaptive cycles’ while having spatial and social connotations are necessarily temporal in scope, since they measure or describe how a system operates over time and either moves from one state to another, or sustains its particular characteristics in the face of disturbances. Recognition of this has prompted scholars from across the disciplines to collate and analyse information concerning the state and operation of different systems in the past, not least because such data have the potential to inform how a particular system may respond to future shocks either by providing suitable historical analogues or by identifying the temporal amplitude of particular cyclical processes, especially those that govern key natural processes (e.g. rainfall regimes or soil nutrient recycling). Concurrent with this historical turn in many disciplines that had previously been almost entirely present-​and/​or future-​ focused, has been the recognition that different physical and cultural processes operate not just at different spatial scales (e.g. Peterson et al., 1998; Sayre, 2005), but also different temporal ones (Balée, 2006; Redman and Kinzig, 2003) (see Fig. 4.1). Moreover, understanding how changes at one scale may influence and be influenced by changes at another scale is now widely regarded as critical to describing a system’s overall complexity (Crumley and Marquardt, 1987; Johnson et al., 2005; Redman, 2005), which can be a key factor in determining overall resilience. This kind of multi-​scalar perspective is well illustrated by the modelling of habitat change and continuity in tropical savannah ecosystems in terms of ‘shifting patch dynamics’ (e.g. Gillson, 2004; Wu and Loucks, 1995), and by ‘non-​equilibrium ecology’ (e.g. Sullivan, 1996; Zimmerer, 2000) more generally (see also Ekblom, Chapter 5). The

Interdisciplinary Understanding in Historical Ecology    51 latter term refers to the notion that ecosystems are in a perpetual state of flux and do not have, contrary to earlier ecological theory, a definable stable state (such as a climax community). As a consequence, each disturbance (whether internal or external) results in a new state, and the concept of ‘shifting patch dynamics’ is used in this approach to refer to the changing spatial and temporal distribution of these disturbances and their consequences (Wu and Loucks, 1995). An additional influence of the rise of non-​equilibrium ecology has been increased recognition that while most processes and structures tend to occupy discrete domains in space and time, they ‘are also linked across scales, based on the interactions between slow and broad structures and processes as well as those that are fast and small’ (Walker et al., 2006: 13). Where slower, broader structures and processes constrain faster and smaller ones, then the system is said to exhibit a hierarchical structure. In contrast, where interactions cross different scales and can be either bottom-​up or top-​down, the system is said to exhibit ‘panarchy’—​a term coined by Gunderson and Holling (2002; Holling et al., 2002) to refer to the nested structure of adaptive cycles of expansion and renewal and their cross-​scale interdependencies. One obvious consequence of this trend towards understanding the history of social-​ ecological systems has been a very rapid rise in the number of studies that seek to integrate time-​series data of one kind or another into the analysis of contemporary phenomena. This is reflected by the increasing use of the phrase ‘long term’ in project and paper titles, abstracts, and as a keyword descriptive for research proposals and outputs claiming to contribute to debates on past and future climate change, sustainable economies and subsistence practices, and the resilience of different landscapes. As the following analysis suggests, however, the phrase ‘long term’ is often invoked in an unreflective, uncritical manner without any particular specification as to just how many years, decades, or millennia are implied by its use with reference to a particular process, set of processes, or entire system. Equally disconcerting is the lack of explicit consideration of why a particular duration should be considered ‘long-​’ rather than ‘short​’ or ‘medium ​term’. Clearly, as is well recognized at least implicitly by the majority of researchers and is more explicitly articulated in heuristic notions of ‘panarchy’ and ‘shifting patch dynamics’, different processes operate at different rates, have different durations, and are detectable at different temporal resolutions. Our choice of time scale depends on which issues we wish to investigate, and these may range ‘from evolutionary studies spanning millennia to farming system studies with a time horizon of decades’ (Carpenter et al., 2001: 767). Similarly, the choice of time scale will also affect whether system components are classified as ‘variables or parameters’ and whether operating rates are deemed either ‘fast or slow’ (Carpenter et al., 2001: 767). Critically, ‘different timescales bring into focus different sorts of processes, requiring different concepts and different sorts of explanatory variables’ (Bailey, 1987: 7). Consequently, any proposed measure of sustainability or resilience needs to specify the time scale under consideration. As Bailey’s (2007) discussion of time perspectivism within archaeology highlights, lack of clarity as to the relevance of a particular temporal scale to understanding the operation of a particular process and its contribution to the

52   Paul J. Lane configuration of a system leads only to confusion and miscommunication. Indeed, even from a purely methodological perspective scholars need to recognize that the study of the effects of different types of phenomena may need to be approached employing different time scales—​i.e. different time durations, rates, and degrees of temporal resolution (Bailey, 2007: 201–​202). In her various articulations of the concept of historical ecology, Crumley (1994, 2007) is equally adamant that study of the resilience of particular systems requires a multi-​scalar spatial and temporal framework. Given that the functioning of different processes and the occurrence of different kinds of events can be ‘fast’, ‘slow’, or lie somewhere in between (Fig. 4.1), it is understandable that scholars investigating one or other of these may have different conceptions of what constitutes ‘long term’. However, as discussed later, simply using the term without specifying its temporal range can introduce confusion and may even be deceptive when it comes to assessing the possible contribution of a particular study to planning for sustainable livelihoods and environmental policies.

Figure  4.1  Time scales (from millennial [103] to diurnal [10-​3]) for different sociocultural (broken arrows) and biophysical phenomena (solid arrows) ranging from ‘fast’ process (such as sub-​annual events like seasonal burning and flooding) to ‘slow’ multi-​decadal and longer process (such as culture change or forest succession). Source: based on Dearing et al., 2010: 25, Figure 1; redrawn by Anna Shoemaker; reproduced with permission.

Interdisciplinary Understanding in Historical Ecology    53

Methodology and Caveat So as to identify more precisely what the temporal range of ‘long term’ is typically meant to imply when used by scholars from different disciplines and whether the term is accurately defined with reference to a specific temporal range, a review of recent journal articles spanning the intersection of the environmental and social sciences was undertaken. The method employed was straightforward. An initial search was carried out using Google Scholar with the keywords ‘long term’, ‘sustainability’, ‘environmental change’, and ‘resilience’. This was further refined and narrowed to only journal articles covering general principles or African subject matters, and published within the last three decades. Even then, the number of possible articles was considerable. Using the range of journals publishing papers that used all these terms, and some personal judgement, further searches were undertaken in the Scopus, Elsevier, Wiley Online Library, and Science Direct clusters of journals using similar keywords but with a more restricted temporal range of publications limited to those published between 2005 and 2011. Since the range of different disciplines covered by all these publishers is more heavily weighted to the natural and environmental sciences, additional searches of journals not covered by these services, but often publishing papers on African topics from an archaeological, anthropological, historical, and/​or historical ecology perspective, were also undertaken. The range of journals searched is by no means comprehensive and the final sample of papers analysed in detail is quite small (n = 126). Nonetheless, the disciplinary scope was fairly broad, ranging from Soil Science, Agriculture, Ecology, and Climatology to Archaeology, Anthropology, and Political Geography. The full list of journals included in this analysis is provided in Appendix 1. Starting with the most recent publications, each article was quickly scanned and digitally searched for the phrase ‘long term’ (often, but not universally, rendered ‘long-​ term’). All articles where the term occurred either only once in the text or as part of a citation in the accompanying bibliography were then excluded. Also excluded were uses of the phrase that occurred only as part of a verbatim quote from another source, or where its use was restricted to purely economic concerns—​as was commonly the case in the journal World Development. For those articles selected for further analysis, the number of times the term was used in the main text (excluding figure and table captions and references) and abstract were recorded, along with whether the term was included in the title. Additionally, each journal article was reviewed to see whether the temporal range associated with the use of the phrase ‘long term’ was specified or could at least be inferred from other information included in the text. Finally, the referent for each specific use of ‘long term’ was noted and, where appropriate, relevant sentences or clauses were selected so as to illustrate the different meanings attached to the use of the phrase. Table 4.1 lists examples of the generally preferred temporal range of the phrase ‘long term’ when used by scholars from different disciplines, and Table 4.2 provides some specific examples.

54   Paul J. Lane Caveat: This study makes no claims to meet the rigorous strictures of formal discourse analysis (Gee, 2001) or to be a comprehensive bibliometric analysis, unlike Xu and Marinova’s (2013) study of the uptake of ‘resilience thinking’. Instead, it aims simply to track the use of the phrase ‘long term’ in a sample of recent studies, and to assess whether there is any regularity in the use of the phrase by scholars from different disciplines to refer to particular temporal durations and units of time.

Results Even from the relatively small sample summarized in Table 4.1, it is evident that there is considerable variance in the use of the phrase ‘long term’ across the disciplines, both in terms of its assumed or stated temporal range and in its referents. One of the most disconcerting points to emerge is that only rarely is the temporal extent, i.e. the number of years, decades, centuries, or millennia implied, actually specified. While in the majority of cases it was possible to infer from other information provided in the text the approximate temporal range under consideration, there were several cases where even this information was lacking. This is particularly true when the phrase ‘long term’ is linked to future management of an ecosystem or part of a social-​ecological system, as in statements along the lines: Once consensus has been reached, external funding will still be needed in most cases to support long-​term involvement and monitoring. (Pfund, 2010: 123)

Or, The long-​ term conservation of biodiversity requires an understanding of the processes that allow species to persist in natural as well as human-​dominated ecosystems. (Bengtsson et al., 2003: 389)

Or, Long-​term data series will be crucial to answer  . . .  research questions, as well as record the responses of ecosystems in smaller reserves to global climate change. (Buitenwerf et al., 2011: 244)

Use of the phrase ‘long term’ in these contexts appears to relate more to statements of principle, theoretical orientation, or the need for future action rather than to any consideration of how to put these into practice. If the suggestions put forward by researchers as to how to conduct practices or manage resources in a more sustainable manner are to be

Table 4.1 Indicative definitions and implicit understandings of the temporal range of ‘long term’ in papers covering sub-​Saharan African topics Discipline/​research field

Temporal range inferred from text

Topics

Definition

Agriculture

Farming practices, soil properties, and crop yields

No explicit definition provided in sampled papers

11–​20 years

Archaeology

Human responses to environmental change and sea-​level rise; resilience to recurrent drought; landscape domestication

Variable—​typically defined in terms of temporal range of data sets under study

Variable, typically between c. 400 years and several thousand

Climate change research

Climate variability and predictions; effects of inter-​ annual variability; human responses

Often defined quite precisely

Minimum 10–​ 50 years, but often 100 years or greater

Development studies/​sustainable development

Poverty reduction; sustainable livelihoods; agricultural systems; environmental policies

Rarely defined; often used generically

Where dates are specified, typically last 10–​20 years, at times rather shorter

Ecology and biogeography

Large herbivore impacts; fire, grazing, and vegetation dynamics; effects of human disturbance on species compositions; coastal process and habitats

Variable—​a few cases where long term is explicitly defined (typically >40-​50 years)

Variable, anywhere between 10 and 50 or more years; mostly determined by subject matter

History

Africa’s economic development; forest histories; history of soil erosion control; on-​farm tree planting; colonial environmental policies

Normally no explicit definition provided in sampled papers

Variable, anywhere from since the ‘colonial era’ up to c.500 years ago

Human geography

Political ecology; agrarian change; indigenous farming practices; climate change and conflict

No explicit definition provided in sampled papers

18 months–​ 20 years; c.100 for future prediction

Interdisciplinary research

Mangrove development; complex land systems; socio-ecological resilience; cross-​disciplinary collaboration

Yes, but in a generic sense; multiple temporal scales

Variable; typically ‘longer than available observational records’

Land use/​ environmental management and policy

Sustainable land management; combating degradation; socio-ecological change

No explicit definition provided in sampled papers

c.5–​20 years

(continued)

Table 4.1 Continued Discipline/​research field

Temporal range inferred from text

Topics

Definition

Palaeoecology

Forest loss; vegetation change; habitat complexity

No explicit definition provided in sampled papers

c.4,500 to >90,000 years

Rangeland ecology

Dynamics of savannah vegetation; livestock, firewood collection, and vegetation succession; rangeland dynamics

Range specified in only one case

15–​16 years, as determined by available time-​ series remote sensing data

Soil science

Soil quality and erosion; evaluating soil carbon models

Only in terms of precise number of years of monitoring

c.14–​80 years

Wildlife conservation

Response of wild ungulates to drought; forest disturbance and species composition; hunting impacts; protected area management consequences; carnivore conservation

Rarely specifically defined; mostly determined by duration of study or available data sets

c.15–​50 years

Table 4.2 Examples of different usage of the phrase ‘long term’ in sampled literature Marine ecology: ‘Models of human responses to long-​term climate change may need to be different in certain aspects than what has been done previously’ (Barange et al., 2010: 332). Environmental governance: ‘Maintaining social welfare and opportunity in the face of severe ecological pressures requires frameworks for managing and governing long-​term social-​ecological change’ (Foxon et al., 2009: 3). Palaeoecology: ‘Humans have long distinguished themselves by using tools and technologies to shape savanna ecosystems. To meet challenges of managing savannas in an increasingly populous world we need to fully understand the history of this interaction, particularly as the very nature of this long-​term human–​ecosystem interaction engenders sustainability’ (Marchant, 2010: 102). History: ‘Drawing on African and comparative economic historiography, the argument here underlines the value of examining growth theories against long-​term history, thereby revealing relationships that recur because the situations are similar, as well as because of path dependence as such’ (Austin, 2008: 997). Development: ‘Farmers are still facing the trade-​off between a long-​term sustainable use of their resources and short-​term considerations of profit maximization’ (Prager et al., 2011: 44). Climate change: ‘It is therefore important to strengthen responses that relate to seasonal change as these can be tested on an annual timescale and help deal with variability as opposed to long term decadal change’ (Ziervogel et al., 2010: 552). Sustainability: ‘Archaeology’s routine engagement with the long-​term can help meet that challenge by considering vulnerabilities associated with small-​scale crop production, and the long-​term adaptations that have been successfully employed by prehistoric small-​scale farmers for hundreds or even thousands of years’ (Spielmann et al., 2011: 26).

Interdisciplinary Understanding in Historical Ecology    57 adopted by policy-​makers, land managers, communities, and governments, then clearer statements are needed of the minimum period these new regimes must be in place. Thus, from the perspective of implementing more sustainable practices, the case for clarifying what unit of time ‘long term’ refers to in any particular situation is essential. Turning to the use of ‘long term’ by researchers from different disciplines (Table 4.1), it is evident that the phrase’s temporal referent varies considerably. Soil scientists, plant biologists, and wildlife conservationists tend to use the phrase ‘long term’ with reference to observational data collected over a period longer than a decade. At best, all that ‘long term’ actually refers to is the period of time between the earliest observational record used in a particular study to the most recent observations. This is sometimes explicitly stated (e.g. Wigley et al., 2010: 966). More often than not, however, the precise range of the observational data used is simply mentioned with no indication as to whether these are the earliest records of relevance to the study or not. While there is no explicitly acknowledged optimum, ranges of 10–​25 years typically qualify as ‘long term’ (Table 4.1). Outside the Western hemisphere, and especially for sub-​Saharan Africa, time-​series observational data sets spanning more than five decades are exceptional (e.g. Moebius-​ Clune et al., 2011; Western, 2006), which may explain why in the context of ecological and environmental studies in sub-​Saharan Africa a time period spanning approximately a quarter century may be considered ‘long term’. Observational data typically have greater temporal resolution than most proxies, with the exception of phenomena such as tree-​rings, speleothem (secondary mineral deposits formed in limestone caves on an annual or seasonal basis), and varves (annual sediment layers deposited on lake beds and in some marine environments). They may also offer greater analytical potential, especially when collected as part of ‘experiments’ designed to control the operation of different variables over time, such as the use of exclusion plots for monitoring patterns of vegetation succession (e.g. Augustine, 2003). However, there are recognized problems with these data sets. For instance, mismatches in temporal scale can lead to biases ‘when the temporal extent over which data were collected is smaller than the temporal extent of the ecological process under study’ (Reynolds-​Hogland and Mitchell, 2007: 178) (see Fig. 4.2). Equally, the use of only observational data sets for the construction of ecological baselines has been challenged, from two rather different perspectives. Some ecologists argue that since most habitats had already been impacted by human activities prior to initial collection of relevant observational data, it is impossible to understand how these ecologies functioned under ‘pristine’ conditions (Knowlton and Jackson, 2008). Others have argued, following Pauly (1995), that ecological baselines not only shift over time as social-​ecological systems pass a tipping point or ecological threshold, but also that the notion of any habitat being ‘pristine’ is both questionable and conceptually dangerous as it sets humans ‘outside’ of nature (e.g. Campbell et al., 2009; McNiven, 2008). Among climatologists, ‘long term’ minimally implies 10–​50 years but often a greater duration generally in excess of 100 years (Table 4.1). This is certainly the case with regard to predictions concerning future events, which commonly present scenarios outlining climate change to either 2050 or the end of the twenty-​first century, which

Response Variable

58   Paul J. Lane

X1

X2

Time

X3

Figure 4.2  Graph to illustrate the problems that can arise when an ecological process is studied over too short a time frame. Observations collected between time intervals X1 and X3 would correctly capture process variation, those collected from X1 to X2 would not. Source: based on Reynolds-​Hogland and Mitchell 2007: 178, Figure 10.3; redrawn by Anna Shoemaker; reproduced with permission.

are the two temporal moments usually emphasized by the various Working Groups of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). There is, however, also greater recognition that climatic trends have to be analysed at a variety of temporal scales spanning not just centuries or millennia but tens of millennia. These palaeoclimate reconstructions are important for determining the amplitude of different climatic cycles such as those caused by the three Milankovitch cycles (i.e. variations in the shape of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun [or eccentricity], its axial tilt, and its precession [or slow wobble about its axis]), and for determining system responses to various climatic perturbations. Both can help refine modelling of future climate scenarios given current rates of rising global temperatures. Records that track changes in global temperature and/​or regional precipitation regimes over centennial or millennial time scales are also valuable for identifying the occurrence and frequency of extreme and anomalous events (see e.g. Therrell, 2011), and the nonlinear nature of the Earth’s climate system (e.g. Rial et al., 2004; Knight and Harrison, 2013). They have also been used to provide historical analogues for future climate change scenarios, as argued, for instance, by Loutre and Berger (2003: 209): Past analogues for the present-​day climate are needed to better understand natural climate variability, in order to be able to distinguish between natural climatic changes and those induced by humans, to predict the forthcoming greenhouse warming and consequently to attempt to detect the climatic changes induced by human activities. These analogues could then also be used to forecast future climatic changes and to assess possible consequences of human activities.

Interdisciplinary Understanding in Historical Ecology    59 As their study highlights (cf. Rohling et al., 2010), perhaps the most important past climate analogue in current debates over global climate change is the exceptionally long interglacial between 428,000 and 397,000 years ago known as Marine Isotope Stage 11 (Marine Isotope Stages refer to periods of warmer or cooler global climatic conditions as reconstructed from variations in the oxygen isotope signatures of preserved plankton [formanifera] or pollen recovered from deep sea sediment cores). Palynologists and other palaeoenvironmental scientists similarly tend to focus on temporal scales spanning centuries and typically several millennia (Table 4.1), and may even find it necessary to incorporate analysis of records that stretch back to the Pleistocene (i.e. before 11,700 years ago) when testing hypotheses about the ‘stability’ of particular ecosystems or the future potential impacts of climate change, as the following two quotes illustrate. More records are required to substantiate the hypothesis that long-​term ecological stability during the Pleistocene can explain why the Eastern Arc Mountains are so rich in species and, as a consequence, a biodiversity hotspot. (Marchant et al., 2007: 12) The study of past interglacials can significantly contribute to improving the prediction of future climate change and its potential impact on the biotic and abiotic environment. (Koutsodendris et al., 2010: 3298)

Studies spanning several millennia are particularly valuable for understanding diverse processes, including disturbance histories, landscape connectivity, and range-​and niche-​shifts as responses to climatic change, as well as for informing habitat and ecosystem conservation strategies (Gillson et al., 2009; Marchant, 2010). More generally, they can also provide insights into the relative contributions of anthropogenic and natural processes to environmental change over time. As is now widely recognized across the disciplines, the integration of palaeoenvironmental records with archaeological and historical sources can greatly improve resolution of the relative contributions of human and natural drivers of environmental change. Archaeological and historical sources also provide a record of actual human responses, their coping strategies, and degrees of vulnerability to environmental change under different social, political, and economic circumstances. Moreover, as Briggs et  al. (2006:  180) observe ‘archaeologists can provide ecologists with a long-​term view of human land use’ precisely because ‘most ecological studies examine ecosystem dynamics over a few days to a few years’. This is despite awareness among ecologists that ‘ecosystem structure and function may take decades or centuries to fully respond to disturbance’ (Briggs et al., 2006: 180). As with palaeoenvironmentalists, archaeologists typically use the phrase ‘long term’ with reference to time scales spanning several centuries or more (Table 4.1), whereas for historians—​or at least those who work in sub-​Saharan Africa—​‘long term’ generally equates with between 100 and 500 years, or thereabouts.

60   Paul J. Lane

Discussion The main implications of the rather elastic use of the phrase ‘long term’ by scholars from different disciplines is that its duration is highly case-​dependant, and subject to the specific interests of the researchers who carried out the study and the availability of relevant observational data or proxies spanning variable periods of time ranging from days or months to tens of millennia. Under such circumstances, it would seem wise to treat claims that the results of a particular study are indicative of the ‘sustainability’ or ‘lack of sustainability’ of a particular practice or process with a degree of caution. This is particularly so given that different observational data sets or proxies, even from the same region, can be equivocal or contradictory, as, for instance, has been noted with reference to rainfall trends in the Serengeti (northern Tanzania) and the wider Lake Victoria basin. Specifically, whereas the ‘longest record (1902–​1991), at Musoma on Lake Victoria just west of Serengeti, shows a steady increase . . . the longest record within the ecosystem (1938–​2002), at Banagi and the central woodlands, shows no trend’ (Sinclair et al., 2007: 583). As discussed earlier, issues of spatial and temporal scale, the operation of processes and social-​ecological interactions across these, and the variable rates at which processes and events occur, are widely recognized in the resilience and historical ecology literature. It is also widely acknowledged that many of the so-​called ‘slower’ processes can only be reconstructed from various proxies, such as pollen records, isotopic signatures, tree-​ring characteristics, and so forth. Bailey’s (2007) observation that the temporal resolution of these may be relatively coarse compared with observational records is also something that the majority of researchers from across the disciplines recognize (see Fig. 4.1). In their discussion of these issues Dearing et al. (2010: 22) emphasize the need for integrating the temporal perspectives of different disciplines, likening the study of social-​ecological systems to trying to cure a sick person without any knowledge of healthy individuals: Without a long-​term perspective, we impose an a priori limit on the total number of states of the socio-​environmental system that we are able to study and understand, and bias our knowledge toward the heavily perturbed system states observed in the recent past.

While implicit within such statements is a presumption that over time social-​ecological systems always follow a trajectory of deterioration, these authors nonetheless recognize that the rates at which different processes operate, and hence the temporal span required for their effective analysis, vary, and that no single source can provide all the necessary information about individual processes (see Figs. 4.3 and 4.4).

Interdisciplinary Understanding in Historical Ecology    61

Palaeological (> 1000s yrs)

Data availability

Archaeological (100s–1000s yrs)

100,000

Historical (100s yrs) Fishery Records (10s–100s yrs) Monitoring (10s yrs)

10,000 1000 100 Time before present (years)

10

1

Figure 4.3  The temporal range of modern scientific data (‘monitoring’) typically covers the last 20–​50 years. Including different disciplines enables extension of ecological baselines further into the past, but typically results in a loss of temporal resolution and detail. Source: after Lotze and Worm, 2009: 255, Fig. 1; redrawn by Anna Shoemaker; reproduced with permission.

This much is uncontroversial, and probably explains the reason why scholars from different academic disciplines take ‘long term’ to mean quite different durations of time from just a few decades to several millennia or tens of millennia. Yet, we should still be concerned when statements about the ‘long-​term’ viability of a process or practice, although internally consistent and empirically supported, are linked rather more loosely and without any clear specification about the precise temporal range to notions of ‘sustainability’ or ‘resilience’. Thus for instance, Girmay et al. (2008: 352), in common with many scholars, state that ‘to realize the objective of achieving long-​term economic development, land use and agriculture must be sustainable’ and propose that one mechanism for achieving this is through ‘sustaining and enhancing SOM [soil organic matter] through proper utilization and management of land resources’. There is nothing particularly controversial about this statement. However, based on the analysis presented here, most studies concerning the cycling of soil nutrients and changes in soil organic matter content consider ‘long term’ as representing no more than c.5–​20 years. The logical conclusion to draw, therefore, would be that a management regime that maintained soil organic matter at appropriate levels for 5–​20 years can be regarded as ‘sustainable’. However, from the perspective of human demography this is not even a generation, and is probably far shorter than many of those who promote the concept of ‘sustainable development’ have in mind. Unfortunately, since Girmay and colleagues do not specify the period of time they consider qualifies as ‘long term’ we cannot judge whether this is the period of time they had in mind or not when writing about ‘long-​ term economic development’. Countless other examples can be found in the literature.

62   Paul J. Lane The point of this example is not to single out these scholars over others, but simply to highlight some of the problems that arise when the phrase ‘long term’ is left undefined in terms of an actual temporal duration. Archaeologists also need to pay greater heed to this issue, as they rarely specify why their selected temporal range and not another is a sufficiently long period over which to track the interaction of different variables. Thus, while Gillson and Ekblom’s (2009: 172) statement that ‘conservation managers need to understand not only the natural variability over different scales but also the effect of different management regimes in the long term’ is perfectly in accord with the goals of historical ecology (and likely most contributors to this volume), they do not specify whether the temporal range of their data sets, which span c.1,300 years, is the minimum or ideal range that conservation managers need to consider. Certainly, other archaeological studies have made similar arguments using both longer and shorter temporal ranges. A rare exception is the paper by Brooks et al. (2009: 752), in which they not only take development agencies to task for ‘focusing their adaptation efforts principally on what might be termed the more “manageable” manifestations of climate change, namely, changes in seasonal and inter-​ annual variability’ but also specify that by ‘long term’ they mean ‘decadal-​scale’ or longer (Brooks et al., 2009: 745). They also explain the specific relevance of the period in the past (c.6000 to 4000 Bp) that is their particular focus to addressing contemporary environmental problems in the Sahel induced by rapid climate change, and its limitations as an analogue. Dearing and colleagues (2010) similarly acknowledge that there are important potential barriers facing current efforts to reconstruct long-​term perspectives (by which they imply over several centuries and even millennia) on complex land systems. In their view these are, first of all, the weakness of transdisciplinary linkages within the research community—​and one might point to the very divergent implicit understandings of what ‘long term’ means as an example of this. And, second, what they term ‘the paradox of the Anthropocene’. This latter concept, coined by Paul Crutzen (2002), refers to the period beginning around the mid-​eighteenth century when the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane associated with ongoing rapid climate change, began (for a critique of the concept see Doolittle, Chapter 3). This was also associated with widespread social, demographic, and economic transformations as industrialization and rapid urbanization took hold, triggering other environmental changes. Dearing et al. (2010) argue that analysis of the complex interactions of different processes, agents, and actors over century to millennial time scales was (and remains) essential to developing an understanding of how these interact and the changes these interactions triggered. However they also argue that, paradoxically, the operation of past social-​ecological systems cannot provide suitable comparisons for present-​day or predicted future scenarios. This is because the pace at which change has been occurring (across many variables and not just climatic conditions) since the Industrial Revolution is qualitatively faster than rates of change prior to c.Ad 1750. Consequently, while ‘heuristic analogs offer insights into differences and similarities among cases, and sensitize the expert and public communities about possible

Interdisciplinary Understanding in Historical Ecology    63 surprises and response options’, they are ‘imperfect matches with the present, especially with regard to technological and sociopolitical conditions of the human subsystem’ (Dearing et al., 2010: 3). Stump’s (2010) paper on the contrasting evaluations of East African ‘indigenous knowledge’ concerning irrigation techniques in development discourses highlights very clearly the epistemological challenges that face attempts to use evidence about the operation of past systems as analogues for devising future ‘sustainable’ strategies in the present. The various temporal referents used by scholars from different disciplines also partially map on to the kinds of differences in matters of scale identified by Cutter (1996) between ‘biophysical-​’ and ‘social-​vulnerability’ approaches. In her view, the former consider vulnerability as a pre-​existing condition, whereas the latter regarded it as a ‘tempered approach’. As Dessai and Hulme (2004: 112) note, studies that focus on matters of ‘social vulnerability’ tend to concentrate on defining ‘past and present conditions to inform policy-​making today and in the near future’ and consequently the entire temporal range of their concerns may only cover a few decades. Thus framed, data spanning, say, 20 years may well qualify as ‘long term’ when set against the record of events over the past couple of years. Conversely, scholars whose focus is on biophysical vulnerability typically have in mind time periods in excess of a couple of decades, especially when trying to predict future vulnerability. Adger and colleagues (2005:  83) express the reasoning behind this quite well where they state that ‘A farmer deciding on which crops to plant next year needs to know the likelihood of drought next year rather than the likelihood of drought in 50  years’ time:  long-​term events are not relevant.’ Similar points can be made with regard to research on climate change in response to the continuing increase in the production of greenhouse gases. As Conway (2011: 429) notes, concern about the speed of predicted climate change has encouraged a new demand for climatic ‘information on timescales ranging from the detail of the next rainy season to the extent of climate change over the next couple of decades’, in addition to those relating to longer temporal cycles. This is because better prediction of events, processes, and structures in the near term future are more likely to meet the ‘immediate needs of people and organizations’ and their assessments of future risks and choices (Conway, 2011: 429). This balancing of the value of data sets spanning multiple decades, centuries, or millennia against those covering a few days, months, or years needs a far more sophisticated approach than simply inserting the phrase ‘long term’ periodically into a text in conjunction with words such as ‘resilient’ or ‘sustainable’, as tends to be the case at present. Such an approach not only needs to recognize the limitations of different types of data and the challenges of integrating different sources and kinds of information about past and present social-​ecological systems, but also needs to specify more precisely what types of ‘long-​term’ data are needed and the specific time range these categories cover. There also needs to be appropriate recognition that not all categories of temporal data are needed to resolve particular research questions concerning the functioning of a social-​ecological system or determine the ‘resilience’ of different elements. There have

64   Paul J. Lane been few attempts to do this in any detail with reference to specific ecosystems. One recent effort, aimed at exploring how different sets of time-​series information concerning mangrove development can be integrated (Dahdouh-​Guebas and Koedam, 2008), nonetheless, offers a useful model (Table 4.3 and Fig. 4.4) that could be developed for other contexts. In essence, what these illustrate is that the kinds of historical data sets a researcher will use will depend on the objectives and research questions of a particular study. Moreover, these data sets have different temporal ranges, and different processes exhibit different periodicity and rates of change. Consequently, since diverse processes may have a bearing on the operation of a particular sociocultural-​ecological system, researchers need to combine information from multiple and different types of data sets covering multiple temporal and spatial scales before they can claim that certain systems or practices are more resilient and sustainable than others.

Summary This chapter makes no claim to offer any novel theoretical insights into theories of resilience or concepts of sustainability. Instead, it is simply a modest expression of unease at the general lack of precision in the use by scholars from across the disciplines of the phrase ‘long term’ when linked to these concepts. At least three reasons can be given for why better precision is needed: (1) The use of contrasting understandings of what period of time ‘long term’ actually refers to, and the common lack of precise definition as to how the term is being used, give the false impression that scholars from different disciplines are referring to the same temporal scales and that the processes or phenomena so described are of an equivalent order to each other. This is manifestly not the case. (2) From a purely practical perspective, lack of precise definition of how long ‘long term’ has to be in any given circumstance, impedes implementation of management and other policy proposals, and provides no real guide for future behaviour, despite the obvious aspirations (and claims) of many researchers to do just that. Calls for ‘long-​term’ monitoring, management of activities or habitats, or modifications in behaviour while acceptable in principle, without more precise qualification, amount to little more than reassurances to the scientific community that they are making a positive contribution to addressing some of the most pressing environmental, social, and economic challenges of this century, thereby reducing the value of the phrase to nothing more than an academic placebo. (3) There is widespread recognition within the emerging field of resilience thinking that different processes operate at different temporal rhythms and amplitudes, that different events occur either more or less frequently, and that the effects

X

X

X

X

X

X

Changes in fisheries catches

Changes in utilization patterns

Dependency of subsistence users

Evaluation of natural tree mortality

Evaluation of tree logging

Forest management policy

X

X

X

X

Reforestation (replanting)

Recent environmental impacts

Sea-​level change impacts

Vegetation structure: succession

X

X

X

2

X

X

X

3

X

X

X

X

X

X

4

X

X

5

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

6

X

X

X

X

7

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

8

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

9

X

X

X

X

10

X

11

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

12

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

13

X

X

X

X

X

14

X

X

15

Key: (1) Above ground observations; (2) Lichenometry; (3) Dendrochronology; (4) Landscape photography; (5) Aerial photography; (6) Satellite remote sensing; (7) Stable isotopes; (8) Radiogenic isotopes; (9) Substrate cores; (10) Geomorphological and paleontological data; (11) Hereditary and evolutionary feature differentiation; (12) Interviews; (13) Historic archives; (14) Archaeological data; (15) Spiritual heritage; (16) Palaeoethnobiological data.

X

Phytoremediation

Past climatic impacts

Natural hazards

X

X

Canopy gap dynamics

Historic environmental impacts

1

Study objective

X

X

16

Table 4.3 Suggested methods and approaches (as ordered and numbered in the KEY) that can be combined, if present, for a multi-​ temporal study of the diverse social-​ecological processes that can affect mangrove forest composition and longevity (after Dahdouh-​Guebas and Koedam, 2008: 87, Table 1; reproduced with permission)

vegetation dynamics human impact traditional uses trophic relationships climate short-term changes medium-term changes

Data Sources Always available/collectable Usually available Often unavailable

pollen distribution age of exposure maps/descriptions sustainable management ancient practices coastal settings age

Source: Dahdouh-​Guebas and Koedam, 2008: 86, Figure 3; redrawn by Anna Shoemaker; reproduced with permission.

Figure 4.4  Data sources for retrospective research, with examples or application fields. The temporal scale is not continuous, but functionally classified (between hours and millions of years) with respect to the data sources.

Above-ground fieldwork Landscape photography Interviews Stable isotopes Dendrochronology Satellite remote sensing Aerial photography Soil cores Lichenometry Historic archives Spritual heritage Archaeological and paleobiological data Geomorphological and paleontological data Radiogenic isotopes

million decamillenia centuries decennia years months days hours years millenia

Interdisciplinary Understanding in Historical Ecology    67 of some processes or events are more immediate and faster than others. There is also recognition that a transdisciplinary approach which interrogates and inter-​collates qualitatively different kinds of temporal records, such as characterized by some forms of historical ecology, is critical for understanding the dynamic, complex, and self-​regulating properties of social-​ecological systems. Nonetheless, while there are some important exceptions, there remains a continuing reluctance among scholars to give equal weight to the perspectives offered by academics from disciplinary backgrounds that diverge significantly from their own. This is particularly so with regard to the interactions between on one hand those scholars whose work is typically either present-​or future-​ focused, and on the other those whose primary concerns are with historical issues and what happened in the past and why. The resultant lack of dialogue clearly impedes the development of precisely the transdisciplinary perspectives that are being called for. More generally, all of us with an interest in the resilience of social-​ecological systems and the possibility of a sustainable future for our planet, in our haste to jump on the bandwagon of climate change-related research, and the funding we hope this will attract, have perhaps lost sight of the limitations of our respective disciplinary expertise. Perhaps it is time to look more critically at these and not just emphasize the strengths of our own perspectives, however important and collectively necessary these are.

Acknowledgements The background research for this chapter was undertaken as part of the Historical Ecologies of East African Landscapes (HEEAL) project hosted by the University of York and funded by a European Union Marie Curie Excellence Grant (MEXT-​CT-​2006-​ 042704) awarded to the author. An earlier version was presented at the 10th Nordic Environmental Social Science conference, June 2011, Stockholm University. I would like to thank the participants in Workshop 10 at this conference, especially the discussants Lars Elenius and Annika Nilsson, as well as the editors, Kevin Walsh and Federica Sulas for their comments on earlier drafts, and Anna Shoemaker for preparing the illustrations. All remaining errors and views are my own.

Appendix 1 List of Journals Consulted African Journal of Ecology; African Studies; Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment; Aquatic Botany; Climate Change; Conservation Biology; Conservation and Society; Ecology and Biogeography; Ecology and Society; Environmental Policy and Governance; Environmental

68   Paul J. Lane Sustainability; Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment; Global Change Biology; The Holocene; International Journal of Climatology; Journal of Archaeological Science; Journal of Arid Environments; Journal of International Development; Land Degradation & Development; Landscape Ecology; Political Geography; Quaternary Science Reviews; World Development.

References Adger, W. N., Arnell, N. W., and Tompkins, E. L. (2005). Successful adaptation to climate change across scales. Global Environmental Change 15(2): 77–​86. Adger, W. N., Lorenzoni, I., and O’Brien, K. L. (eds) (2010). Adapting to Climate Change: Thresholds, Values, Governance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Augustine, D. J. (2003). Long-​term, livestock-​mediated redistribution of nitrogen and phosphorus in an East African savanna. Journal of Applied Ecology 40(1): 137–​149. Austin, G. (2008). The ‘reversal of fortune’ thesis and the compression of history: perspectives from African and comparative economic history. Journal of International Development 20(8): 996–​1027. Bailey, G. N. (1987). Breaking the time barrier. Archaeological Review from Cambridge 6(1): 5–​20. Bailey, G. N. (2007). Time perspectives, palimpsests and the archaeology of time. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 26(2): 198–​223. Balée, W. (2006). The research program of historical ecology. Annual Review of Anthropology 35: 75–​98. Barange, M., Cheung, W. L., Merino, G., and Perry, R. I. (2010). Modelling the potential impacts of climate change and human activities on the sustainability of marine resources. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 2(5–​6): 326–​333. Bengtsson, J., Angelstam, P., Elmqvist, T., Emanuelsson, U., Folke, C., Ihse, M., Moberg, F., and Nyström, M. (2003). Reserves, resilience and dynamic landscapes. Ambio 32(6): 389–​396. Briggs, J. M., Spielmann, K. A., Schaafsma, H., Kintigh, K. W., Kruse, M., Morehouse, K., and Schollmeyer, K. (2006). Why ecology needs archaeologists and archaeology needs ecologists. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 4(4): 180–​188. Brooks, N., Grist, N., and Brown, K. (2009). Development futures in the context of climate change:  challenging the present and learning from the past. Development Policy Review 27(6): 741–​765. Buitenwerf, R., Swemmer A. M., and Peel, M. J. S. (2011). Long-​term dynamics of herbaceous vegetation structure and composition in two African savanna reserves. Journal of Applied Ecology 48(1): 238–​246. Butzer, K. W. (2005). Environmental history in the Mediterranean world: cross-​disciplinary investigation of cause-​and-​effect for degradation and soil erosion. Journal of Archaeological Science 32(12): 1773–​1800. Campbell, L. M., Gray, N. J., Hazen, E. L., and Shackeroff, J. M. (2009). Beyond baselines: rethinking priorities for ocean conservation. Ecology and Society 14:  14:  . Carpenter, S., Walker, B., Anderies, J. M., and Abel, N. (2001). From metaphor to measurement: resilience of what to what? Ecosystems 4(8): 765–​781. Conway, D. (2011). Adapting climate research for development in Africa. Climate Change 2(3): 428–​450.

Interdisciplinary Understanding in Historical Ecology    69 Crumley, C. L. (ed.) (1994). Historical Ecology: Cultural Knowledge and Changing Landscapes. Albuquerque, NM: School of American Research Press. Crumley, C. L. (2007). Historical ecology: integrated thinking at multiple temporal and spatial scales. In A. Hornborg and C. Crumley (eds), The World System and the Earth System: Global Socio-​Environmental Change and Sustainability since the Neolithic. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 15–​28. Crumley, C. L., and Marquardt, W. H. (eds) (1987). Regional Dynamics: Burgundian Landscapes in Historical Perspective. San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Crutzen, P. J. (2002). Geology of mankind. Nature 415: 23. Cutter, S. L. (1996). Vulnerability to environmental hazards. Progress in Human Geography 20(4): 529–​539. Dahdouh-​Guebas, F., and Koedam, N. (2008). Long-​term retrospection on mangrove development using transdisciplinary approaches: a review. Aquatic Botany 89(2): 80–​92. Dearing, J. A., Baimoh, A. K., Reenberg, A., Turner, B. L., and van der Leeuw, S. (2010). Complex land systems: the need for long time perspectives to assess their future. Ecology and Society 15(4): 21: 12 yrs)

Acacia cornigera L. Wild, Ananas comosus L. Merr., Annona muricata L., Attalea cohune C., Brosimum alicastrum Sw., Bucida buceras L., Cucurbita pepo L., Bursera simarouba L., Byrsonima crassifolia L. Kunth, Calophyllum brasiliense Cambess, Carica papaya L., Cecropia peltata L., Ceiba pentandra L., Cnidoscolus chayamansa McVaugh, Enterolobium cyclocarpum Jacq. Griseb., Guarea glabra Vahl, Guazuma ulmifolia Lam., Hamelia patens Jacq., Manihot esculenta Crantz, Manilkara zapota L. van Royen, Opuntia cochenillifera L. P. Mill, Pachyrhizus erosus L., Persea Americana P. Mill, Pimenta dioica L. Merr., Pouteria sapota Jacq. Moore & Stearn, Psidium guajava L., Quercus oleoides Schltdl. & Cham., Sabal morrisian Bartlett, Simira salvadorensis Standl., Talisia oliviformis Radlk. Alseis yucatanensis Standley, Aspidosperma cruentum Woodson, Attalea cohune C. Mart, Brosimum alicastrum Sw, Bursera simarouba L., Cryosophila stauracantha Heynh. R. Evans, Licania platypus Hemsley Fritsch, Lonchocarpus castilloi Standley, Manilkara zapota L. van Royen, Piscidia piscipula L. Sarg, Pouteria campechiana Kunth Baehni, Pouteria reticulata Engl., Sabal morrisiana Bartlett, Simira salvadorensis Standl, Spondias mombin L., Swietenia macrophylla King, Talisia oliviformis Radlk, Vitex gaumeri Greenman, Zuelania guidonia Britton & Millsp.

landscape itself are the starting point (Diemont and Martin, 2009). Domesticated crops, along with other native plants, are managed in unison, creating an effective system adapted to the necessities of a tropical setting (Altieri, 2002; Brookfield, 1988; Wilken, 1971). The milpa forest-​garden cycle is a multi-crop polycultivation system that transforms fields to forests over decades. Open field plots are spatially diverse and the system is temporally dynamic, starting with fire to prepare the maize-dominated field, and then

Linking the Past and Present of the Ancient Maya    161 progressing through successive stages of reforestation to bring the plot into a closed canopy forest (Diemont and Martin, 2009; Ford and Nigh, 2010; Levy Tacher and Rivera, 2005; Rätsch, 1992). The stages are skilfully managed to establish a useful repertoire of plants to serve the short-​term and long-​term family needs. This is accomplished while also managing the water regime, soil fertility, and organic content of the land (Ford and Nigh, 2010; Nigh, 2008). First in the dry season, woody plants and trees on a plot are cut and burned, but specific trees and stumps are preserved for future sprouts. After the burn, sun-​loving domesticated crops (maize, beans, squash among over 90 crops; Ford and Nigh, 2015: Appendix I) are planted and the plot’s canopy is kept at the maize level (Quintana-​ Ascencio et al., 1996). Crops are cultivated annually up to four years, while fruit and hardwood tree sprouts are encouraged beneath cover crops to grow in the shade of the tall maize, assisting in reforestation. As each plot cycles into a managed forest, the open croplands are naturally staggered by household needs and locations so that at any one time plots are at different stages of the cycle (Fig. 9.3, Table 9.1). The stages of the milpa cycle match the ecological succession characteristics of tropical forest dynamics (Chazdon, 2014: 1–​3; Finegan, 2004; Kellman and Tackaberry, 1997: 146–​51; Nigh, 2008). Ecologists often see the concept of fallow, a period of ‘rest’, and its reduction as negative, an unsought result of population growth and land pressure that leads to a loss of biodiversity and soil fertility (Vliet et al., 2013; among others). There is no ‘rest’ in the milpa cycle. The stages after the open maize field are a process of strategic reforestation, an agricultural intensification strategy achieved by directing the succession of perennial shrubs and trees towards desired ends. At each stage, there is skilled investment in and use of the economic value of the plots. The phases are intentionally managed with utility in mind; the selection of species is a product of conservation practice (Atran, 1993; Atran et al., 1999, 2002; Rätsch, 1992). Planting and plant selection favour first short-​and then long-​lived economic perennials represented among the dominant plants of the Maya forest (Campbell et al., 2006; Ford, 2008; Gómez-​Pompa, 1987; Levy Tacher and Rivera, 2005: 71). The objective of the cycle is to increase the economic values of the managed forest garden and the Maya forest as a whole. Three ethnographic examples of the milpa forest-​garden cycle represent the land use cycle of the Maya. These case studies show the variations of investment and maize yields that reflect on land cover. The cycle visibly begins with the open field driven by maize yields that vary based on skill, labour investment, and scheduling, all factors of intensification. Farmers prefer to resolve subsistence requirements close to the primary residence, with emphasis on the infield. This infield space integrates many of the basic needs of the household and is a distinct part of the Maya settlement landscape. The dispersion of farming residences near and far from civic centres defines the Maya settlement patterns (Ford et al., 2009), promoting an image of an agro-​urban landscape (Isendahl, 2012) where farming is a major component of the household. To the extent that the infields cannot meet subsistence needs, outfield plots were established at distances from the primary residence. Traditionally, secondary sites

162    Anabel Ford and Keith C. Clarke

Figure 9.3  European arable land perspective on the Maya landscape (top) vs. the milpa cycle landscape (bottom). Note the significant cover and diversity of the milpa cycle promoting field and forest resources and providing shade for water conservation. Source: the El Pilar project.

associated with peripheral fields were located in varied habitats to hedge against uncertainties. Rainfall guides plot choice; fields may be in well-​drained zones or near lowlands so that, even with fluctuations in rain, some plots will always produce. Our first ethnographic case is the Petén Itzá Maya. They were relatively isolated from the national Guatemala economy in the 1960s when Cowgill (1960) conducted her study. They were self-​sufficient, had few land restrictions, and engaged with capital exchange. Living in the remote Petén of northern Guatemala, the Itzá were able to integrate the

Linking the Past and Present of the Ancient Maya    163 forest at their doorsteps. Petén Itzá data (Cowgill, 1960, 1961) provide a low maize yield example of 855 kilograms per hectare that we used for our study. A second case is the Yukatekan Maya. They were, in many ways, integrated into the national economy of Mexico. Long involved with the capital economy providing labour, given the expansion of Mexican land tenure, the Yukatekan Maya had experienced many land restrictions. By the twentieth century, they were assimilated into the Mexican agricultural system fulfilling the labour needs of the henequen plantations and even the Carnegie Institution, for whom they were the subject of ethnographic research. Yukatekan Maya data (Steggerda, 1941; Villa Rojas, 1945) have a range of maize yields that average 1,144 kilograms per hectare, considered an expectation of farmers for production today. Our third case is the Lakantun Maya. They maintained a remote, independent existence with little integration with the national economy of Mexico, avoiding capital relations with the larger society until recently. Fundamentally self-​sufficient, the Lakantun managed most of their household needs within the Maya forest. The Lakantun example (Nations and Nigh, 1980) is amazing, with high maize yields of 2,800 kilograms per hectare. Having evolved within the historical ecological context of the tropics, the locally adapted milpa forest-​garden agricultural cycle of the Itzá, Yukatec, and Lakantun supplied households with food and forest products at every stage of its varied habitats. Yet in these three examples, maize crop yields vary from 855 to 2,800 kg/​hectare impacting field and forest proportions. The reforestation with economic plants that make up the Maya forest today (Campbell et al., 2006) owes its resilience to the pernicious forces of human selection that have endured across the millennia with deep roots in the Maya forest.

Population Distribution and Density: Defining the Basis of Population Estimates Population distribution and density are at the base of understanding sustainability worldwide in the past and present. The population of the ancient Maya has been a source of considerable debate, and bears significantly on sustainability. The estimates range from hundreds to thousands across landscapes large and small. Reasonable estimates have put the overall densities from 100 to 200/​km2 (Trigger, 2003: 303; Turner, 1990; Webster, 2002: 264), but have gone as high as 1000/​km2 (Chase and Chase, 1987, 1998; Chase et al., 2014: 24; Haviland, 1972). All estimates are based on the number of residential or domestic sites (Healy et al., 2007: 26; Robin, 2012: 40–​1). Logically, surviving ancient structures have been used as a proxy for households, providing the basis for population estimates. Any estimation strategy is sensitive to

164    Anabel Ford and Keith C. Clarke the assumptions that influence the results (Culbert and Rice, 1990; Turner, 1990). The strategy most often employed for the ancient Maya has been the domestic or residential structure, and reports of settlement density are routinely given by numbers of structures within a given area (Ashmore, 1981; Ford, 1991; Healy et al., 2007; Levi, 2002, 2003; Robin, 2012: 25–​6). Many structures are formally grouped in two or more, often around a small open area or plaza (Levi, 2002, 2003), not unlike the primary town residence common in Yucatan. These compounds are in stark contrast to the solitary structures that are isolated some distance from the compounds. These distinctions are ignored in the conventional development of population estimates. Just as understanding the ethnographic impact of the milpa cycle land use strategies can assist in interpreting ancient land use, so can the ethnographic descriptions help in describing domestic patterns (Zetina Gutiérrez, 2007; Zetina Gutiérrez and Faust, 2011). Since the milpa cycle imposes conditions on land use, these examples are useful to incorporate into the inquiry. Historical research and ethnographic studies have emphasized the variety of domestic residential land uses among the Maya (Farriss, 1984; Fedick, 1992, 1996; Hanks, 1990; Netting, 1977; Redfield and Villa Rojas, 1962; Steggerda, 1941; Villa Rojas, 1945). In particular, Zetina Gutiérrez (2007) has noted that contemporary Maya residential patterns are closely tied to the agricultural cycle and routinely require multiple residential sites for one family (Zetina Gutiérrez and Faust, 2011). Families maintain a primary residence in the main village or town while concurrently managing field sites with secondary residences, or rancherias, close to peripheral fields and organized by the seasonal agricultural activities (see Villa Rojas, 1945). A single family will have several additional residences and Zetina Gutiérrez and Faust (2011) argue that such patterns must be accounted for in population estimates. Commonly, in Maya archaeology, each structure, whether part of a group or isolated, has been counted as the proxy for houses in estimating population (see Healy et al., 2007:  30), discounting the variability in residential configurations, patterns that are easily recognizable on the archaeological landscape (Ashmore, 1981; Healy et al., 2007; Levi, 2003). To incorporate multiple residences into our view of the Late Classic Maya, we need to distinguish groups or compounds of structures and the isolated structures as secondary residential units. Only those defined as primary residential units will be counted for the population estimates. Turning to the El Pilar area archaeological data, our classification of primary residential units, or PRUs, was based upon the following criteria: mapped structure size (diagonal length in metres), height of the structure (reflecting building effort), residential unit composition (number of structures and presence of a plaza), labour investment (LI, originally developed for the Tikal map by Arnold and Ford, 1980), and the location as given in UTM coordinates in the Maya forest GIS (Ford et al., 2009). The GIS served as the means to isolate by query the PRUs from the field survey data and to propagate the patterns across the study area based on a predictive model (Ford et al., 2009; Merlet 2009). PRUs were characterized as one or more structures/​unit with an LI calculation greater than an estimated 500 labour-​days, the time invested in the resource procurement and construction of a minimum of two perishable structures (Erasmus, 1965; Arnold and

Linking the Past and Present of the Ancient Maya    165 Table 9.2 Primary and secondary residential units (RU): proportions, area, and labour investment (LI) Residential unit (RU)

Number of RU

Average LI

% RU

Total RU area

% area of RU

Primary

440

1481

46 per cent

153,586

79 per cent

Secondary

516

257

54 per cent

39,919

21 per cent

Ford, 1980). This assemblage of residential units included formally arranged groups where the structures flank a plaza and informal groups of structures irregularly arranged related to a contiguous space. These residential units had an average of 2.5 structures per unit and an average unit diagonal of greater than 24 m. While designated PRUs composed 46 per cent of all residential units of the surveys, they covered 79 per cent of the surface area devoted to residential architecture (Table 9.2), their average LI was 1,481 labour-​days and represented 54 per cent of the units within high-​priority settlement areas supporting their roles as the infields of the landscape. The remaining residential units were small solitary structures with a LI under 500 labour-​days. These were designated as secondary residential units, SRUs, had an average structure diagonal of less than 9 m and were isolated from residential groups. In the high-​density settlement areas, SRUs were solitary structures located greater than 20 m from other units. Composing 54 per cent of all units of the study area, they remain a minor component on the domestic scene. SRUs covered only 21 per cent of residential architecture (Table 9.2), had an average LI of just 257, less than one-​fifth of the average PRU, and made up 72 per cent of the mapped units in low-​density areas where the outfield fields would be expected. While consideration of the land use intensity must account for both PRU and SRU, our calculation of population depends on the PRU alone so as not to overestimate numbers and densities. The results provide the basis for looking at how settlement and population vary across the Maya forest landscape.

A Predictive Map of Ancient Maya Settlement Population In prior work (Ford et al., 2009), we created a map of Maya settlement preferences expressed as Bayesian probabilities for the El Pilar area. El Pilar is a major Maya centre first mapped and brought into the archaeological record in 1984. Excavations have revealed that El Pilar developed over two millennia beginning 3,000 years ago (Ford, 2004). The El Pilar area is an example of the varied geography of the greater Maya region, with a narrow alluvial valley, rolling marl foothills, and well-​drained ridges comparable to the Tikal area 50 km away

166    Anabel Ford and Keith C. Clarke (Fedick, 1988, 1989; Fedick and Ford, 1990; Ford, 1986, 1990, 1991, 2004). El Pilar’s prosperity, as with all the major centres of the Maya region, was dependent on the skilful management of the landscape to promote its importance among the other centres in the region. The development of a predictive model (Ford and Clarke, 2006; Ford et al., 2009, 2011; Merlet, 2009) involved extensive GIS data correlation, building a model using Weights-​of-​ Evidence predictive methods, application of the model to El Pilar, and its validation by extensive field-​testing and authentication. Results demonstrate that three major geographic variables—​soil fertility, landform drainage, and topographic slope—​together predict the settlement landscape at the 95 per cent confidence level (Fig. 9.4). Not surprisingly, ancient Maya settlements preferred to locate near fertile soil and on well-​drained slopes.

Probability Very high High Low Very low

0

5

N Kilometres 10

Figure  9.4 Predictive model of Maya settlement indicating field verified probability distribution. Source: the El Pilar project.

Linking the Past and Present of the Ancient Maya    167 Using the predictive model, we extrapolated settlement and residential patterns for the Late Classic Maya (Ford et al., 2011; Merlet, 2010). Refining our model to estimate population using the data from the archaeological project called the Belize River Archaeological Settlement Survey (BRASS, Fedick, 1995; Ford and Fedick, 1992) and Barton Ramie (Willey et al., 1965), we were able to characterize residential configurations across the wider El Pilar study area (Fig. 9.2). The distribution and configuration of PRU and SRU from the surveys was used to propagate residential units proportionally for the 1288 km2 El Pilar study area. Based on the probability map of Maya settlements (Fig. 9.4), qualified PRUs were counted in the context of the GIS (Fig. 9.5). The total number of PRUs was reduced by the proportion of land occupied in the Late Classic (c.95 per cent after Culbert and Rice, 1990; Ford, 1990; Ford et al., 2009: 14). For estimating household size, Turner suggests 5.6 as a valid calculus for the ancient Maya as a ‘paleotechnic agrarian economy’ (Turner, 1990: 305), embracing the variations of smaller and larger family size (see Healy et al., 2007: 31; Puleston, 1973: 171–​189; Turner, 1990). Site distributions were diverse, as predicted. The overall residential unit density was high (Table 9.3) with areas of significant concentration (Fig. 9.4). Other areas, particularly in the middle of the study area dominated by low fertility, poor drainage, and little slope, have very little to no settlement (Fig. 9.5; Table 9.3). The highest concentrations of residential units are found in one-​fifth of the study area (Table 9.3), dispersed in a mosaic of fragmented large and small patches (Fig. 9.5). No well-​drained occupied area was far from a poorly drained unoccupied wetland, suggesting cultural and natural resources of many habitats were within the range of every household.

Modelling Maya Population and Land Use in the El Pilar Area The probability map and population estimates for the El Pilar area provide a basis to evaluate the subsistence capacity of the landscape. Calculating the Late Classic Maya population density and distribution requires area, the number of primary residential units, and their distribution by probability class. These totals were summed by probability class and multiplied by 5.6 persons/​household to derive the population range of the area and for each probability class (Table 9.3). The population estimates for the El Pilar area are substantial and the range is wide, based on probability classes, from 0 to 390 persons/​km2. The lowest probability classes, covering nearly two-​fifths of the total land area, have no occupation, while the highest probability classes, 20 per cent of the land area, are an average of 390 persons/​km2 (Table 9.3). The population density for the whole area ranges from 137 to 142 persons/​km2, based on 5.4 or 5.6 persons/​residential unit respectively. This density is significantly greater than early estimates (Turner, 1990: 317), but within the estimated averages for the Late Classic period (Culbert and Rice, 1990). They are not, however, in densities that exceed current world averages (Boserup, 1981; United Nations, 2004: 62–​65).

168    Anabel Ford and Keith C. Clarke

Belize River

Primary residential unit

0

5

N 10

Kilometres

Figure 9.5  Distribution of primary residential units, PRUs, based on field settlement survey data and predictive model patterns. Source: the El Pilar project.

Our population estimates for the Late Classic Maya of El Pilar suggest a very intensive use of the well-​drained upland landscape interspersed among the poorly drained lowland and wetland areas. A range from 176,078 to 182,600 people is projected to have lived and farmed in the 1,288 km2 study area. The zones of the greatest density reach 376–​390 per km2, ‘very dense’ by Boserup’s calculations (1981: 9–​11), and share

Linking the Past and Present of the Ancient Maya    169 Table 9.3 Probability class, Late Classic residential units, and population distributions for the study area based on 5.6 persons per residential unit Settlement probability class characteristics

Late Classic residential units Area (km2)

Population

Density

Per cent population

Per cent area

0 per cent

38 per cent

Very low: poor drainage and fertility

0

485

0

0

Low: moderate drainage and fertility

5,403

243

30,255

124

17 per cent

19 per cent

Low: moderate drainage and fertility

1,753

76

9,818

129

5 per cent

6 per cent

High: good drainage and fertility

7,643

225

42,800

190

23 per cent

18 per cent

Very high: good drainage and fertility

17,808

256

99,727

390

55 per cent

20 per cent

Total

32,607

1,285

182,600

142

100 per cent

100 per cent

the common characteristics of fertile soil, good drainage, and moderate slope. These zones concentrate 78 per cent of the population in 38 per cent of the area. This is balanced by large unoccupied zones of another 38 per cent of the area (Table 9.3), characterized by low fertility, poor drainage, and extremes in slope (too little or too much). Could this diverse landscape with unoccupied zones dispersed among the moderate and densely occupied zones have supported the resource to sustain centuries of the estimated Late Classic Maya population? Moreover, was there enough land to produce the staple crop of maize? Was there ample time to build a forest canopy and return to maize cultivation? Was there sufficient land cover to manage the water cycle, inhibit erosion, and build biodiversity? Maya farming strategies, with their traditional ecological knowledge of the region, are the logical link to the identified ancient Maya land use patterns of El Pilar. We turn now to the current El Pilar landscape to evaluate how milpa forest-​garden maize yields might have supported the ancient Maya. Our estimate of 142 persons/​km2 for the whole study area is nearly ten times the population density of Belize and northern Guatemala today. Assuming maize is a staple, what were the calorie needs of the estimated population? Can the milpa cycle maintain

170    Anabel Ford and Keith C. Clarke agricultural usefulness and forest cover? To answer this, we apply the infield–​outfield land use model as discussed for the Maya. Maize calories: With a total population of 182,600 inhabitants, we can calculate calorie requirements and estimate the contribution of maize in the diet for the El Pilar area. We used the FAO 2010 average daily calorie requirement (Anríquez et al., 2010; Bassett and Winter-​Nelson, 2010: 21; Shapouri et al., 2009), statistics on the basic contribution of maize in the diet of preindustrial subsistence farmers in Mesoamerica (Margaret Smith, Cornell University, personal communication, 1998), and the figure of 3,551 calories/​kg for maize (Leung and Flores, 1961). These data derive the total annual maize requirement of 13,373,586 kg/​year for the El Pilar area population (Table 9.4). How does this match the landscape of the El Pilar area? The answer depends on yields. Maize yields: To determine both sufficient maize and land to maintain the milpa forest-​garden cycle of our estimated population, we used the three examples presented earlier of traditional Maya farming. These three ethnographic cases bracket Maya maize yields from 855 to 2,800 kg/​ha. Each case reports comparable field production strategies for plot selection, preparation, burning, and planting. Activities were managed with simple tools, skill, and labour. Each case demonstrates a milpa polyculture strategy dominated by maize with a number of distinct local crops and nurtured native trees. The higher yields relate to the labour invested in the field (Wilken, 1971, 1987) and that of the Lakantun represent concentrated investment in management, maintenance, and scheduling (Nations and Nigh, 1980; Nigh, 2008). For the El Pilar area, our calculated requirement to sustain the population each year is 13,373,586 kg of maize (Table 9.4). The question is whether there is not only sufficient cultivable land to provide the maize in any one year, but also to cycle through the reforestation stages to high canopy (Table 9.1). The sustainability of the system requires the ability to complete the entire milpa forest-​garden cycle to ensure the management of forest cover and to support lands for natural resources.

Table 9.4 Population requirements of calories and maize for the El Pilar study area Total population of the area

182,600 inhabitants

Calorie requisites per person/​day

2,100 kcal

Calculation for the population for one year

139,675,305,000 kcal

Maize consumption estimate (M. Smith, personal communication)

34 per cent

Calories/​year from maize

47,489,603,700 kcal

Calories/​kilogram of maize (Leung and Flores, 1961)

3,551 kcal

Maize kg required/​year for population

13,373,586 kg

Linking the Past and Present of the Ancient Maya    171

Maize Production and the Population of El Pilar The high-performance milpa was a permanent part of farming life in Mesoamerica (Wilken, 1971). Maize for the Maya was grown in both the home garden infield and the diverse outfields in the well-​drained areas. The infields and outfields were dynamic, associated with family size, land use history, and climate uncertainties. Excluding areas of human use (monuments, all residential units, communication links, and ancillary features) that make up 5 per cent of the landscape and focusing on the hand cultivable areas appropriate for maize (Fedick, 1988, 1989), the El Pilar area provides a total of 734 km2 from the Maya forest GIS. To determine if this could produce sufficient maize for the population based on the yields, we apportioned the land use according to the infield–​outfield model of subsistence farmers. The infield maize contribution is fixed on the PRU and extrapolated based on their number and density. Fedick (1992) compiled average home garden figures to come up with 4,000m2 for the infield (Fig. 9.6). Ethnographic cases of the Maya suggest that approximately 30 per cent of infield cultivation was dedicated to maize (Lopez Morales, 1993:  222). Based on the estimated number of households (32,607; Table 9.3), we calculated the infield maize production for all households is a total of 39 km2 (Table 9.5). The area needed for outfield maize varies according to yield. For lower yields more outfield land is required, while with higher yields less land is required. Consequently, the greater the area devoted to maize production, the shorter the management cycle. But, is there sufficient land at the lowest yields to allow a minimum managed succession cycle? Ronald Nigh (2009 personal communication) has determined that traditional farmers plant maize for up to four years and manage reforestation for a minimum of 10–​12 years. This makes a minimum of 16–​18 years to complete a total cycle including the maize and reforestation, providing a baseline in our examination of land use of the El Pilar area. The total El Pilar study area incorporates 1,288 km2 of which 734 km2 has been identified as hand cultivable and available for outfield cultivation and 74 km2 for residential and monumental architecture. The remainder, 480 km2, has serious hand cultivation limitations, but contributes to natural resource management of flora and fauna. We use the variable maize yields of low yield 855 kg/​ha, average yield 1,144 kg/​ha, and high yield 2,800 kg/​ha for both the fixed infields and variable outfields. To be sustainable, the entire cycle must allow for four years of maize production with at least 12 years in reforestation, providing a minimum of a 16-​year complete milpa forest-​garden cycle. Recalling the high population total of 182,600 for the El Pilar study area, or 142 persons/​km2, calculations show the yields for all three cases are able to provide sufficient maize production to support this estimate (Table 9.6). Variation in maize yields relates directly to the open field management and investments in labour, skill, and

Temporary structure Permanent structure Trees/orchard Maize field

10 m

Tool shed

Laundry

Open kitchen

Primary residential unit

Figure 9.6  The primary residential unit infield with the milpa, orchard, and residence. Source: the El Pilar project.

Table 9.5 Home garden production of maize for the El Pilar area Calculated land use/​home gardens

Factors

Home garden area per residential unit

4,000 m2

Proportion of maize infield garden

30 per cent

Infield area for orchard garden

2,800 m2

Infield area for maize per residential unit

1,200 m2

Total area of home garden for study area

130 km2

Total area of maize infield for study area

39 km2

Linking the Past and Present of the Ancient Maya    173 Table 9.6 Land use requisites for the milpa forest-​garden cycle of the El Pilar area (734 km2) Total area required for maize

Area of infield/​ outfield

Years of maize field/​ managed succession

Areas of long-​term management

855

156 km2

39/​117 km2

4/​16 years

134 km2

Average yield

1,144

117 km2

39/​78 km2

4/​27 years

292 km2

High yield

2,800

48 km2

39/​9 km2

4/​275 years

569 km2

Yield level based on ethnography Low yield

Yield kg/​ha

scheduling, and ever-​greater maize yields are achieved by increasing these investments (see Fukuoka, 1978 for the case of Japan). In the low and average yield cases, where communities have historical continuity in one place and considerable interaction with the greater economies, the projected agricultural cycle mirrors family life cycles of 20–​31 years and resolves 25–​33 per cent of their maize need from the infield (Table 9.6). To fulfil the subsistence needs in these cases, outfield production makes up the majority (60–​82 per cent) of cultivable land required for maize production. Such a situation would require a greater number of peripheral fields, increasing the SRU component of land use. In the high yield case, production strategies developed to support family needs within the Maya forest, outside the greater economy. The intensive infield component of the cycle for the high yield case could provide 81 per cent of the maize needs of the El Pilar’s population (Table 9.6). There would be very little outfield farm lands required, only 22 per cent. The impact of the high yield model on the forest is minimal and land use beyond the infields is negligible, requiring few peripheral fields and thus few SRUs. Considering vegetation, all areas in reforestation reduce exposure and promote land cover that inhibits erosion. In all the cases, 3 per cent of the landscape is in managed infields, while the variable outfields open 12 per cent of the lands in the low yield case, 9 per cent in the average, and only 4 per cent in the high yield case (Fig. 9.7). A maximum of 15 per cent of the landscape in open fields implies at least 85 per cent in some kind of cover from early succession building in the cycle to long-​term upland and lowland forests (Chazdon, 2014: 1–​7). The most significant component of the system is the investment in reforestation, reflecting the real subtlety of the cycle. Variation of the agricultural cycle across the landscape creates variable land cover and resources, making a patchwork mosaic of plant and animal habitats. The first period of succession, the building phase, is a critical step in the reforestation where there is creative selection for plants to manage biodiversity, increase the soil fertility, and support shade for the water cycle. The building phase covers more area in the low yield model, 18 per cent; it drops to 9 per cent for the average yield and is under 1 per cent for the high yield model (Fig. 9.7).

174    Anabel Ford and Keith C. Clarke Low yield 0%

18%

Average yield 22%

11% 10%

9%

18% 38% 12%

38%

9% 9%

3%

High yield

3%

Upland maize infield Upland maize outfield

43%

Upland 8 yr building cycle Upland 8 yr mature cycle 38%

Upland long-term

11% 0.5% 0.5%

Upland developed

4%

3%

Lowland forest

Figure  9.7  Field to forest proportions of the milpa forest-​garden cycle for low (top left), average (top right), and high yield (bottom left) models. Source: the El Pilar project.

What is remarkable about these calculations is that, in each case, there are allowances for long-​term forest management in the preferred occupied hand-​cultivated areas. These upland areas (developed and long-​term, Fig. 9.7), because of their integration among occupied settlements, show that the milpa cycle does not devote all the available land to maize production. In fact, even in the low yield case, a full 10 per cent of the landscape, 134 km2, could be reserved for long-​term forest management. With an average yield, 292 km2, or 22 per cent of the land is reserved in long-​term forests, and for the high yields, 569 km2, 43 per cent, could be reserved (Table 9.6). Additional land cover is evident outside of main agricultural zones. Areas with the limitations imposed by hand cultivation (Fedick, 1992) in the El Pilar example come to nearly two-​fifths of the landscape. These unoccupied zones would provide natural

Linking the Past and Present of the Ancient Maya    175 resources, such as logwood from the seasonal lowlands and wetlands (e.g. Lentz and Hockaday, 2009) and habitat refuge for animals. Reserves are a concept that traditional Maya farmers in Belize and Guatemala use to describe up to 60 per cent of their land use (Ford, 2008), a number comparable to conserved upland and lowland forests in the El Pilar example (Fig. 9.7). The nature of the milpa forest-​garden cycle is one of labour and skill. The types of intensification used in the Maya cases would leave no obvious or visible archaeological traces. Without significant agro-​engineering features such as irrigation, terraces, or drainage, that are not a major component of the Maya land use systems particularly in the El Pilar and Tikal areas, the Maya milpa forest-​garden cycle refutes the conception that intensification must involve terraforming. High investment of labour and skill, and the scheduling of those activities can domesticate the entire landscape (Terrell et al., 2003; Terrell and Hart, 2008) as is unmistakable in our examination of the Maya forest.

Discussion An enduring question in ancient Maya studies is how a complex and populous civilization was maintained in the humid tropics relying on ‘primitive’ agricultural technologies (i.e. milpa swidden, see Beckerman, 1983; Conklin, 1954, 1957; Cook, 1921). By scrutinizing the traditional Maya strategies and practices of the milpa cycle, we call into question the notion of primitive. Our review of the sophistication of the milpa forest-​ garden cycle demonstrates that it is integral to the forest within which it emerged, where practices of skill with knowledge create labour-​intensive adaptations to increase restoration potential of the landscape. The ancient Maya civilization was built on agrarian foundations, and its success relied on its subsistence system. Few archaeologists have seriously considered the Maya milpa to explain the apparent mystery of Maya cultural advancement and population growth over 20 centuries beginning by 1000 bc. The most parsimonious answer to the subsistence question would be the traditional milpa forest-​garden system recorded by the Spanish and practised tenaciously by traditional farmers over the past 500 years. It is the obvious link of continuity over time (Terán and Rasmussen, 1995). Considering only field crops and discounting the succession plots as ‘fallow’ and barren, the complex milpa was denigrated. Incorporating research from agroecology of the Maya, the milpa system is recognized as cyclic, enhancing field plots with economic trees that support reforestation. Rather than slash-​and-​burn, the system is better understood as select-​and-​grow: cutting with a purpose, leaving trees strategically in the field, and using fire judiciously. Fields are dominated by maize, but many other sun-​loving plants and spouts of trees are included in the milpa. This management of the open fields hastens the reforestation cycle. Further, farmers upgrade natural reforestation with desirable plants and improve soil productivity creating forest gardens. This is the intensive system that we use in considering the maize yields for the settlement and environmental

176    Anabel Ford and Keith C. Clarke land use of the ancient Maya of El Pilar. As a result, this applied archaeology brings new light to the value of long-​standing traditions by examining their capacity to meet subsistence needs as well as manage the conservation needs of the forest. The results demonstrate that traditional Maya farming was (and still could be) viable for the Maya forest landscape of El Pilar. The establishment of settlements, such as El Pilar, which grew and developed over millennia, were achievements managed during prosperity. The ancient Maya political economy relied on the success of the subsistence economy; the elite were obliged to support the practices that worked! The Maya milpa of today offer a critical link to these land use practices. Archaeologists missed what ethnographers recorded and most recently agroecologists recognize: that the traditional Maya milpa forest-​garden system is an intricate polycultivation land use strategy that is integral with the landscape. While the production of maize is important, every phase of the cycle supplies useful products, foods, and benefits for the Maya. Research on the land use of El Pilar reveals that maize production and forest management must have been part of the same process in pre-​ Hispanic times, not competing land uses as has been promulgated. This serial progression of the milpa forest-​garden cycle recorded historically and surviving today among traditional Maya made the Maya forest a garden; qualities upon which the pre-​Hispanic elite hierarchy was contingent. The ancient Maya left a permanent impression on the Maya forest. Major centres, such as El Pilar, the foundations of houses, and the patterns of their locations are direct evidence of their achievements. The relationship between the Maya of the past and the Maya of today has been debated; whereas links have already been established between the language and calendar (Freidel et al., 1993; Macri and Ford, 1997) and the resources and conservation of the forest (Atran, 1993; Atran and Medin, 1997; Gómez-​Pompa et al., 1972; Rätsch, 1992), the agricultural strategies have been ignored. The forest has been called anthropogenic and here we have forged a link from the traditional Maya subsistence systems of today to the distant past and shown the origins of the millennial qualities of the Maya forest today. Our examination reveals how contemporary land use strategies can apply to the ancient Maya, supporting the high population densities proposed for prehistoric occupations. It also illustrates how the cyclic land use system can direct the economic makeup of the forest by managing plant succession over generations, centuries, and millennia (Cazdon, 2014). The Maya forest is now at risk not because of the traditional system, but because of the introduction of European strategies of pasture and plough. The indigenous smallholder techniques of felling, cutting, pruning, coppicing, and pollarding perennial shrubs and trees within a cycle of complex dispersed annual fields built a resilient forest that responds to the hand cultivation methods of humans who, through trial and error, developed the Maya forest. Small farmers, like the traditional Maya, supply the majority of the world’s food on a fraction of the land surface (FAO, 2014). The smallholder milpa and its diversity have successfully provided a livelihood for farm families and a food surplus for local

Linking the Past and Present of the Ancient Maya    177 markets in the past and present. In this view, there is little doubt that they represent a far greater potential for increasing food production and conservation through indigenous agroecological methods that cannot be matched with industrial agriculture (Altieri and Toledo, 2011; Schwartz and Corso, 2015; Turrent et al., 2012). Our research provides an understanding of the traditional Maya milpa cycle’s potential to manage the landscape, providing basic foodstuffs and household necessities while conserving the forest. This agricultural cycle creates a dynamic variety of open fields and closed productive forests that evolved with the environment and across generations of Maya family life. This system is sustainable and offers a tie to traditional ecological knowledge that could serve as a conservation strategy for the Maya forest into the future.

Acknowledgements We thank UCSBs Research Across Disciplines programme for funding aspects of our research and the support for our collaboration with spatial engineering interns from the Ecole Supérieure des Géomètres et Topographes in Le Mans, France. All figures were designed and created by the MesoAmerican Research Center, University of California, Santa Barbara.

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Chapter 10

Pal eozo ol o gy I s Va lua bl e to C onservat i on Bi ol o g y R. Lee Lyman

Introduction Over the past two decades, a slowly growing number of zoologists and conservation biologists have acknowledged that there might be some small value to palaeozoological data, where such data derive from faunal remains recovered during archaeological and palaeontological excavations. Palaeozoologists, on the other hand, tend to be more optimistic about the value of their data for conservation purposes (Dietl and Flessa, 2009; Lauwerier and Plug, 2004; Louys, 2012; Lyman, 2006; Lyman and Cannon, 2004; Wolverton and Lyman, 2012). I believe that a lack of familiarity with the data and analytical techniques of palaeozoology and subscription to a particular view of science have contributed to the two different perspectives. There are indeed differences between zoological data and palaeozoological data. What is sometimes acknowledged but has not been explored in detail, however, is that it is precisely some of these differences that make each kind of data pertinent to the other; neither is perfect yet they complement one another when used in conservation biology. Here I argue that palaeozoological data have little-​known characteristics that make them exceptional (relative to neozoological data) and thus valuable to conservation biology (by which I  mean conservation biology, restoration and landscape ecology, and wildlife management). I begin by outlining reasons that have been given as to why palaeobiological data in general, and palaeozoological data in particular are thought by some neozoologists (those who study living animals) to have minimal value to conservation biology. I then discuss why palaeozoology is scientific and why many of the reasons it is thought to be of little use to conservation biology are misconceptions based on a neozoology-​centric viewpoint. Finally, I turn to a consideration of what seems to be the foundational modern concept for conservation biology—​biodiversity. I  argue that if palaeozoological data can be used to provide estimates of biodiversity in the past

Paleozoology Is Valuable to Conservation Biology    185 and simultaneously suggest reasons for particular values of biodiversity and assist with identifying causes for changes in biodiversity, then conservation biologists have minimal grounds for ignoring those data. Palaeozoological studies that exemplify particular topics are briefly described and serve as the metaphorical glue that holds my argument together.

Why Palaeozoology Is Thought to Not Be Valuable to Conservation Biology Though they are referring to palaeofloral data, White and Walker (1997) summarize the weaknesses thought to attend palaeobiological data. These include:  insufficient temporal duration, insufficient temporal resolution, poor spatial resolution, biases such as differential preservation, complex or nonlinear responses to environmental change, time lag in response, spurious correlations between biological signals and environmental changes, and weak linkages between physical environment, disturbance regimes, and ecosystem structure and function. Thus, in their view, palaeobiological data ‘can represent important reference points, [but] they cannot be accepted as descriptions of restoration goals for contemporary environments’ (White and Walker, 1997:  345). Neobiologists Hofreiter and Barnes (2010) argued that the fossil record is ‘ultimately unsatisfying’ for a host of reasons, including the vagaries of preservation and sampling, and the fact that fossils are not living organisms (see also Morrison, 2001; Rackham, 1998). The root of the problem seems to reside in the correct observation that the mortal remains of animals—​bones, teeth, shells, etc.—​are not the same as the animals themselves. No palaeozoologist would dispute such a claim. Animals are animate; they behave and they interact with one another and their environments in relatively directly observable ways. Animal remains, on the other hand, are inanimate; they are dead and they just lie there in the sediment; they don’t do anything that is observable. What the animals those remains represent did do behaviourally and ecologically must be inferred using palaeoecological analytical techniques; such inferences are sometimes incorrect. Thus, neozoologists have tended to focus on the differences between their data and those of palaeozoologists, emphasizing how a palaeozoological collection is different than a fauna on the landscape and highlighting the inability of palaeozoologists to directly observe the sorts of phenomena of paramount interest to neozoologists, phenomena such as behaviours, ecologies, and the like. The inability to measure with palaeozoological data some variables of interest to neozoologists does not mean that all variables of interest cannot be measured with ancient animal remains. Some examples will make this clear. Neozoologists have implied that the palaeozoological record is the result of non-​ random (or non-​representative) selection and accumulation of animal carcasses or portions thereof, non-​random preservation of animal remains, non-​random collection of

186   R. Lee Lyman remains by palaeozoologists, and non-​random study of collected animal remains (e.g. Morrison, 2001). Neozoologists thus worry that palaeozoological data do not allow one to estimate the absolute abundance of a taxon on the landscape at the time when the faunal remains were deposited (e.g. Keigley and Wagner, 1998); this notion has long been acknowledged among palaeozoologists (e.g. Grayson, 1981, 1984; Redding, 1978). Numerous recent ‘fidelity studies’ (studies of how accurately animal remains accumulated in caves by raptors and carnivores, and remains accumulated on landscapes reflect the living fauna) show, however, that quite often the relative abundances of taxa (e.g. taxon A is abundant relative to taxon B or taxon B is rare relative to A) can often be estimated with some accuracy (e.g. Miller, 2011; Terry, 2010a, 2010b; Western and Behrensmeyer, 2009). The neozoological claim that palaeozoological data cannot provide estimates of taxonomic abundances is curious because results vary across the several techniques used by mammalogists (for example) to determine taxonomic composition and abundance within faunas on a piece of landscape (e.g. live trapping; prey in raptor pellets; prey in carnivore scat) (e.g. Slade and Blair, 2000; Torre et al., 2004; Yom-​ Tov and Wool, 1997). Typically these different neozoological techniques are conceived as providing complementary information rather than any particular technique being fatally flawed. It is not clear why palaeozoological data cannot be similarly conceived. Morrison (2002:  77), a neozoologist, correctly notes that ‘reference specimens for comparison with [taxonomically] unknown [bones]’ are mandatory for accurate taxonomic identifications, but then writes ‘Knowledge of vertebrate morphology is necessary to speed the identification process, but those with undergraduate training in wildlife science or zoology can usually perform the analyses.’ I have heard other neozoologists express surprise that every single bone or tooth recovered from an archaeological excavation could not be identified to species. I suggest Morrison’s statement and related ones are naïve for two reasons. First, most neozoological guides to the identification of mammals (for example) focus on cranial and dental characteristics of anatomically complete specimens (e.g. Glass, 1973; Hall, 1981). Palaeozoologists, on the other hand, typically deal with anatomically incomplete skulls, dentitions, and post-​cranial skeletal parts that are in varied states of preservation. Thus, in palaeozoological collections I have studied the average percentage of all the bone and tooth fragments that could be identified to genus or species has been ≤7 per cent. The other reason Morrison’s statement is naïve rests on the fact that I have heard more than one neozoologist express scepticism about the identification of bones as a taxon that is historically not known to occur in the geographic area where the bones were found. This in turn suggests that not all neozoologists understand the nuances involved in taxonomic identification of skeletal remains and that not all neobiologists entertain the notion that communities change over time. Naïveté, scepticism, and surprise are not unexpected given that procedures of this most fundamental task of palaeozoology—​taxonomic identification of bones, teeth, shells—​are seldom described in the palaeozoological literature. I blame palaeozoologists for this. Zooarchaeologists in particular, and to a significantly lesser degree, palaeontologists, seldom discuss the morphological and metric anatomical criteria they used to ‘identify’ a particular bone or tooth as, say, white-​tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus)

Paleozoology Is Valuable to Conservation Biology    187 rather than mule deer (O. hemionus). Because this failure has prompted minimal discussion in the palaeozoology literature (for exceptions, see Bochenski, 2008; Driver, 1992; Lyman, 2002, 2005), I require my students to examine several exemplary studies in which the morphological and metrical criteria used to taxonomically identify faunal remains recovered from prehistoric contexts are spelled out explicitly (e.g. Grayson, 1983, 1985; Guilday et al., 1977, 1978). These studies also include discussion of why some specimens could only be identified to genus and not to species and make clear how difficult it can be to determine if a second lower molar or distal femur is one species but not another. They implicitly underscore the fact that a palaeozoologist typically identifies isolated bones, and teeth, and shells (that may not be anatomically complete) as representing a particular taxon, whereas a neozoologist distinguishes taxa on the basis of features of living animals such as coat colour, and ear, and tail length. The lack of understanding of palaeozoology on the part of neozoologists could be because some archaeologists who work with neozoologists bemoan the lack of comparability of data from the two research arenas. For example, archaeologists Rick and Erlandson (2008: 298) have noted that ‘linking [palaeozoological] studies to the present is complex and often hindered by methodological and epistemological discrepancies between the dynamic modern world and the static realm of archaeological and historical records.’ Of course, palaeozoological data are not like neozoological data in many ways beyond the stasis of the one relative to the dynamics of the other, and because of those differences palaeozoological data cannot answer all of the questions asked of neozoological data. But to therefore interpret such statements as indicating there is minimal value to palaeozoological data for purposes of conservation biology is like saying the metric system of linear measurement is flawed because it does not measure weight; in fact, both sets of units—​metres and grams—​provide an indication of size, albeit different yet complementary indications. Unfortunately, palaeozoologists themselves have contributed in other ways to negative perceptions of the palaeozoological record. Two palaeontologists who are well known outside their discipline once wrote ‘it is unfortunately true that we cannot be sure that a collection of fossils is a truly representative sample of a biological population’ (Eldredge and Gould, 1977: 27). They did not go on to indicate how we might determine sample representativeness, such as by sampling to redundancy (e.g. Lyman and Ames, 2004). Or they could have suggested that multiple samples be drawn from similar deposits and compared in terms of taxa represented, taxonomic abundances, and the like; similar samples would suggest representativeness in terms of the variables compared. Or they could have suggested that a palaeozoologist use ecological principles (e.g. Wolff, 1975) to argue samples are representative. Thus, a non-​critical reader might take Eldredge and Gould’s statement as universal, which of course it is not. Failing to mention how we might test for the representativeness of palaeozoological samples may leave a palaeozoologically naïve reader of Eldredge and Gould (1977) with deep doubts about the representativeness of every collection of ancient animal remains. A few neozoologists have indicated that in some cases, palaeozoological data are irrelevant to conservation biology (e.g. Houston and Schreiner, 1995). But it is clear that

188   R. Lee Lyman such data can be quite relevant, and in some instances provide the only information that allows the solution of a problem, such as those cases when available historical data are controversial or contradictory. For example, in western North America the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries belief was that many large mammals had originally occupied plains habitats but, in the face of Euro-​American settlement and predation, had moved into mountainous areas where the density of humans was much lower. This notion fell from favour for unclear reasons by the middle of the twentieth century and was replaced by the notion that the large mammals of concern had always been in the mountains, and that the plains populations were simply eradicated. Historical data are ambiguous as to which hypothesis is accurate. Palaeozoological data have recently provided the first empirical evidence that the earlier hypothesis is incorrect and the more recent hypothesis seems to be correct (Lyman, 2011b). A final point that requires comment is that conservation biology occurs in a socioeconomic and political arena and thus it sometimes has to struggle to make itself heard among the interests competing for the attention of decision-​makers (e.g. Robinson, 2006). Further, it is a science based on incomplete and imperfect data, thus it must often ‘muddle through’ (Bailey, 1982)—​make decisions without perfect data—​in order to avoid the ‘paralysis of analysis’ (Hutchins, 1995; see also Grantham et al., 2009; Robinson, 2006)—​waiting to make a decision on a conservation issue until perfect data are available. For both of these reasons, it seems unwise to ignore potentially significant sources of data that might strengthen the case for a particular conservation application.

Palaeozoology as Science Palaeozoologists often disagree about methods, interpretations, and the like. But this makes the research endeavour no less scientific than other research involving the natural (or human) world. Disputes in any research endeavour indicate the efforts are scientific because empirical refutation and confirmation are the hallmarks of science (e.g. Derry, 1999; Platt, 1964; Romesburg, 1981; Wylie, 2002). But there is more to science than just empirical standards; there is also the necessity of explanatory laws, theories, and principles regarding how the portions of the world under study work, interact, and respond to one another. Palaeontologists have modern Darwinian evolutionary theory to help guide many of their research activities (e.g. Foote and Miller, 2007); zooarchaeologists typically call upon some form of social or anthropological theory to help account for their data (e.g. Reitz and Wing, 2008; Russell, 2012). They both also have biological and ecological principles that guide their analyses. On the criterion of having explanatory principles and theories, palaeozoology is scientific. On the criterion of being empirically testable, claims about the world that are based on empirically derived palaeozoological data are scientific claims. Neobiologists nevertheless sometimes look down on palaeozoology as less than a so-​called hard science because behaviours and ecological interactions of animals must

Paleozoology Is Valuable to Conservation Biology    189 be inferred rather than being directly observed. As noted above, there is no doubt that palaeozoological data derived from the mortal remains of animals that are often anatomically incomplete as well as inanimate are not the same as neozoological data derived from living and behaving organisms. To find fault with palaeozoological data because of this is, however, akin to damning neontology because it cannot directly see species boundaries but must instead infer where those boundaries are (which individual organisms should be included within a species unit and which should be excluded) based on a sometimes contentious definition of the species concept (e.g. Mayden, 1997). Palaeozoologists are well aware of the neozoological limitations of their data; they typically do not make inferences about phenomena that are largely invisible in the palaeozoological record, though where the boundary between what is visible and what is not is the subject of continuing dispute. But such dispute is healthy for the discipline—​ it ensures against poor reasoning and weakly founded empirical claims—​because it rests on the growing body of knowledge that comes in large part from actualistic research; watching live animals turn into (sub)fossils. In this sense, then, palaeozoology is no less scientific than geology given that both rest on the assumption of methodological uniformitarianism—​that the natural processes in operation today are similar in nature and magnitude to those that operated in the past (Gould, 1965, 1979; Simpson, 1963, 1970). It has been suggested on more than one occasion that neozoology suffers from physics envy (e.g. Brown, 1994; Van Der Steen and Kamminga, 1991); that is, neozoologists worry that they are not as scientific a discipline (whatever that means) as physics. As a result, perhaps when neozoologists point out weaknesses in palaeozoology they are attempting to argue in a sort of backhanded way that their own field is a solid scientific endeavour. Interestingly, both palaeontologists and zooarchaeologists have also suffered physics envy. This was the case in the 1960s and 1970s in particular when palaeontology sought to pull itself out of what some thought was a narrow, intellectually sterile descriptive effort to write the history of life (Sepkoski, 2012; Sepkoski and Ruse, 2009). A similar episode can be found in archaeology where the argument for the change was quite similar to that in palaeontology (Trigger, 2006). In short, the feeling was that if physics was the archetypical science, then palaeontology and archaeology could become scientific if they adopted some of the same characteristics as physics (put on white lab coats, test hypotheses, wear clear safety goggles, write theories). This was despite the fact that most practitioners of both disciplines thought they were doing science long before 1960. Whether or not those early practitioners were correct or only their intellectual descendants in the 1970s and later were correct in their opinion that their intellectual forebears were not scientific, it is hard to deny that palaeozoology as either palaeontology or zooarchaeology today fulfils the basic requirements of most sciences—​empirical evaluation of hypotheses about how the world works, and the construction of explanatory theories and models. Empirical hypothesis testing is universal in palaeozoology. A common manifestation of this is represented by analyses of multiple independent collections, often from geographically adjacent but independent deposits in order to determine if they all indicate

190   R. Lee Lyman a similar faunal response to environmental perturbations, whether natural or anthropogenic (e.g. Hill et al., 2008; Schmitt et al., 2002). The reasoning is that, given multiple independent samples each of which may be biased in some way to a greater or lesser degree, it is unlikely that all of them will suggest the same ecological cause or record what seems to be a similar ecological response. This is appropriate given the historically contingent nature of taphonomy and the logical implication that it is unlikely that multiple independent samples will all be biased in precisely the same manner (Lyman, 1994). Ultimately, palaeoecological hypotheses that are incorrect tend to have brief shelf lives precisely because of the empirical standards that hypotheses must meet. One thing that palaeozoology has uniquely contributed to ecological theory is the recognition that Pleistocene biotas, particularly mammals but other taxa as well (e.g. Williams and Jackson, 2007), often constitute communities of species that today do not live together. These were originally referred to as ‘disharmonious’ faunas to signify that the represented prehistoric species compositions have no modern analog among living faunal communities. This term was, however, occasionally incorrectly taken to mean that a disharmonious fauna was somehow out of harmony with the prevailing climate, so to avoid confusion these faunas are now typically referred to as ‘no-​analog’ faunas. In one of the early major studies of no-​analog mammal faunas in North America, the researchers found that late Pleistocene mammal communities often did not have modern analogs, but also that those faunal communities were organized into faunal provinces (biogeographic patterns) that were quite similar to modern provinces. These similarities suggested that east–​west moisture and north–​south temperature gradients were involved (Faunmap Working Group, 1996). Dissimilarities in species composition between past and modern provinces may be a concern to conservation biologists, but insofar as the locations of biogeographic provinces and the biogeography of communities are concerned, these results may provide some consolation to conservation interests. What is perhaps the most important theoretical implication to emerge from recognition of no-​analog biotas is the realization that communities are not static; they are dynamic and constantly in the process of becoming. Thus any concept of a ‘benchmark’ or ‘reference condition’ providing a management target for restoration ecologists and conservation biologists, regardless of its naturalness or how pristine it might be, is a phenomenon with a short lifespan; it is a constantly moving target. This realization has prompted some commentary from conservation biologists and others (e.g. Fox, 2007; Keith et al., 2009), but such commentary has not yet reached the frequency that it perhaps should; that is, the phenomenon of dynamic rather than static communities is likely not yet as well known as it should be. Nevertheless, what is clear is that detailed study of the causes of no-​analog biotas (e.g. Barnosky, 1998) is called for so that we are better prepared to accurately categorize (Parmesan, 2006) faunal change as we witness it happening in real time. An example concerning mammals will make this clear. Blois et al. (2010) recently examined the last 17,000 years of change in a local small mammal community in northern California. They found a number of interesting things happened to that community over the Pleistocene–​Holocene transition. First, a couple of species were locally extirpated, but these persisted until today in the region. Second,

Paleozoology Is Valuable to Conservation Biology    191 small-​mammal species richness decreased overall but the trend was intermittent and had reversals as some taxa were locally extirpated but then recolonized the area around the cave that contained the bones under study. Third, small-​mammal species evenness decreased consistently during the Pleistocene–​Holocene transition. Combined, these observations suggest that the local small mammal community remained relatively stable in terms of taxonomic composition, that it changed relatively little in terms of species richness, and that it changed relatively significantly in terms of taxonomic abundances. The terminal Pleistocene small-​mammal fauna was relatively even but the Holocene fauna was relatively uneven. This in turn suggests two things. First, because rarity tends to be a precursor to extirpation, there may be some local extinction debt remaining (continued warming may see the loss of presently rare species). Second, depletion of some rodent taxa may have ecological cascade effects that cause shifts in ecosystem function (e.g. Brown and Heske, 1990). These are precisely the sorts of things that conservation biologists are interested in, and a key variable in these interests is biodiversity.

Biodiversity The concept of biodiversity came to the fore in conservation biology in the 1970s and 1980s when it was recognized that benchmarks such as a ‘natural ecosystem’ or a ‘pristine wilderness’ no longer exist anywhere on earth (Maclaurin and Sterelny, 2008: 3). As was recently pointed out, ‘A philosophy of conserving the composition of biological communities as they are, or restoring them to some specified (or imagined) historical state, sits uneasily with the reality of environmental and biological change’ (Thomas, 2011: 216–​217). The concept of biodiversity seems straightforward—​the diversity of life—​ in such a historical context (Reaka-​Kudla et al., 1997; Wilson, 1988). However, it quickly became clear that biodiversity can be measured at any number of scales of inclusiveness (DeLong, 1996; Hamilton, 2005; Maclaurin and Sterelny, 2008; Purvis and Hector, 2000; Scholes et al., 2008). These scales include, but are not limited to: gene, phenotype (morphological disparity or diversity), species or higher taxon (typically richness or number of taxa represented), and community (taxonomic composition, richness, abundances or heterogeneity, evenness). All of these have gained increasing importance in studies of, and efforts to conserve, biodiversity (e.g. Callicott, 2002; Frankham and Brook, 2004; Landres, 1992). And numerous metrics have been developed to measure biodiversity conceived at one or more scales (e.g. Magurran, 2004). J. John Sepkoski, Jr (1997) was one of the first to explore deeply the implications of the palaeozoological record for the practice of conservation biology. Sepkoski defined biodiversity as ‘the number and variability of genes, species, and communities in space and time’ (1997: 533), and he worried not just about the loss of biodiversity through extinction but also about the creation of biodiversity via speciation and other processes. That both extinction and diversification were of interest to Sepkoski is not surprising when it is realized that he was a palaeontologist. It is important to acknowledge that

192   R. Lee Lyman both generic processes—​not only extinction or loss, but also diversification and speciation or addition—​are always and everywhere at work, and to keep this in mind when measuring biodiversity (however it is defined) because biodiversity is never static over time or across space. The typical focus of conservation biologists is on extinction, and while that cannot and should not be de-​emphasized, those with a longer-​term view such as palaeozoologists are trained to think about both the loss and the creation of biodiversity. Both are important in conservation biology. Ecologists tend to have a short-​term view (relative to palaeoecologists) of ecological and evolutionary processes and thus not only tend to neglect speciation but some of them discuss ‘neutral theory’ and the fact that two or more species may be ‘ecological’ or ‘functional equivalents’ (Hubbell, 2005). On this basis some argue that the loss of one species may not completely disrupt ecological processes and the sustainability of a community despite a decrease in biodiversity. However, two things are worthy of note here. First, shifting from the loss of taxonomic and genetic diversity to the non-​loss of ecological processes constitutes a shift from one kind of phenomena—​stuff—​to another kind—​dynamic processes. Second, the only reason that Darwinian natural selection works is because it selects from available variation. Genetic bottlenecks (and taxonomic bottlenecks) have long-​term effects that are increasingly revealed by studies of ancient DNA (e.g. de Bruyn et al., 2011; Leonard, 2008). Studies of both ancient morphological bottlenecks (e.g. Leonard et al., 2007; Lyman and O’Brien, 2005) and genetic bottlenecks (e.g. Loehr et al., 2005; MacPhee et al., 2005; Prost et al., 2010) suggest that any loss, even of one of several functionally equivalent taxa, jeopardizes the resilience and sustainability of the affected communities simply because there is less variation from which the forces of natural selection may choose. Ancient DNA studies also indicate which gene pool to draw from if populations need to be replaced or supplemented (e.g. Valentine et al., 2008). Ecologists and conservation biologists are worried about biodiversity in the face of global climatic change. Operating from the presumption that more biodiversity is better than less, they have sought to build models to help monitor and predict (and perhaps even prevent) future loss of biodiversity. Numerous kinds of variables go into building and testing these models. Here, I use the recent discussion of biodiversity by Dawson et al. (2011) as a guide to some of those variables that palaeozoologists often measure using ancient animal remains. The significant question of most biodiversity research addressing the influences of global change concerns learning how species cope with or respond to climatic change. Responses include persisting in situ, shifting to more suitable habitats, migrating to more suitable regions containing suitable habitats, microevolutionary or phenotypic response (adaptive plasticity), and genetic response (evolutionary change). The intrinsic adaptive capacity of individual species to withstand climate change is important to the predictive models because it suggests how well (or poorly) a species may respond to future climatic changes of particular kinds. Similarly, insight to the adaptive mechanisms of individual taxa, or communities of taxa, also provides clues to how habitats and landscapes should be managed in the face of anticipated climatic changes. Numerous questions can be asked and answered with palaeozoological

Paleozoology Is Valuable to Conservation Biology    193 data: what is the limit of adaptive plasticity in a taxon? To which environmental variables does a taxon seem most sensitive and vulnerable? Does a taxon respond to different degrees to an environmental continuum, or is there a threshold environmental value to which a taxon responds? ‘The fact that the biodiversity on Earth today passed through [multiple past events of environmental change] indicates natural resilience and adaptive responses’ (Dawson et  al., 2011:  56). Palaeobotanists have done a wonderful job over the past decade of showing what they can bring to conservation biology by way of studying prehistoric botanical diversity (e.g. Froyd and Willis, 2008). If palaeozoologists can determine answers to the concerns expressed by neozoologists interested in conserving biodiversity, then the opinion that palaeozoological data are unsatisfactory for purposes of conservation biology cannot be considered tenable. If palaeozoologists can measure the variables identified by conservation biologists as responses to environmental change (whether anthropogenically driven or not), then palaeozoological data cannot be categorized as unsatisfactory for purposes of conservation biology.

Biodiversity in Palaeozoology Many neobiologists have come to recognize the value of the long temporal durations that palaeoecological records provide (e.g. Bunting and Whitehouse, 2008; Holmes, 2006; Hunter et al., 1988). Some of this recognition has come from increased knowledge of climate change, whether anthropogenically caused or not (e.g. Edwards et al., 2007; Lawler, 2009; Westbrooks, 2001). Thus we have researchers working under the auspices of, for example, the United States’ National Science Foundation supported Long-​Term Ecological Research Program (Hobbie, 2003). And we find palaeozoologists talking a great deal among themselves about the value of palaeozoological data (e.g. Dietl and Flessa, 2009; Lauwerier and Plug, 2004; Louys, 2012; Lyman and Cannon, 2004; Wolverton and Lyman, 2012), and also occasionally to a wider audience (e.g. Dietl and Flessa, 2011). Despite the recognition of the value of the extensive temporal record palaeozoology provides, the paucity of articles in high-​profile, internationally known, interdisciplinary journals wherein palaeozoological data are called upon for purposes of conservation biology is remarkable. One notable exception concerns the highly controversial Pleistocene rewilding debate (e.g. Donlan, 2007; Donlan et al., 2005; Wolverton, 2010), and another concerns reporting that pre-​industrial humans had influences on ecosystems, especially littoral ones (e.g. Erlandson and Rick, 2010; Jackson, 2001; Jackson et al., 2001; Rick and Erlandson, 2009). Both of these topics have had palaeozoological data brought to bear on them, and both concern biodiversity. Being able to predict what future climate change (whether or not it is anthropogenically driven) might do to biodiversity (however it is measured) is a critical aspect of modern conservation biology. Palaeozoologists have produced studies that document how prehistoric instances of global warming have altered faunas, a hot (no pun

194   R. Lee Lyman intended) topic today among conservation biologists (e.g. Barnosky et al., 2003; Blois et al., 2010). Such changes not only cause the expected extinctions and range shifts, they result in community reorganization and restructuring. These sorts of changes have been documented in the palaeozoological record not only at the community level (Faunmap Working Group, 1996) but at the population level (e.g. Grayson and Delpech, 2005; Randklev et al., 2010), at the phenotypic level (e.g. Lyman and O’Brien, 2005), and the genetic level (e.g. Hadly, 1997; Hadly et al., 2004). As noted above, there are significant variables that those interested in conserving biodiversity often measure when building models of global change. Following Dawson et al. (2011), these include: • When responding to climatic change, does a species: (i) persist in situ, (ii) shift from a deteriorating habitat to a more suitable one, (iii) migrate to more suitable regions, (iv) change in a microevolutionary or phenotypic (adaptively plastic) way, or (v) evolve genetically or evolutionarily? • What is the intrinsic adaptive capacity of a species for climatic change, and how well might a species respond to particular kinds of future climatic changes? • What are the adaptive mechanisms of individual taxa, and communities of taxa, and what does this suggest about the kinds of habitats and landscapes that conservationists should work towards in the face of anticipated climatic change? In the following, I summarize palaeozoological studies that explicitly provide just these kinds of information. Palaeozoologists have made monitoring the response of animal species to climatic change a regularly sought, and attained, analytical goal. Nearly all of the variables identified above have been identified, measured, or monitored in the palaeozoological record. With respect to determining how animals respond to climatic change, some persist in an area despite major climatic changes. Desert woodrats (Neotoma lepida), for example, remained in the Bonneville Basin of western Utah throughout the climatically dynamic Holocene epoch (Grayson, 2000); that is persistence for a mere 10,000 years, but persistence nonetheless. Other taxa accompanied desert woodrats and also persisted (Grayson, 2000). Persistence is of course a good thing from the perspective of conservation biology and biodiversity; but other sorts of responses seem to be more common, or at least receive much more publicity, than do instances of persistence. Stable isotopes incorporated into bones as a result of dietary practices of individual animals reveal changes in habitats exploited. Bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis) occupying the eastern Yellowstone ecosystem during the Holocene changed from one set of habitats they exploited to another set in the face of Euro-​American settlement and landscape modification (Hughes, 2004), yet they persist in the general area. On the other hand, knowing what facilitates stasis could be critical. For example, palaeozoological research (Sanders and Miller, 2004) has shown that a long-​distance migration corridor in western Wyoming used today by pronghorn (Antilocapra americana) was used 6,000 years ago during seasonal migrations between winter and summer feeding

Paleozoology Is Valuable to Conservation Biology    195 grounds, and likely was so used continuously between then and now. Given this long-​ term and long-​distance seasonal migration pattern, it seems highly likely that any obstruction would result in extirpation of the population that uses it (Berger et al., 2006). The palaeozoological record has produced many examples of species shifting their geographic ranges in response to climatic change. One concerns European reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) that occupied more southern latitudes during the peak of the most recent (late Pleistocene) glacial era c.21,000 years ago, and then retreated northward at the end of that epoch (Grayson and Delpech, 2005). One wonders if, in the face of continued global warming, this large ungulate will continue to retreat northward until it cannot immigrate any farther at which point it may go extinct for want of a favourable environment. Sommer et al. (2011) found that the reindeer disappeared from southern Sweden about 10,300 years ago but the pond turtle (Emys orbicularis) colonized the area about 9,860 years ago, both during a period of climatic warming. Other taxa likely were similarly influenced. The implications for biodiversity shifts as responses to climatic change are that some local losses resulting from emigration may be compensated (eventually, in this case) by immigration, assuming that there are no barriers to range shifts. There are many other examples of individual species shifting their ranges in response to changes in climate, including small mammals such as pygmy rabbits (Sylvilagus idahoensis) (Lyman, 2004a), pikas (Ochotona princeps) (Grayson, 2005), bison (Bison bison) (Grayson, 2006), double-​crested cormorants (Phalacrocorax auritus) (Bovy, 2011) and other birds (e.g. Stewart, 2004), and shellfish (e.g. Randklev et al., 2010). Changes in form might be genetic and microevolutionary, or they might be phenotypic responses of an adaptively plastic species to climatic change. Both kinds of changes can be detected among palaeozoological remains. For example, recall the persistence of desert woodrats in the Bonneville Basin of Utah noted earlier. The persistence of this species may have been facilitated by a phenotypic response. During the Holocene, as shown in Fig. 10.1, the diversity of mandibular alveolar lengths decreased as temperature increased and primary productivity decreased (primary productivity is the rate of production of biomass by photosynthesis [Whittaker, 1975]). Diversity increased in the late Holocene when mean temperatures decreased and primary productivity increased (Lyman and O’Brien, 2005). Other North American animals such as elk (Cervus elaphus) (Lyman, 2004b, 2010), bison (Bison bison) (Hill et al., 2008), and bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis) (Lyman, 2009 and references therein) had large mean adult body sizes during the late Pleistocene and underwent diminution during the Holocene. Net primary productivity is implicated in the diminution and that variable would seem to have larger implications for landscape ecology and management (Huston and Wolverton, 2009; Wolverton et al., 2009). Museum specimens collected over the past century suggest that body size change may occur as a response to climatic change (e.g. Gardner et al., 2011), but more data points are required to clarify matters. Palaeozoological data provide not only more data points in terms of taxa represented, but increased duration of time series and multiple kinds of climatic change (e.g. Barnosky et al., 2003). There is palaeozoological evidence that some species will respond to climatic change by evolving in the sense of their genetics changing over time. Hadly et al. (2004), for

0.74–0.77

0.78–0.81

0.82–0.85

0.86–0.89

0.90–0.93

0.94–0.97

Mandibular alveolar length size class (cm)

0.98–1.01

0

25

1.02–1.05

Neotoma cinerea

50%

1.06–1.09

Source: After Lyman and O’Brien 2005.

Figure  10.1  History of mandibular alveolar lengths in Neotoma spp. (woodrats) at Homestead Cave, Utah (after Lyman and O’Brien, 2005). Size classes are arbitrary 4 mm units; size class 0.90–​0.93 includes mandibles that cannot be reliably assigned to species (N. lepida [desert woodrat] or N. cinerea [bushy-​tailed woodrat]). Bar width in each column represents the relative (percentage) frequency of mandible specimens in each size class within a stratum. Note that faunal remains from strata X, XIII, XIV, and XV were not identified.

I

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Paleozoology Is Valuable to Conservation Biology    197 example, determined the history of genetic diversity in northern pocket gophers (Thomomys talpoides) and montane voles (Microtus montanus) over the last 2,500 years as evidenced by skeletal remains recovered from a small cave in the Yellowstone ecosystem. On one hand, as climates warmed during the Medieval Warm Period (~1150 to 650 bp) pocket gophers decreased in abundance and also reduced their genetic diversity, the latter because they are territorial and do not disperse far and thus between-​ population gene flow is minimal despite the lack of barriers between populations. On the other hand, montane voles disperse relatively large distances and during the Medieval Warm Period they not only decreased in relative abundance, their genetic diversity increased precisely because of increased between-​population gene flow. Hadly et al. (2004: 1607) conclude that these ‘insights will prove invaluable to future conservation of biodiversity’ because whether one estimates a minimum viable population size for a species on the basis of genetic diversity or on the basis of the number of individual organisms, those estimates must also consider life history and animal behaviour. With respect to determining the intrinsic adaptive capacity of a species for climatic change, monitoring how that species has responded to climatic change over long time spans, say 15,000 years, would provide much unprecedented information. As noted in preceding paragraphs, some taxa persist through major environmental fluctuations lasting several hundreds to several thousands of generations; others do not fare as well. For example, it appears that the noble marten (Martes americana nobilis), a unique form of American marten that occupied lower elevation, less boreal habitats than its extant conspecific pine marten (Martes americana), existed during the late Pleistocene and into the late Holocene, the youngest dated specimen being about 3,000 years old (Hughes, 2009; Lyman, 2011a). It is unclear why the phenotypically unique noble marten went extinct; only 19 sites in western North America have produced their remains and we are still learning about this taxon’s ecology. If additional study reveals why this form no longer exists, such knowledge may help with managing its extant conspecifics. A final adaptive mechanism concerns changes in relative abundance. That is, the abundance of one or more taxa relative to other taxa may shift in response to environmental change. Blois et al. (2010), for example, noted that some taxa decreased in relative abundance relative to other taxa at the end of the Pleistocene, and some of those taxa whose abundances were depleted were eventually locally extirpated whereas others with depleted abundances managed to persist at reduced numbers. This particular example not only shows how abundances of taxa and thus taxonomic richness change in response to environmental change, but Blois et al. (2010) utilized a technique known as rarefaction developed by zoologists and used by palaeontologists to account for variable sample sizes (Fig. 10.2). The trend in decreasing mammalian taxonomic richness they document was masked by sample sizes and only became apparent after rarefaction, making their study particularly appropriate in the context of this discussion as it demonstrates that palaeozoologists are well aware of the limitations of their material but they are equally cognizant of analytical techniques that allow them to overcome many of those limitations.

198   R. Lee Lyman e1 e2 e3a e3b

Holocene

e4a

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Figure  10.2  Taxonomic richness of mammals in Popcorn Dome, Samwell Cave, California (based on data in Blois et al., 2010). A decrease in richness is not very apparent in the observed samples per stratum because richness is strongly influenced by sample size (that is, the number of identified bones and teeth). A decrease in richness is indicated by the rarefied samples wherein each stratum’s sample has been probabilistically reduced to the same size. Source: Based on data in Blois et al. 2010.

Discussion and Conclusion It should now be clear that there is little empirical basis to conclude that the palaeozoological record is unsatisfactory for purposes of conservation biology. This should not, on the one hand, be interpreted to mean that every part of that record is useful to conservation biology; our increasing knowledge of taphonomy indicates that the palaeozoological record is too often frustratingly biased with respect to one variable or another (Lyman, 1994). On the other hand, even though the part of the record under study may be biased in a particular way, that does not mean the entire record is biased in

Paleozoology Is Valuable to Conservation Biology    199 that way or with respect to every variable of possible interest. I can conceive of only one variable for which the entire palaeozoological record is likely universally biased, and that concerns the variable of taxonomic absence. As Grayson (1981) pointed out many years ago, the palaeozoological record can be used to demonstrate the presence of particular taxa, but it would be unwise to use it to argue for the absence of particular taxa from an area. This is so because a taxon may be absent from the palaeozoological record as it is known because it was never in the area under investigation (the answer of interest in biogeography and conservation biology), but it may also be absent from the known record because we excavated in the wrong place in a deposit, or we did not use appropriate recovery techniques (e.g. screen mesh size), or the remains of the animal did not preserve (Ervynck, 1999; Lyman, 2008a). The palaeozoological result (absence of evidence) is the same regardless of the cause. Recognizing limitations such as those just mentioned, palaeozoologists can use their data to contend with slippery issues in conservation biology. Palaeozoologists have, for example, been measuring biodiversity—​either the number of species represented by a collection of faunal remains, or the distribution of individuals across the species in a collection, or both—​for many years (e.g. Wing, 1963; Grayson, 1984). Such has become an important topic not only in palaeozoology itself (e.g. Barnosky et al., 2005) but in conservation biology as well (e.g. Barnosky et al., 2011). And, many of the metrics used to calculate biodiversity indices are applicable to palaeozoological data (e.g. Terry, 2010a; see also Magurran et al., 2010), but with cautions about which metric is applicable when and to which collections and using which quantitative unit (Grayson, 1984; Lyman, 2008b). A growing number of palaeozoologists are arguing that their data are pertinent to conservation biology. But the number of studies that address conservation issues explicitly and directly is still relatively small (Lyman, 2012). I suspect part of the reason is because of the discomfort that attends crossing disciplinary boundaries. Whatever the case, the discussion above has demonstrated that there is much to gain in consulting the palaeozoological record for purposes of conservation biology; this implies the truth of the converse—​there is much we may lose if we do not consult the palaeozoological record for purposes of conservation biology. Let me end this discussion with some personal observations:  I have learned an incredible amount about ecology, conservation, economics, politics, and animal and human behaviour as I have practised what I think of as applied palaeozoology. As an anthropologist, I am regularly fascinated by the human aspects of conservation; as an archaeologist I am often amazed at what prehistoric humans accomplished; and as something of a biologist I find the biological and ecological worlds very interesting. As an applied palaeozoologist, I can simultaneously experience all of these intellectual stimuli simultaneously. It does not get much better than that, in addition to which, someone is willing to pay me to do the mental gymnastics required. And, most importantly, if I do the gymnastics well, my grandchildren will have a diversity of plants and animals to enjoy and so too will their grandchildren.

200   R. Lee Lyman

Acknowledgements Thanks to Daryl Stump and Christian Isendahl for the invitation to write this chapter; writing it prompted me to think about applied palaeozoology in new ways.

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Chapter 11

Historic Mol e c u l e s C onnect th e Past to Modern C on se rvat i on Ashley N. Coutu

Introduction Wildlife conservation policies can (and should) be enlightened by the long-​term perspective offered by historic isotope data collected by archaeologists and palaeoecologists. These data can provide a historic lens on the establishment, disturbance, and recovery of ecosystems as well as an understanding of human–​animal interactions from the past to the present. Though historical and archaeological data sets are often fragmentary, there is a real benefit to using historic isotope data in conjunction with modern data, as this offers a more complete understanding of how the ecology of specific landscapes and species have changed over various time scales. These time scales can range from the last few decades, as in the case of Jaeger and Cherel’s (2011) isotopic study of penguin diets in the southern Indian Ocean, to the past few hundred years, as in the case of Blight et al.’s (2014) study of gulls in North America, to more than 10,000 years in the case of Fox-​Dobbs et al.’s (2007) study of late Pleistocene carnivore palaeoecology from the La Brea tar pits. This chapter briefly summarizes the principles of isotope analysis, and presents a set of case studies illustrating the use of this technique with a focus on elephant conservation in eastern and southern Africa (Fig. 11.1). One of the foremost concerns for managing modern African elephant populations involves distributions and their impact on the surrounding habitat for humans and other flora and fauna that share that habitat. Therefore, there is a particular focus in this chapter on the technique of isotope analysis as it has been applied to understand the dietary changes in elephant populations over historic time scales (circa the last 150 years). The focus is on African elephants due to the fact that the conservation of this species is arguably one of the most pressing

Historic Molecules Connect the Past to Modern Conservation    209

Figure 11.1  Map indicating national parks and locations for which elephant data are displayed in Figures 11.2, 11.3, and 11.4. Base map of vegetation provided by GlobCover © European Space Agency 2010 & UCLouvain. Map: Ashley Coutu.

international concerns within wildlife ecology, and is the subject of what is currently the longest palaeodietary study using isotope analysis of animal tissue (Codron et al., 2012). Although this chapter is specific to African elephants, it is possible to apply the methodology and approach to other species and in different landscapes across the world (Fox-​Dobbs et al., 2012; Jennings et al., 2002; Koch et al., 2009; Moss et al., 2006; Szpak et al., 2012).

Fundamentals of the Method Each time an animal eats, drinks, or moves across the landscape, it incorporates elements into its body that become the building blocks of tissue such as hair, bone, and teeth. These elements are ingested from water, soil, and food, and are all traceable in biological tissues after death as long as those tissues are preserved after death. Thus, the isotope composition of animal tissues are affected by many factors, including the type of environment in which the animal lives, its diet, and the soil substrates and geology of the bedrock in its habitat range (Gannes et al., 1998). These effects cause differences in the

210   Ashley N. Coutu isotopic composition of the tissue, which can then be analysed after the animal has died. It is in this way that isotope analysis of modern and historic animals can be used as a method for reconstructing the diet, climate, and habitat of the animal while it lived (Koch et al., 1994). But what exactly is an isotope? An isotope is a naturally occurring form of an element that varies in its atomic mass due to its number of neutrons. This variation in mass causes isotopes of elements to react differently in chemical reactions, meaning that living organisms incorporate varying amounts of each isotope and metabolize them differently (DeNiro and Epstein, 1978; Sharp, 2007). This is called fractionation, and is one of the most fundamental aspects of measuring isotope ratios in animal tissue, because it is imperative to understand how the isotopes of specific elements travel from the biosphere into the tissue of the animal being analysed so that the animal’s diet and habitat are understood. These isotopic ratios are measured by a mass spectrometer, so the resulting value is actually a ratio of the heavy to light isotope relative to a standard. For example, carbon isotope values are expressed with reference to 13C (the heavier isotope) compared to 12C (the lighter isotope), and are written δ13C to denote this ratio (Sharp, 2007). This chapter focuses on stable isotopes, which are naturally occurring and do not undergo decay, and the various stable isotopes of an element behave similarly both chemically and physically (Gannes et al., 1998). Analyses of stable isotopes are most commonly used in ecological studies because they reflect aspects of the animal’s diet and habitat that are useful for understanding animal ecology. The next section will present case studies in which the technique has been utilized to understand the diets of African elephants in the past for the conservation of modern elephant populations, and how these data could be further integrated alongside modern isotope studies of elephants in the future.

Elephants in the Wildlife Conservation Policy Landscape The increasing demand and exploitation of African elephant ivory on a global scale peaked in the late nineteenth century, when the value and use of ivory changed from being an enigmatic and valuable commodity to a raw material used as the Victorian version of modern plastic (Beachey, 1967; Sheriff, 1987). Yet it was not until poaching became large-​scale, conducted by professional hunters who moved tonnes of ivory in the mid-​twentieth century that there was an internationally recognized impetus to protect extant elephant populations (Parker, 1979). The growing concern raised by governments and conservation groups over how to control these poaching operations provided a catalyst for the protection of African elephants at an international level. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) listed the African elephant as an endangered species in 1976, then revised its status in 1989, which offered elephants the highest amount of protection (Blanc et al., 2007).

Historic Molecules Connect the Past to Modern Conservation    211 International agreements controlling the trade in endangered wildlife, therefore, are often implemented to stimulate an immediate and effective impact for the protection of the species. However, they can lack long-​term data on how species utilize the landscape over time. For example, understanding the feeding behaviour and migration of elephant populations prior to the gazetting of national reserves helps to understand where wildlife corridors and watering holes need to be protected and managed to control populations moving outside of national park boundaries (Croze and Moss, 2011). One of the problems comes in collecting historic data. Extracting relevant information from data sets on animal populations that span different regions and time periods is not simple, especially for elephant conservation as a continent-​wide phenomenon. Thus, important decisions affecting elephant protection and changes to these policies are often made without a thorough understanding of how elephant populations have historically responded to and rebounded from periods of intense exploitation and/​or habitat modification (Gillson and Lindsay, 2003; Milner-​Gulland and Beddington, 1993). This lack of historic data is particularly relevant in the current climate of conservation agendas being renewed, elephant poaching on the rise, and many African governments arguing that international conservation agendas set by CITES give little attention to the economic constraints of managing elephant populations and stockpiles of ivory (Blignaut et al., 2008; Wittemyer et al., 2014). While there have been an impressive number of studies investigating modern elephant populations across Africa, most of these studies have focused on population numbers, migration, and the immediate impacts of elephants on local vegetation and biodiversity (e.g. Codron et al., 2006; De Boer et al., 2013; O’Connor et al., 2007; Scheiter and Higgins, 2012). Thus, there is a lack of long-​term data and a historical understanding of the demographics, movement, and feeding behaviour of elephants in these same landscapes in the past, though this has begun to be recently addressed (e.g. Clegg, 2008; Codron et al., 2012; Coutu, 2011; Croze and Moss, 2011; Ntumi et al., 2009). Because they are a keystone species, their survival and population size maintains the balance of the ecosystem; in other words, many plants and animals depend on the existence of the elephant to thrive (Mills et al., 1993). For example, forest elephants are frugivores (fruit consumers) and are known to increase tree diversity by distributing seeds in their dung across their habitats (Campos-​Arceiz and Blake, 2011). Thus, they are arguably an important species to understand in the context of their impact on the historical ecology of African landscapes in the past. This has direct implications for modern conservation if the research on past populations is conducted in a way that is applied and practical. Addressing this point, Gillson and Lindsay (2003) proposed that a better way to tackle the current disassociation in elephant management between broad, economically-​driven conservation decisions and local, ecologically-​driven conservation ones is to understand the historic impacts of the ivory trade on local elephant populations in specific landscapes. There is a reliance on short-​term data sets, especially observational data, which is immediate and relevant to short-​term management decisions but does not offer a long-​term perspective. Historical data sets regarding the behaviour of elephant populations are more difficult to interpret due to their fragmentary

212   Ashley N. Coutu nature, though this type of data is something which palaeoecologists and archaeologists are trained to analyse. The remainder of this chapter will focus on case studies from eastern and southern Africa which have successfully attempted to bridge these knowledge gaps by creating historic data sets for African elephant populations.

Why is Knowing Historic Elephant Diet Important? A significant debate in the management of African elephant populations in savannah ecosystems is the extent to which elephants impact the landscape through their feeding preferences and large daily vegetation requirements (150  kg of biomass/​35 trees foraged per day; Scheiter and Higgins, 2012; Shannon et al., 2008). This debate is of specific concern as an overpopulation of elephants in restricted areas such as national parks can change the vegetation cover of a habitat dramatically within a period of decades (Scheiter and Higgins, 2012). This occurs due to elephants clearing paths and consuming/​knocking down trees, which destroys woodland and can eventually lead to an opening of the landscape and thus a change in the distribution of woody vegetation cover (Dublin et al., 1990; Owen-​Smith et al., 2006). Historically, the reverse scenario is often cited by archaeologists and historians as one of the impacts that the increased demand for ivory had on African habitats in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Håkansson, 2004; Thorbahn, 1979). If the ivory trade caused a disproportionate reduction of elephants in certain regions, this would have subsequently increased dense vegetation cover in these habitats caused by the reduced pressure on woodland as a key source of elephant diet. After elephants were intensively hunted out of certain habitats, these areas would have likely become dominated by woody scrub and bush, and this change would have certainly had further impacts on the biodiversity of those habitats for the sustainability of other species (Nasseri et al., 2011; Ogada et al., 2008), but also on human habitation due to the creation of an open landscape suitable for agriculture or pastoralism (Håkansson, 2004). There is evidence to suggest, however, that the elephant/​vegetation dynamic is much more complex. For example, studies in southern Africa have demonstrated that the existence of large elephant herds is not always consistent with the destruction of woody vegetation cover (Kalwij et al., 2010). This would support the assumption that historically, when the roaming patterns of savannah elephants were less restricted, they seasonally selected mosaics of vegetation. Events from the nineteenth century onwards, nevertheless, may well have had an impact on their vegetation preference by causing elephants to rely more consistently on woodland resources for longer periods. For example, with reference to southern Zimbabwe, Clegg (2008) argues that woodland loss has been a long-​term phenomenon that was initially caused by the ivory trade because elephants were forced into woodlands for protection against hunters. This led to an over-​exploitation of woodland once elephant numbers increased in the mid-​twentieth century and was further compounded by the decrease in both grassland and woodland

Historic Molecules Connect the Past to Modern Conservation    213 habitats near permanent water sources due to expanding human settlement, agriculture, and the creation of national parks. Thus, if it were possible to establish the extent to which elephants consumed woody vegetation before the intensification of the ivory trade, this would help to evaluate how much habitat modification could be attributed to changing elephant distribution patterns during intense periods of elephant hunting in the past.

Isotope Analysis as a Window on Historic Elephant Diet Fortunately, isotope analysis allows us a window into understanding historic elephant diet, as the stable carbon isotope ratios measured in historic elephant tissue are an indication of the type of vegetation they consumed when the tissue was growing. In African habitats, the C3 photosynthetic pathway is the standard way in which plants such as trees, shrubs, and herbs take in CO2 from the air and transform it into sugars which provide the energy necessary for growth. The C4 photosynthetic pathway is the way in which most tropical grasses have evolved and adapted to thrive in hotter climates, so they use a different mechanism to photosynthesize in order to capture CO2 to the fullest efficiency (van der Merwe et al., 1988). The difference in these two types of photosynthesis is thus measured by carbon isotope analysis so that C3 vegetation has δ13C values between –​25 and –​29‰, while the range for C4 plants is between –​11 and –​14‰ (Cerling et al., 1999, 2009). African elephants are mixed feeding herbivores which rely on a diet of different plant species, from trees and shrubs to tropical grasses, and therefore the δ13C values of individual elephants can range widely (Tieszen et al., 1989). The nitrogen isotope ratios measured within elephant tissue also reflect vegetation in the diet. Nitrogen is influenced by the aridity of the habitat due to the effect of water stress and nitrogen recycling in the soil in which the vegetation grows (Aranibar et al., 2008; Murphy and Bowman, 2009). Because of this, the δ15N values of vegetation recorded in arid African environments are typically high. For example, Ishibashi et al. (1999), van der Merwe et al. (1990), and Coutu (2011) measured high δ15N values (12.4‰, 13‰, 12‰) in the tissues of elephants from arid environments (Ethiopia, Namibia, Somalia). Carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios measured in elephant tissue therefore provide a window to historic elephant diet and the habitat in which that elephant lived.

Measuring Historic Elephant Diet in Southern and Eastern Africa during the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries The most extensive studies on historic elephant diet patterns have been conducted in Kruger National Park (KNP), South Africa (Codron et al., 2006, 2011, 2012). By sampling the tusks of 14 elephants for isotope analysis, it was possible to reconstruct diet

214   Ashley N. Coutu histories of individuals on a seasonal basis between 1903 and 1993, making it the longest and most-​detailed dietary study on any extant species. Because tusks grow by accretion and throughout the life of the animal, it is possible to analyse the growth of the tusk in cross-​section, as the growth layers form concentric rings, much like tree rings (Codron et al., 2012). Codron et al. (2012) radiocarbon-​dated these growth layers to establish a chronology for the isotope values measured in each of these rings and as a proxy for measuring variations in time-​sensitive environmental indicators such as temperature, rainfall, and vegetation cover in KNP over time (see also Ekblom, Chapter 5). It was thus possible to gather multi-​decadal isotopic information from tusks sampled incrementally due to the long lifespan of elephants (some up to 60 years). One of the aims of the study was to measure individual diet histories using carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis to determine if climate change or park management decisions had an effect on the dietary preferences of the elephants. The years under study (1903–​1993) were particularly important due to the significant changes in the management of the KNP landscape, including the decline in woody vegetation cover and culling of elephants in the park from 1967 to 1999 (du Toit et al., 2003; Freeman et al., 2009). In the tusks analysed from KNP, Codron et al. (2012) found a consistent pattern in the carbon isotope values suggesting that the elephants were mixed feeding on graze and browse, even during years of well-​documented fluctuations of vegetation change. As such, the isotope values of the tusks did not correlate to climate records indicating significant shifts in rainfall and temperature during the years the tusks were growing. Codron et al. did observe a general increase in the amount of C4 that Kruger elephants consumed throughout the twentieth century, especially in the wet seasons, which relates to a shift in vegetation cover more recently in the park being dominated by grassland (Fig. 11.2; Owen-​Smith et al., 2006). With this substantial data set of 14 individuals on a seasonal basis for over 50 years, they argued that the long-​term trends showed that elephants are ‘dietary generalists’ and that their large body mass necessitates the ability to switch between browse and graze over long time frames (Codron et al., 2012). They further suggested that the ability of elephants to respond to changes in vegetation availability in their habitats caused either by natural or man-​made factors could be one of the reasons why elephants have survived long-​term ecological changes in their habitats in the past. This led the authors to conclude that elephants will have a unique dietary ability to survive future human or climate engendered habitat change. The dietary history of elephants has also been analysed in Amboseli and Tsavo National Parks, Kenya, where elephants consume the highest amount of C4 grass in their diet compared to other populations across Africa (van der Merwe et al., 1988). Fig. 11.3 is a compilation of the carbon isotope results from elephant populations in these two national parks for the past 40 years. One particular study, Koch et al. (1995), found an increasing trend in the amount of C4 vegetation in the diet of Amboseli elephants in recent decades. They were particularly interested in this trend as it correlated to the end of a drought which occurred in the region in the late 1970s. They argued that this drought would have influenced the dietary preferences of Amboseli elephants, as elephants would have had to migrate outside of the park to surrounding woodlands for

Historic Molecules Connect the Past to Modern Conservation    215 –22

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food. This dietary adaptation is visible in the carbon isotope ratios measured in the tissues of elephants which lived during and after the drought (Fig. 11.3). Populations that were alive during the drought exploited more C3 resources (δ13C values between –​25 and –​22), whilst populations alive after the drought, when increased rainfall brought an increase in the availability of C4 grass, subsequently exploited more C4 inside the park (δ13C values between –​21 and –​17). This pattern also exists in the carbon isotope results published for elephants living in Tsavo National Park (in the same region of south-​eastern Kenya) during the drought (Fig. 11.3). However, the most recent values published for elephants in Tsavo and Amboseli by Cerling et  al. (1999, 2007) suggest that elephants in both parks are returning to mixed feeding on graze and browse. Because these data sets are from different publications and the time scales are more dispersed than the Codron et al. (2012) study on directly dated tusks from individual elephants, it is difficult to draw specific conclusions about the effects of climate, management, and vegetation change in Amboseli and Tsavo over the past 40 years. But there is a general trend that climate and vegetation availability played a role in elephant feeding behaviour and that elephants responded to these changes by adapting their diet. There is also a consistent trend in all of these studies that modern elephants in savannah habitats are increasingly exploiting C4 vegetation, specifically in the rainy seasons when it is more readily available, palatable, and nutritional (Cerling et al., 2009; Codron et al., 2011). But how much this is a

216   Ashley N. Coutu

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recent phenomenon of elephant behaviour being constrained in protected areas, and how much this is due to the flexibility of an elephant selecting its vegetation is difficult to conclude without understanding the dietary histories of elephants in landscapes prior to the establishment of these boundaries. Recently, some research attention has been given to the analysis of elephant tissues from big game hunting collections formed by hunters and colonial travellers to eastern Africa during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Coutu, 2011, 2015). The unique aspect of sampling material from these collections is that there is a precise record of when and where the elephant was shot, making it possible to build individual life histories of the elephant skeletons through archival photographs and written records, but also through isotope analysis of the preserved elephant tissue (Coutu, 2015). For example, incremental isotope analysis of the tail hairs preserved in these collections allows for direct comparison with studies by Codron et al. (2013) and Cerling et al. (2009) which analysed tail hairs of South African and Kenyan elephants. Because the date of death is recorded for the historic tail hairs, it is possible to build a well-​dated snapshot of individual elephant diet in a specific landscape in the past. The three historic elephant tail hairs in Fig. 11.4 represent elephants from different habitat zones of eastern Africa including an arid savannah with low rainfall and dominated by C4 vegetation, a mixed savannah with fluctuations in C3 and C4 vegetation and rainfall patterns seasonally, and a closed-canopy forest environment, which is humid and dominated by C3 vegetation. Therefore, the distinct vegetation and climates of these

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218   Ashley N. Coutu habitats cause differences in the carbon and nitrogen isotope compositions of elephants living there. Isotope analyses combined with documentary evidence from the big game hunters about these landscapes provide a way to track the diet and habitat type that these historic elephants lived in over a century ago. In Fig. 11.4, there are significant fluctuations in both the δ15N and δ13C values along the tail hair of the Ogaden elephant, and, compared to the other two elephants, these values are higher. These values indicate that this elephant exploited a range of different vegetation types, though a substantial amount of C4, during the time that its tail hair was growing, which is estimated as a period of approximately 1.5 years (Coutu, 2011). High δ15N and δ13C values are typically measured in modern elephants which live in open, arid C4 grassland habitats (van der Merwe et al., 1990). Therefore, the pattern seen in the Ogaden elephant is an indication that the habitat in which this elephant lived in 1896 was likely similar. This evidence is corroborated with Powell-​Cotton’s (1896) diary entries from the days surrounding this elephant’s death, in which he describes an open, grassy landscape on travel by camel. Furthermore, the projected historic climate records for this area indicate that it received less than 300 mm of rainfall that year (Jones and Harris, 2008). Elephants in more humid, closed-​canopy forests, on the other hand, live in habitats that are not affected by strong seasonal shifts in rainfall and vegetation which occur in savannah ecosystems (Cerling et al., 2004). Thus, the isotope ratios measured in the tissue of these elephants do not fluctuate as much throughout the year. Furthermore, because of the abundance of C3 vegetation, and due to the canopy effect of carbon recycling in rainforests, they also have more negative δ13C values compared to savannah elephants (Cerling et al., 2004). In Fig. 11.4, this is illustrated by the historic elephant from Makala, which has stable δ13C and δ15N values measured along the entire length of the tail hair, a period of at least one year. This elephant also has the most negative δ13C values of the three elephants measured, which indicates that it consumed C3 vegetation year-​round. Powell-​Cotton describes shooting this elephant in thick, thorny bush and that the vegetation was dense, with animals only visible at waterholes and clearings in the forest (Powell-​Cotton, 1906). The Mt Elgon elephant has the lowest δ15N values and δ13C values ranging between the other two elephants, which indicate that this elephant consumed a mixture of C3 and C4 vegetation, with the fluctuations seen along its tail hair indicative of seasonal fluctuations in vegetation available in its habitat. Mt Elgon is an extinct volcano dominated by C3 vegetation in the upper altitudes of the mountain and C4 grass on the plains below (Coutu, 2015; Simonetti and Bell, 1995). Thus, the isotope values in the tail hair indicate that this elephant exploited both of these resources, which is typical of elephants in montane regions (Afolayan, 1975). Studies on modern elephant tail hair (Cerling et al., 2004, 2009) have shown that there is a delay between when the vegetation is consumed and the synthesis of the elements such as carbon and nitrogen into the growth of the tail hair. Cerling et al. (2009) found that short-​term bursts of C4 consumption were not always reflected at a 1 cm (18 day) scale of hair growth because the long-​term pool of hair synthesis reflects the primary diet of the individual (Cerling et al., 2009). This would mean, then, that the historic elephants in Fig. 11.4 that have significant fluctuations in the isotope values in their

Historic Molecules Connect the Past to Modern Conservation    219 tail hairs would have experienced a shift in diet (between rainy and dry seasons, for example) for long enough to be measured in the hair. Coutu (2011) found that overall, including the tail hairs of other elephants from East Africa in addition to the three featured in Fig. 11.4, isotope analysis of historic savannah elephant hair revealed significant fluctuations in the δ13C and δ15N values measured along the tail hair, indicating that these historic elephants exploited both C3 and C4 vegetation and that this preference fluctuated seasonally. This pattern fits with the hypothesis put forward by recent studies (Clegg, 2008; Loarie et al., 2009) which suggest that historically, savannah elephants were able to roam more widely and select vegetation preferences based on what was most palatable and available at different times of the year. These results also concur with the studies detailed earlier in this chapter from historic elephants in eastern and southern Africa, particularly the idea proposed by Codron et al. (2012) that elephants are ‘dietary generalists’ and that this mixed feeding pattern and non-​reliance on a specific vegetation niche has allowed them to be successful in the face of vegetation change and habitat modification engendered by humans and/​or climate. Thus, the combination of the isotopic information preserved in the tail hairs with the archival information provided by the hunting accounts and historic climate records makes these historic skeletons unique and relevant for understanding historic elephant diet. The question that remains is how to make the histories of individual elephants relevant and applicable for understanding the current relationship between elephants, humans, and the habitats in which they coexist.

Mapping Elephant Isotope Data in the Past, Present, and Future The overall conclusion of these case studies suggests that savannah elephants are inclined to select different types of vegetation based on changes in seasonal climate and vegetation palatability with little regard for landscape boundaries (Cerling et al., 2009). This supports the argument that homogeneous vegetation zones present in national parks today cause elephants to roam outside park boundaries, which can cause management problems and over-​exploitation of specific resources (Scheiter and Higgins, 2012). Mapping diet histories by using detailed isotope analysis of historic elephants coupled with palaeoecological data and modern elephant isotope data would allow for an understanding of how the relationship between vegetation, diet, and elephant movement has changed over time in a specific landscape. These data could contribute to management decisions regarding elephant migration, as elephants are capable of moving great distances to access specific vegetation patches (Codron et al., 2011; Loarie et al., 2009). This could also be particularly useful for the management of wildlife corridors in order to protect wildlife from death due to roads (Newmark et al., 1996), but also in protecting human settlements from damage and danger caused by wildlife (Goldman, 2003). One

220   Ashley N. Coutu example of this was the proposed international highway through Serengeti National Park, Tanzania, which was opposed within the international conservation community due to the disruption of wildlife corridors and wildlife habitats that a major highway would cause (Dobson et al., 2010). Managing these landscapes in the face of these competing interests is therefore a constant challenge. Another challenge that comes with evaluating historic trends in elephant populations is the lack of resolution when matching local climate data for a particular region with detailed dietary patterns for elephants in a specific habitat over time. One way to address this problem in the future is to incorporate high resolution palaeoecological data for a specific landscape with isotope data of historic elephants in these same locations. The key to making this leap with the historic data relies on the amount of integration that occurs between historical ecology approaches, historic data sets, and modern forms of management and conservation in these same landscapes (Brewer et al., 2012; Gillson and Marchant, 2014; Rick and Lockwood, 2013). One way of bridging these gaps is to utilize new platforms and technology for bringing this data together. For example, with mapping tools and online databases managed through open source platforms such as AfricaMap () and IsoMap (), it is possible to layer historical data with modern data in a spatial way. For example, Coutu (2011) created maps for East Africa that amalgamated historic elephant isotope data with historic climate records, vegetation, and geological data. Integrating this data in a visual way can aid in evaluating trends in the data sets. In this way, Geographic Information Systems are useful at connecting the relationship between the geographical distribution of isotope values with corresponding climate data in a region, which would be particularly relevant for the integration of historical data sets with modern ecology, as this data can be layered and trends analysed simultaneously in this platform. Another way to utilize spatial data is to redress the imbalance of research on African elephants by region. Although elephants in central Africa are listed as most vulnerable in the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List, these are also the populations that are the least researched, especially for historic populations (Campos-​Arceiz and Blake, 2011; Maisels et al., 2013). A dense proportion of elephant populations exist in countries that have experienced recent war and ongoing conflict, such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of South Sudan. These conflicts remain the foremost reason for the lack of data on these elephant populations, but these regions are important areas for elephant conservation as a result, and many of these same areas were also historically significant elephant hunting grounds. Much of the ivory exported from the East African coast in the nineteenth century was sourced from the Congo region, for example (Beachey, 1967; Coutu, 2011; Håkansson, 2004). Therefore, these regions could be important places to investigate the links between historic and modern elephant populations. If research agendas in both disciplines can be aligned and data sets more freely available and integrative, it is possible to begin targeting areas of research in a much more coherent and holistic way (Stephenson and Ntiamoa-​Baidu,  2010).

Historic Molecules Connect the Past to Modern Conservation    221

Conclusion With a better understanding of the dietary patterns of historic elephants and the historical ecology of habitats where elephants still exist, it is possible to make more informed decisions about managing their modern distribution in protected areas. The case studies in this chapter highlight the ways in which the technique of isotope analysis as applied to historic populations can be useful to wildlife conservation if targeted data sets within national parks or specific landscapes are applied. However, it is important to note that isotope data cannot exist in isolation, but rather, must be viewed within the context of other information such as archaeozoological (Lyman, Chapter 10), archaeobotanical (Ekblom, Chapter 5; Minnis, Chapter 2), and genetic data. The correlation of these data sets can provide important information about the dynamics not only of the individual and its palaeodiet as provided by isotope data, but also about the interaction of that individual with other animals and humans, especially in time periods when the landscape was less intensively utilized and managed. Though this chapter focused on the African elephant, there have been a number of important studies within historic isotope ecology that have contributed to the understanding of other species in different places and times, such as the sea otter in British Columbia (Szpak et al., 2012), the Pacific fur seal (Moss et al., 2006), and the distribution of fish in the North Sea (Jennings et al., 2002). To support the other voices in this volume, historical ecology and the knowledge gained by palaeoecologists, historians, and archaeologists working with historical data sets can play a key role in conservation by contributing knowledge about historic relationships between animals, humans, and their surrounding ecosystems.

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224   Ashley N. Coutu Koch, P. L., Fogel, M. L., and Tuross, N. (1994). Tracing the diets of fossil animals using stable isotopes. In K. Lajtha and R. H. Michener (eds), Stable Isotopes in Ecology and Environmental Science. Oxford: Blackwell, 63–​92. Koch, P. L., Fox-​Dobbs, K., and Newsome, S. D. (2009). The isotopic ecology of fossil vertebrates and conservation paleobiology. In G. P. Dietl and K. W. Flessa (eds), Conservation Paleobiology: Using the Past to Manage for the Future. Boulder, CO: Geological Society of America, 95–​112. Koch, P. L., Heisinger, J., Moss, C., Carlson, R. W., Fogel, M. L., and Behrensmeyer, A. K. (1995). Isotopic tracking of change in diet and habitat use in African elephants. Science 267(5202): 1340–​1343. Loarie, S. R., van Aarde, R. J., and Pimm, S. L. (2009). Elephant seasonal vegetation preferences across dry and wet savannas. Biological Conservation 142(12): 3099–​3107. Maisels, F., Strindberg, S., Blake, S., Wittemyer, G., Hart, J., Williamson, E. A. et al. (2013). Devastating decline of forest elephants in central Africa. PloS One 8 (3): e59469. Mills, L. S., Soule, M. E., and Doak, D. F. (1993). The keystone-​species concept in ecology and conservation. BioScience 43(4): 219–​224. Milner-​Gulland, E. J., and Beddington, J. R. (1993). The exploitation of elephants for the ivory trade:  an historical perspective. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B:  Biological Sciences 252(1333): 29–​37. Moss, M. L., Yang, D. Y., Newsome, S. D., Speller, C. F., McKechnie, I., McMillan, A. D., Losey, R. J., and Koch, P. L. (2006). Historical ecology and biogeography of north Pacific pinnipeds: isotopes and ancient DNA from three archaeological assemblages. Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology 1(2): 165–​190. Murphy, B. P., and Bowman, D. M. J. S. (2009). The carbon and nitrogen isotope composition of Australian grasses in relation to climate. Functional Ecology 23(6): 1040–​1049. Nasseri, N. A., McBrayer, L. D., and Schulte, B. A. (2011). The impact of tree modification by African elephant (Loxodonta africana) on herpetofaunal species richness in northern Tanzania. African Journal of Ecology 49(2): 133–​140. Newmark, W. D., Boshe, J. I., Sariko, H. I., and Makumbule, G. K. (1996). Effects of a highway on large mammals in Mikumi National Park, Tanzania. African Journal of Ecology 34(1): 5–​31. Ntumi, C. P., Ferreira, S. M., and van Aarde, R. J. (2009). A review of historical trends in the distribution and abundance of elephants Loxodonta africana in Mozambique. Oryx 43(4): 568. O’Connor, T. G., Goodman, P. S., and Clegg, B. (2007). A functional hypothesis of the threat of local extirpation of woody plant species by elephant in Africa. Biological Conservation 136(3): 329–​345. Ogada, D. L., Gadd, M. E., Ostfeld, R. S., Young, T. P., and Keesing, F. (2008). Impacts of large herbivorous mammals on bird diversity and abundance in an African savanna. Oecologia 156(2): 387–​397. Owen-​Smith, N., Kerley, G. I. H., Page, B., Slotow, R., and van Aarde, R. J. (2006). A scientific perspective on the management of elephants in the Kruger National Park and elsewhere: elephant conservation. South African Journal of Science 102(9–​10): 389–​394. Parker, I. (1979). The Ivory Trade. Washington, DC: Department of Fisheries and Wildlife. Powell-​Cotton, P. H. G. (1896). Diary entries from January 1896. Accessed in the Powell-​Cotton Museum archives, 27 November 2009. Powell-​Cotton, P. H. G. (1906). Diary entries from July 1906. Accessed in the Powell-​Cotton Museum archives, 27 November 2009.

Historic Molecules Connect the Past to Modern Conservation    225 Rick, T. C., and Lockwood, R. (2013). Integrating paleobiology, archeology, and history to inform biological conservation. Conservation Biology 27(1): 45–​54. Scheiter, S., and Higgins, S. I. (2012). How many elephants can you fit into a conservation area? Conservation Letters 5(3): 176–​185. Shannon, G., Druce, D. J., Page, B. R., Eckhardt, H. C., Grant, R., and Slotow, R. (2008). The utilization of large savanna trees by elephant in southern Kruger National Park. Journal of Tropical Ecology 24(3): 281–​289. Sharp, Z. (2007). Principles of Stable Isotope Geochemistry. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education. Sheriff, A. (1987). Slaves, Spices and Ivory in Zanzibar. London: James Currey. Simonetti, A., and Bell, K. (1995). Nd, Pb and Sr isotopic data from the Mount Elgon volcano, eastern Uganda–​western Kenya: implications for the origin and evolution of nephelinite lavas. Lithos 36(2): 141–​153. Stephenson, P. J., and Ntiamoa-​Baidu, Y. (2010). Conservation planning for a widespread, threatened species: WWF and the African elephant Loxodonta africana. Oryx 44(2): 194. Szpak, P., Orchard, T. J., McKechnie, I., and Grocke, D. R. (2012). Historical ecology of late Holocene sea otters (Enhydra lutris) from northern British Columbia:  isotopic and zooarchaeological perspectives. Journal of Archaeological Science 39(5): 1553–​1571. Thorbahn, P. F. (1979). The precolonial ivory trade of East Africa: Reconstruction of a human–​ elephant ecosystem. PhD dissertation, University of Massachusetts. Tieszen, L. L., Boutton, T. W., Ottichilo, W. K., Nelson, D. E., and Brandt, D. H. (1989). An assessment of long-​term food habits of Tsavo elephants based on stable carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios of bone collagen. African Journal of Ecology 27(3): 219–​226. van der Merwe, N. J., Lee-​Thorp, J. A., and Bell, R. H. V. (1988). Carbon isotopes as indicators of elephant diets and African environments. African Journal of Ecology 26(2): 163–​172. van der Merwe, N. J., Lee-​Thorp, J. A., Thackeray, J. F., Hall-​Martin, A., Kruger, F. J., Coetzee, H., Bell, R. V. H., and Lindeque, M. (1990). Source-​area determination of elephant ivory by isotopic analysis. Nature 346: 744–​746. Wittemyer, G., Cerling, T. E., and Douglas-​Hamilton, I. (2009). Establishing chronologies from isotopic profiles in serially collected animal tissues: an example using tail hairs from African elephants. Chemical Geology 267(1–​2): 3–​11. Wittemyer, G., Northrup, J. M., Blanc, J., Douglas-​Hamilton, I., Omondi, P., and Burnham, K. (2014). Illegal killing for ivory drives global decline in African elephants. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 111(36): 13117–​13121.

Chapter 12

C omm u ni t y a nd C onservat i on Documenting Millennial Scale Sustainable Resource Use at Lake Mývatn, Iceland Megan Hicks, Árni Einarsson, Kesara Anamthawat-​J ónsson, Ágústa Edwald MAXWELL, Ægir Thór Thórsson, and Thomas H. McGovern

Commons Management, Local and Traditional Ecological Knowledge, and Long-​Term Sustainability The past decade has seen an increasing appreciation of the value of local and traditional ecological knowledge (LTK) in understanding the long-​term interactions between societies and local environmental resources, with an eye towards management strategies (Berkes et al., 2000; Peloquin and Berkes, 2009; Thornton and Maciejewski Scheer, 2012). Basic understanding of environmental variables like sea ice thickness and changing animal migratory patterns requires a broadening of knowledge bases beyond narrowly-​defined disciplinary academic science (Cochran et al., 2013; Huntington et al., 2011). Current efforts to integrate LTK with science recognize that a limited observational span (geographically and temporally), ideological biases, and inaccurate taxonomy impact all knowledge systems. Neither ‘traditional local knowledge’ nor ‘modern science’ is a unitary social or behavioural entity in practice, yet there exist social, linguistic, and epistemological barriers between different practice groups. Considerable effort in the past decade has integrated professional and local efforts in the circumpolar north to bridge communication gaps

Community and Conservation    227 among groups, to support ‘citizen science’, and to share data between communities (e.g. Gearheard et al., 2010; Krupnik and Jolly, 2002; Kruse et al., 2004; Pulsifer et al., 2012). While much of this work is aimed at improving understandings of social and ecological interaction, a substantial literature has developed to evaluate the potentials and pitfalls of integration of LTK with modern sciences (e.g. Agrawal, 1995; Hunn et al., 2003; Nadasdy, 1999, 2005). In historical ecology literature, cases of long-​term sustainable resource management are contrasted with cases of ecological depletion caused by contemporary, historical, and prehistoric societies alike, with significant variation (Broughton, 2002; Diamond, 2005; Grayson, 2001; Krech, 2005). Thus, broad and uncontextualized generalizations concerning tendencies of societies and individuals towards environmental exploitation are of little utility. Hardin, for example, introduced the notion of the inevitability of a ‘tragedy of the commons’ (Hardin, 1968; Hardin and Baden, 1977), which portrayed common resource management as doomed to failure over the long term due to advantages eventually accrued to ‘cheaters’—​a notion which has been widely criticized (see Agrawal, 2002; Hunn et  al., 2003; McCay and Jentoft, 2010; Ostrom, 1990). A  more critical literature (e.g. McCay and Jentoft, 2010: 211) concludes that common resource management and LTK are part of place-​specific integrated knowledge and governance that relates to multiple needs and objectives at different scales—​from the individual to systemic—​not simply towards abstract or etic ideals of conservation or optimization of resources as isolated entities. Research objectives may be refined by applying Allen et al.’s (2003) four-point query of ‘sustainability of what, for whom, at what cost, and for how long?’ Our challenges are therefore:  to better understand and contextualize sustainable and unsustainable resource use; to work on a temporal scale that can meaningfully address Allen et al.’s fourth query (for how long?); and to understand central issues affecting social resilience and change (Kintigh et al., 2014). To this end, the present work investigates Viking Age to modern economic utilization of waterfowl around Lake Mývatn in northern Iceland (ad 871–​twentieth century) including local management strategies that were intended to secure access in successive years to a limited resource—​wild bird eggs. This tradition seems to have secured a sustainable harvest, while guarding the wild bird population for more than a millennium.

The Environmental Setting The Mývatn region of Iceland (Mývatnssveit) straddles the Mid-​Atlantic Ridge, and has been volcanically active for thousands of years (Fig. 12.1). Lake Mývatn is a eutrophic, spring-​fed shallow lake, with an outflow via the Laxá River that runs northwards to the ocean approximately 60 km away. Mývatn supports three species of fish:  arctic char (Salvelinus alpinus), brown trout (Salmo trutta), and three-​spined stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus), as well as midges (chironomid flies) that provide its name

228    Megan Hicks, Árni Einarsson, et al.

100 km

Iceland

RIVER LAXÁ

Arctic Circle

HST

RIVER KRÁKÁ

Myvatn

Myvatn

SKU

HRH SVK

10 km

2 km

Figure 12.1  Location of the study area. Boxes contain archaeological site codes mentioned in the text. Credit: The authors

(‘Midge Lake’) (Einarsson et al., 2004). The Kráká River extends southwards into the interior highlands. Despite its high altitude (250–​300 m above sea level) the region supports rich hay fields upon which residents base their harvest of winter fodder for livestock. Mývatnssveit represents the largest inland farming community in northern Iceland. Lake Mývatn and the outflowing Laxá River form the core of a wetland complex that is exceptionally rich in breeding and moulting waterfowl (Anatidae). At present 15 species of ducks, two species of geese, and one species of swan breed there regularly. About half of the species overwinter in coastal or inland waters in north-​western Europe. Four species spend the winter in coastal seas around Iceland and three species are sedentary, staying on unfrozen spring-​fed streams and bays in the Lake Mývatn region. Other water bird species include arctic tern (Sterna paradisaea), red-​necked phalarope (Phalaropus lobatus), great northern and red-​throated divers (Gavia immer and G.  stellata), and horned grebe (Podiceps auritus). Approximately 15,000 breeding pairs of waterfowl nest in the Mývatn region. Ptarmigan (grouse, Lagopus muta) are present in upland heaths surrounding the lake, as is the only native land mammal: arctic fox (Vulpes lagopus). The migrating ducks arrive in late April/​early May. The dabbling ducks (Anas spp.), the long-​tailed duck (Clangula hyemalis), and goosander (Mergus merganser) are early

Community and Conservation    229 breeders, while the red-​breasted merganser (Mergus serrator) is the last to begin nesting. A duck lays one egg per day and does not begin to incubate until all nine eggs or so have been laid. This ensures that all the eggs start developing at the same time and synchronizes their hatching. Many species breed colonially making them an easy target for human utilization. It is during the egg-​laying period (nine to ten days for an individual duck) that the egg harvesting takes place. As egg-laying periods vary between species as well as between conspecifics the total harvesting season is about five weeks. At present, each nesting area is visited for egg collection by members of households seven to eight times, at about four-​to six-​day intervals (Gudmundsson, 1979).

Mývatn Research History Mývatnssveit saw some of the earliest professional archaeological excavations in Iceland just over a century ago (Bruun and Jónsson, 1911) and since 1996 has hosted annual international collaborative projects combining archaeology, palaeoecology, and community engagement as part of the long-​running Landscapes of Settlement project led by the Icelandic Institute of Archaeology, with collaboration from the international North Atlantic Biocultural Organisation (NABO) research cooperative, the Mývatn Research Station, and the Thingeyjarsýsla Archaeological Association. This sustained effort has allowed the collaborative excavation and interdisciplinary analysis of sites including Hofstadir (site code HST in Fig. 12.1), Sveigakót (SVK), Steinbogi, Selhagi, Hrísheimar (HRH), and Skútustadir (SKU) (Aldred, 2008; Ascough et al., 2007, 2010; Einarsson et al., 2002; Fridriksson, 2013; Gestsdóttir and Isaksen, 2011; Lawson, 2009; Lawson et al., 2007; Lucas, 2009; Sayle et al., 2013; Simpson et al., 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004; Thomson and Simpson, 2007; Vésteinsson, 2008). The focus of the work of several university groups, together with the Mývatn Research Station (established in 1974) and the Icelandic Institute of Freshwater Fisheries, has been to characterize the rich ecosystem of Lake Mývatn and the Laxá River, with particular emphasis on strongly cyclic food web dynamics (Einarsson et al., 2004; Ives et al., 2008). Part of the ecological work involves close monitoring of food web components like waterfowl, fish, and their invertebrate food species (e.g. Einarsson et al., 2004; Gratton et al., 2008). The history of the biota has been extended 2,000 years back in lake sediment cores (see Einarsson, 1982; Hauptfleisch, 2012). The Mývatn region’s soils provide favourable conditions for long-​term organic preservation of archaeological remains, with soil pH consistently in the range of 6.25–​6.5 allowing the preservation of anthropogenic deposits of delicate fish and bird bones as well as substantial amounts of bird eggshell. Precisely dated Icelandic volcanic ash layers (tephra) provide isochrones that temporally connect different portions of individual sites, but also allow for accurate correlation between excavations, soil profiles, and lake and bog cores on the landscape scale. Locally visible tephra layers around Mývatn date

230    Megan Hicks, Árni Einarsson, et al. from about ad 871, c.940, 1104, 1158, 1300, 1410, 1477, and 1717. The present investigation thus draws on rich and diverse data sets and provides the opportunity to work with large, well-​preserved, and well-​dated zooarchaeological samples from multiple sites dating back to the initial settlement period in the late ninth century ad (McGovern et al., 2007).

Prior Results: Diet, Economy, Ecology As part of the Landscapes of Settlement project, excavations of household refuse have provided a record of farm-​based production and interregional food networks (McGovern et  al., 2006). While individual farms were the basic settlement unit, marine fish, bird, and sea mammal bones in infuse from all the inland farms indicate a broader community of economic interaction linking Mývatnssveit to the coast (McGovern et al., 2006, 2013; Perdikaris and McGovern, 2008). Current evidence indicates that Mývatnssveit was probably a fully settled community by the early tenth century (Vésteinsson and McGovern, 2012). By the mid-​eleventh century Hofstadir had lost its importance as a central place (Lucas, 2009), leaving two centres of local power, at Skútustadir on the south-​western side of the lake and Reykjahlid on the north-​eastern side, both of which remain rural centres to the present. Mývatn apparently participated in the intensification of wool production around the thirteenth century, with cattle to sheep and goat ratios changing from one cow to four or five caprine during the ninth–​ twelfth centuries to a 1:20 ratio on smaller farms by the thirteenth century. Furthermore, a mixed sheep/​goat flock was replaced by all sheep, and reconstructed sheep age indicates wool production (Harrison, 2014). The highland lake basin was probably also affected by the sudden onset of colder temperatures followed by an increase in sea ice c.1275–​1300 in northern Iceland/​southern Greenland (Miller et al., 2012). An animal bone collection from a domestic midden deposit just above (i.e. later than) the ad 1300 tephra layer at Hofstadir showed evidence of subsistence stress including uncommonly heavily processed bone fragments (indicating efforts to extract additional nutrients) and the presence of bones from intentionally killed dogs and cats, both possibly pointing to dietary shortfalls on the farm. In addition bones of ice-​riding harp seals were found within this ad 1300 assemblage (McGovern et al., 2013). Harp seals are hunted while they breed on sea ice and are therefore a proxy for its presence. Sea ice is closely correlated with cooling of air temperatures on land and using modern analogy it is believed such conditions would have limited grass growth for animal fodder (Ogilvie, 1984). Successive years of sea ice would have decimated livestock populations. Significant hazards that affected Mývatn were the same as for all of Iceland in the eighteenth century:  smallpox killed up to a quarter of the population of Iceland in 1707–​1710, while climate cooling limited fodder for animals, and volcanic eruptions could damage agricultural land, such as the eighteenth-​century lava flow that nearly destroyed

Community and Conservation    231 the Reykjahlíd farm. While Mývatn was historically considered privileged by its plentiful wild bird and fish populations, the zooarchaeological evidence from Hofstadir, and the eighteenth-​and nineteenth-​century hardships, suggest the community was not immune to periods of subsistence stress.

Waterfowl Management in Mývatn Farms in Mývatn contain extensive wild bird nesting grounds and harvesting eggs has been a traditional way of exploiting them. The general practice of collectors leaving several eggs in each nest for the female to incubate is first mentioned in the area in 1862 (Shepherd, 1867), but self-​imposed restrictions to harvesting are mentioned some 40 years earlier (Thienemann, 1827). Leaving eggs ensures the female will not abandon the nest. Studies demonstrate that sensitivity to predation differs according to the level of predation (number of eggs removed) and among species (Ackerman et al., 2003). Dabbling ducks, for example, are more likely to desert the nest when only three to four eggs remain and less likely to desert when six to seven eggs remain. Successfully nesting females tend to return to their previous nesting locale, whereas nest abandoning birds have a tendency to move to a new site in the following year (Dow and Fredga, 1983; Hepp and Kennamer, 1992). The overall survival of young after hatching is regulated by the availability of food in the lake, mainly midges and their larvae and small crustaceans, and ducks in the Mývatn region produce fewer than four young per female a year on average (Einarsson and Gardarsson, 2004; Einarsson et  al., 2006; Gardarsson, 1978–​1979; Gardarsson and Einarsson, 1997, 2002). Adult waterfowl are reported to have been protected from hunting in historical sources (Thienemann, 1827). However, diving water birds, including ducks, were sometimes accidentally drowned in nets used for char and trout fishing (Gardarsson, 1961).

Evidence from the Long-​Term Archaeological Record of Skútustadir The aim of current research is to take initial indications of long-​term management of the migratory waterfowl to a fuller level of analysis. Since preliminary assessments in 2006, archaeologists have analysed additional bird bones from Skútustadir, sampled eggshell from the same site, and produced scanning electron microscope (SEM) images of modern and archaeological egg fragments to allow their identification to species level. Collaboration with the local community provides historical and ethnographic documentation of management and harvesting of natural resources.

232    Megan Hicks, Árni Einarsson, et al.

Excavation, Sampling, and the Osseous Remains Masses of crushed but otherwise well-​preserved bird eggshell have regularly been encountered in early deposits during archaeological excavations, indicating that intensive, seasonal collection of bird eggs took place in the settlement period. Initial identification of recovered eggshell fragments from the Viking Age deposits of three archaeological sites in Mývatn confirmed the presence of substantial amounts of duck eggshell as well as some ptarmigan and a few marine bird eggs. The species composition contrasted with that represented by bird bones (i.e. killed birds), of which the majority were ptarmigan (McGovern et al., 2006). The newly excavated long-​term archaeological record from Skútustadir adds significantly to the data. Skútustadir is located on the south shore of Lake Mývatn on a corridor of dry land between Lake Mývatn and extensive marshlands. The farm owns islands in the lake, shoreline, and meadow edge, as well as numerous ponds—​offering diverse habitats for breeding waterfowl. Extensive sampling of stratified household midden deposits (refuse containing hearth ash, animal bone, eggshell, plant remains, and discarded objects) from large-​scale fully sieved excavations has produced one of the largest archaeofauna and artefact collections from Mývatnssveit. The earliest radiocarbon dates at Skútustadir attest to initial settlement in the ninth century and cultural deposits lie directly upon the ad c.871 landnám tephra layer. The uppermost midden deposits include both destruction debris of a late nineteenth-​century turf farm house and early twentieth-​century deposits (Edwald and McGovern, 2009; Hicks et al., 2013, 2014). The Skútustadir midden deposits thus provide an unusual opportunity to document the full period of human occupation in Mývatnssveit. The densest layer of eggshell encountered in the Skútustadir midden was a concentration of fragments extending approximately 2 by 0.5 metres and 1–​3 centimetres thick, in contact with animal bones, refuse, and the ad 940 tephra. These thick and extensive eggshell scatters, as shown in Fig. 12.2, presumably represent seasonal concentrations of intensive egg harvest that correspond with the seasonal breeding in spring and early summer. The archaeological samples from Skútustadir used in the ongoing analysis are derived from three different archaeological layers. One set of samples is derived from directly on the ad 940 tephra and is likely to pertain to the period referred to as the Viking Age. The second sample was recovered from above the 940 tephra and below the 1108/​1154 tephra—​linking them to the Viking Age or early Middle Ages. The third set of samples was recovered between the 1477 tephra and 1717 tephra; this layer contained kaolin pipe stems and thus can be further refined to about ad 1610–​1717 (following Mehler, 2002). These samples provide comparison between the Viking Age, and the seventeenth–​ eighteenth centuries, which can themselves be compared to the ample record from the twentieth century. Species level identification of these fragments allows us to compare egg collection strategies to hunting strategies interpreted from the osseous remains. Thus far the Skútustadir bird bone frequencies suggest that bird hunting played a very minor

Community and Conservation    233

Figure 12.2  Archaeological eggshell fragments in situ at Skútustadir. Credit: The authors

subsistence role in all phases. As Table 12.1 indicates, bird bones make up a relatively small proportion of the Mývatnssveit archaeofauna, and on all sites except Skútustadir the ptarmigan, a heath-​nesting bird, was far more common than any other identified birds (unidentifiable fragments were virtually all in the ptarmigan size range). While some waterfowl bones do appear, they make up a very small fraction of the total number of identified specimens (NISP).

Improving the Identification of Eggshells Identifying eggshells to the species level involves a detailed comparison of eggshell micromorphology of as many duck species and other birds as possible with a SEM. Two main groups of characters are registered: (1) density and size of mammillae and (2) their ultra-​structural and topographical features. After completing the scanning process of selected archaeological eggshell samples from Skútustadir, we are establishing standards based on present-​day bird species in the Mývatn area and surroundings. In our project we investigate 27 bird species; 20 of these are found nesting in the Mývatn area. Other species are included for comparison with reference species described in Sidell (1993). Fig. 12.3 shows the contrast in the

7

22

9

38

SVK

HST

SKU (preliminary)

Waterfowl

HRH

Sites (all phases)

4

146

697

230

Ptarmigan

5

24

6

0

Other identified bird sp.

174

160

462

109

Unidentified bird sp.

2,666

33,940

17,816

2,782

Total NISP

8.29

1

6.66

12.44

% bird

1.43

0.03

0.12

0.25

% waterfowl

Table 12.1 Preliminary summary of bird bones from major Mývatnssveit archaeofauna (sites: Hrísheimar, Sveigakót, Hofstadir, and Skútustadir). Skútustadir (SKU) is located on the lake shore in the midst of the duck nesting grounds and lacks good ptarmigan hunting grounds in its immediate area, but even so waterfowl bones make up less than 2% of the currently identified collection. Data from McGovern et al., 2006 and Hicks, 2010

Community and Conservation    235 A

B

Figure  12.3  A:  Chicken (Gallus gallus). B:  Swan (Cygnus Cygnus) at 300x magnification, using BEC mode, voltage at 10 kV, 20 Pascal units, and working distance WD 8 mm. Scale bar represents 50 µm. Credit: The authors

ultra-​structure of internal surfaces of eggshell samples from domestic chickens (Gallus gallus) and a whooper swan (Cygnus cygnus). The formation of eggshell takes around 20 hours and when fully formed consists of five morphologically distinct regions (Solomon, 2010). Proceeding from the innermost layer, these are the mammillary knob layer, the cone, palisade, vertical crystal layer, and cuticle. SEM is the best technology for visualizing the surface structure, which is the final pattern of interplay between crystal layers and the organic matrix. The SEM microscope used is of the type JSM-​6610LA (JEOL, Japan); it has several advantages over conventional SEM. First, the improved technology circumvents coating of samples with materials such as gold/​palladium alloy, platinum, or osmium. Second, signals are produced by secondary electrons (SE), back-​scattered electrons (BSE), or a combination of both, which appear brighter in the resulting image when compared to SE alone. All these advantages make it possible to investigate and obtain reliable results although we observe that archaeological samples range from intact to fairly damaged.

Findings These data are in the preliminary stages of being analysed. Identification of bird bone is ongoing and detailed stereoscopic observations and eggshell thickness measurements will be compared with comparative mammillae density analyses generated from the SEM photographs of the archaeological specimens and the reference collection. Thus far, waterfowl eggs have been initially observed at Skútustadir, which is in line with the previous findings from Hrísheimar, Hofstadir, and Sveigakót, but the presence of eggs of various species may well differ by site and period. Swan (Cygnus sp.) egg fragments were securely identified and a case can be made for the presence of the eggs of Barrow’s goldeneye (Bucephala islandica) in all layers based on stereoscopic observations and measurements.

236    Megan Hicks, Árni Einarsson, et al. Although analysis is still underway, some preliminary patterns deserve further comment here. We hypothesize that the relative scarcity of waterfowl bones among other consumed animal remains (Hicks, 2010; McGovern et al., 2006) is evidence of management of Mývatn waterfowl for sustainable egg collection, especially when the archaeological data are considered alongside the historical and archaeological record of extensive egg collection and historical protection of nesting birds from hunting. Further, evidence from the four farms in Table 12.1 demonstrates that some form of management was common in the region and extends from modern times back to first settlement in the Viking Age. Our ability to further extract species-level identification from these large archaeological collections will enhance our understanding of household-level and regional-level bird management and consumption, as well as changing patterns through time. Archaeology may also serve to answer key research questions in avian biogeography by providing positive evidence of the presence in the region of identified species through time.

Ethnographic and Historical Records Documentary sources relevant to wetlands and waterfowl management in Iceland extend back to the thirteenth century but become far richer and more detailed after 1700. These records include both formal administrative documents (law codes such as the 1712 Jardabók farm register) and multi-​century manuscript records by local farmers, including egg harvest counts by species, resolutions of collective management associations, and a wealth of diaries and unpublished poetry, newsletters, and correspondence and will be combined with ethnographic interviews with modern farmers now underway to produce a multi-​century record of wild resource use (Edwald, 2012). The first textual record in Icelandic legal codes postdates the significant Viking Age archaeological data. Egg collection by tenants and landowners was lawful, but ‘nesting birds [Icelandic: eggversfugla], no man shall hunt’ says Jónsbók, the law code enacted for Iceland in 1281 and remaining in force until the eighteenth century (Halldórsson, 1904). This was an elaboration on earlier Grágás law code regulations which protected the rights of tenants and owners to hunt in their own bird colonies, even when these shared boundaries with neighbours or commons (Dennis et al., 1993; Finsen, 1852). It is noteworthy that the clear Viking Age archaeological evidence of the non-​hunted status of waterfowl in Mývatn may predate the known written laws (McGovern et al., 2006). The earliest documentary source detailing egg harvesting specifically at Mývatn is the 1712 Jardabók farm register, which records the value of the farm, the number of inhabitants, livestock, fishing rights, and egg harvesting. In total, 14 farms harvested eggs at Mývatn in the early eighteenth century. According to the register the farms which harvested the most duck eggs are Reykjahlíd (360 eggs per spring), Geirastadir (360 eggs), Skútustadir (120 eggs, though these benefits are said to have decreased in years recent to 1712), Gardur (120 eggs), Kálfaströnd (1,200 eggs), Geiteyjarströnd (360 eggs), Vogar (360 eggs), and Grímsstadir (900 eggs). In total, the register estimates the number of

Community and Conservation    237 harvested eggs to be around 3,960 each spring (Magnússon and Vídalín, 1943). Where farms housed more than one family or household, the total number of collected eggs would be counted and divided in proportion to the percentage of the farmland owned by each family. In the same Jardabók entry just mentioned, six farms (Arnarvatn, Sydri Neslönd, Ytri Neslönd, Grænavatn, Helluvad, and Haganes) are recorded to have some benefits from nesting birds, although estimations of the number of eggs harvested are not given. Gudmundsson (1979) has noted the relatively low count given of 4,000 eggs in the Jardabók, compared to Gudmundsson’s own estimates of 41,000 in 1941. Regarding the low Jardabók numbers, it is worth noting that the smallpox epidemic in the region during the early eighteenth century may have reduced the number of people relying on this resource. Alternatively, underreporting may have been a method of avoiding taxation. Both Benediktsson (1957; in 1747) and Mohr (in 1786) refer to egg harvesting by Mývatn farmers. Faber (1822) notes that farmers are strongly opposed to any ducks being shot because of the customary harvesting of eggs and down from their nests. This attitude is further supported by Thienemann’s 1827 account:  ‘The ducks of Mývatn [ . . . ] are very seldom shot at or disturbed by the natives, and their nests are never wholly robbed [ . . . ] unless four or five eggs are left in a nest, they will not return to it’ (cited from Gudmundsson, 1979: 234). Hörring visited Mývatn in 1906 and 1907 and according to his unpublished diaries the farmers’ annual egg harvest was 25,000–​30,000 eggs. These eggs were collected on seven or eight occasions throughout the nesting season and specific rules were followed with regards to the numbers of eggs taken from the nests of different duck species (Gudmundsson, 1979). Written records on the annual egg yield since the turn of the nineteenth century exist from some of the farms on the lake shore. At Grímsstadir, an egg harvest record by species for the period 1900–​57 indicates peaks in 1907–​10, 1913–​18, and 1941–​3 (Gardarsson, 1979; Gudmundsson, 1979). In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries local social movements were formed to govern resource use, including hunting associations, lake fisheries associations, and water bird associations. Their records are now being examined to better understand (1)  the influence and adoption of scientific recording through contact with visitors and (2) potentially associated changes in modes of thought about natural resources (Edwald, 2012). This may represent a noteworthy case of traditional environmental knowledge inscription through modes of modern scientific practice, by local residents, and highlights how Mývatnssveit LTK is a living and changing knowledge system.

Recent Wildfowl Populations and Collection Practices The duck populations of Mývatn and Laxá have been monitored closely over half a century and have shown marked fluctuations (Einarsson et al., 2004; Gardarsson and

238    Megan Hicks, Árni Einarsson, et al. Einarsson, 2004). The main contributing factor to population fluctuations, and thereby also to variations in the volume of harvested eggs, is thought to be the availability of food resources—​midges and blackflies—​in the lake ecosystem (Bengtson, 1971; Gardarsson, 2006; Gardarsson and Einarsson, 1997). Escaped introduced mink (Neovison vison) predated on nesting birds in the latter half of the twentieth century and, accordingly, mink are hunted. There have also been changes in nesting duck populations, with new species arriving and others decreasing in numbers (Gudmundsson, 1979). Harvesting takes place from around the 20 May and nesting grounds are walked every third to fourth day until mid-​June. It is estimated that around 10,000 eggs are harvested each spring, which is considerably less than was harvested in the mid-​twentieth century (Gardarsson, 1979). Bird populations have gained new significance through over a century of growing tourism as an attractive component of Mývatn’s environment. Local households remain actively engaged in environmental concerns and debates, along with the Mývatn Research Station and international researchers.

Conclusion We hypothesize that the 1,100-​year interaction of humans and waterfowl in the Mývatn basin wetlands is a case of community level sustainable resource management. The long-​term archaeological record and historical documents demonstrate a system of limited egg collecting combined with little to no hunting of waterfowl; the latter seems to have been a major component of management since earliest settlement. The practice of leaving a portion of eggs in each nest is, however, not archaeologically visible. Therefore, none of these informational sources studied alone could convey the multi-​ part management practices. Interdisciplinary work has allowed this ongoing research to communicate results at the level of detail provoked by Allen et al.’s (2003) four-​point query of ‘sustainability of what, for whom, at what cost, and for how long?’ Lake Mývatn households, having property rights on nesting grounds, protected the populations of breeding migratory waterfowl whose eggs were a food resource for 1,100 years and counting. Questions presenting a challenge for ongoing interdisciplinary research include: (1) What was the economic difference between households that had and did not have direct access? And (2) How was protection enforced? These questions and others may allow us to address the query ‘at what cost?’ through ongoing research. This research sheds light on the complexities of socially embedded common resources and questions the universality of commons abuse as described by Hardin (1968). In Mývatn, overharvest of eggs would cause nesting birds to desert and potentially never return to the same place to breed—​a loss for the particular farm and therefore a private concern. However, birds other than incubating females may move about many farms and open water (this would include females before and after the incubation period). As the birds alternatively move about or nest, they shift between

Community and Conservation    239 being a common resource and being a privately accessed resource. Following this, limiting egg collection per nest should not be described as commons management, but rather as a community level practice with shared norms around a local, limited resource. On the other hand, the tradition of not hunting waterfowl (with some exceptions) shared in the region through time, is an example of long-​term common resource management. Limited egg collection and limited hunting seem to have superseded any effects of overharvest in the long term. Today the waterfowl populations serve as a twofold economic resource for subsistence and they attract economically important tourism. Their habitat has been designated as a UNESCO world heritage site. This is an example of long-​term success in social–​environmental interactions in contrast to other known adverse human impacts detected in the archaeological record (Dugmore et al., 2007, 2009). While much remains to be learned about this case, two broader implications are worth noting for the benefit of policy-​makers, researchers, and local communities alike: (1) As Dugmore et al. (2013), Hunn et al. (2003), and Peloquin and Berkes (2009) observe, resource management systems need not be followed perfectly to be broadly effective. The historical and archaeological record indicates that sometimes people did kill adult waterfowl (e.g. as a bycatch during fishing with gill nets). There could have been cases of overharvest of eggs during periods of hardship (e.g. unexpected climatic cooling and livestock epidemics) and not all community members may have always been equally constrained by traditional practice. At other times, variation in biological productivity must have challenged predictability, but this system worked well enough to cope with variations. (2) Short observation periods lead to poor understanding: short-​term studies focused on times of distress in the early fourteenth and late seventeenth centuries would have surely questioned the long-​term viability of the social-​ecological system around Mývatn (see Lane, Chapter 4). A short-​term understanding of landscapes and resource variability often leads to failure to manage them successfully over the long term (Crumley, Chapter 1). As we collaborate across academic disciplinary boundaries and unite varied traditional and institutional sources of environmental understanding, we aim to contribute insights towards the making of a more sustainable future.

Acknowledgements This research was made possible by generous grants from the National Geographic Society, RANNIS, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Leverhulme Trust, the Wenner-​Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the Leifur Eiriksson Foundation Scholarship, the American Scandinavian Foundation, the US National

240    Megan Hicks, Árni Einarsson, et al. Science Foundation (grants 0732327, 1140106, 1119354, 1203823, 1203268, and 1202692), and the University of Iceland Research Fund. We would also like to send our warmest thanks to our host communities in Iceland who have supported this work and partnered in the investigation of their heritage as a source for education for sustainability.

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Chapter 13

Soils, Pl ants , a nd   T e xts An Archaeologist’s Toolbox Federica Sulas

Introduction: The Past versus the Present The understanding of past environments and societies is, partly, shaped by how we experience them today. In turn, this perception influences the ways in which we deal with global challenges such as developing sustainable lifeways in the face of climate change and population growth. In Africa, for example, state-​sponsored land reforms have drawn greatly (and opportunistically) from archaeological and historical models linking the development of early farming to deforestation to justify certain policies. In these narratives, human landscape intervention began with the clearing of land to sustain growing farming populations. Over time, the intensity and pace of land exploitation accelerated, increasingly depleting the environment. A few centuries later, monumental architecture and degraded landscapes form the remaining legacy of once thriving states. Responses to such simplistic models of linear change towards greater depletion of once thriving and undisturbed environments include equally simplistic restoration resolutions of reforestation and the replacement of historical rainfed farming or savannah landscapes with irrigated fields. Another, more subtle, critical point concerns issues of scale:  the large and global versus the small and local. In a modern capitalistic world, it is hard to believe that non-​ mechanized farming strategies could support more than a couple of nucleated settlements. Following this line of thinking, ancient states, whose vast ruins testify to the golden age of complex, hierarchic societies, must have hosted thousands of people and thrived on labour-​intensive, spatially extensive forms of land-​use. Indeed, small-​scale subsistence systems today are found in those regions prone to food crises that need to be ‘developed’: traditional resource uses are seen as not sufficiently productive to sustain

Soils, Plants, and Texts    247 fast-​growing economies as well as detrimental to the environment, making these regions more vulnerable to both climate and socioeconomic changes. This is the case for the highland region of northern Ethiopia and central Eritrea where some of Africa’s earliest state societies developed, including the kingdom of Aksum (c.50 Bc–​Ad 800; Fig. 13.1). Here, the expansion of permanent settlement and farming and the rise of early societies have been linked to land clearance, intensive farming, and irrigation to sustain population growth and social complexity (Bard et al., 2000). Under such pressure, erosion ensued and with the onset of a drier climate, the whole system would have collapsed (Butzer, 1981). This brief and simplified summary of the environmental history of the region serves to highlight the main characters of the historical narrative

Figure 13.1  Composite map showing the location of Ethiopia and Aksum. Map: Federica Sulas.

248   Federica Sulas informing land development and environmental conservation policies in Ethiopia and Eritrea today: the now much-​eroded landscapes were once wooded and are, thus, in need of tree-​planting; an improvident rainfed farming system has depleted the land and is no longer sustainable, and should be replaced with modernized irrigation agriculture. However, recent integrative research on the long-​term relationship between people and environment in northern Ethiopia has revealed contrasting new evidence that questions these tenets. Before entering into the discussion on these findings, I will outline the methodological and theoretical approaches applied in constructing a revised, historical ecological model. While we are still navigating our way through the transition from mono-​to transdisciplinary research agendas and practices, an increasing literature bears testimony to the potential (and necessity) of combining different data sets to understand landscapes and societies over time (e.g. Butzer, 1996, 2005; Ekblom, 2004; McIntosh et al., 2000; Petty et al., 2015; Pikirayi, 2001; Rostain, 2012; Sinclair et al., 2010; Widgren and Sutton, 2004; see also Flannery, 2006; French, 2010). Netting’s (1981) integrative study of a Swiss community in the Alps is a powerful example of transdisciplinary and transgeographical scholarship. By venturing away from the standard ethnographic account of a preliterate community where the anthropologist reigns unchallenged, I have overlapped the more specialized areas of the geographer, the sociological demographer, the rural economist, and the social historian of Europe. Yet in the absence of an ecological perspective, the connections linking environment, subsistence, physiology, and social organization can be glimpsed only indistinctly, if at all. (Netting, 1981: 222)

Here, Netting emphasizes the overlapping of specialized areas and the concept of connectivity as a fundamental property of human ecosystems, where environment and social organizations cannot be studied in isolation—​hence, the necessity of an ecological perspective. These same issues are now breaching into archaeology as historical ecology is forcing archaeologists out of their comfort zones to address not only historical processes but, significantly, by challenging them to make their work both relevant and intelligible to a fast-​growing, globalizing society. Among these approaches, geoarchaeology has made significant contributions by revealing the unique potential of soils and buried landscapes as composite archives of climatic, environmental, and land-​use history (Butzer, 1982; French, 2003; Goldberg and Macphail, 2006; see also Butzer, Chapter 7; and French, Chapter 14; Limbrey, 1975). As a living body, soil is constantly reshaped by natural and anthropogenic factors operating at different temporal and spatial scales. For example, climate impacts on the nature and rate of weathering of rocks and the transport of material, which ultimately provide the mineral component of a soil. At the same time, these weathering and transport processes are influenced by geological and geomorphological settings, vegetation cover, and human activities. While the stratigraphy of sites and landscapes has been a

Soils, Plants, and Texts    249 main concern of archaeology since its inception, geoarchaeology has played a key role in examining environmental changes and resource uses at multiple scales, from the microscopic characteristics of ancient arable soils to landscape evolution (e.g. Butzer, 1982; Courty et al., 1989; French, 2003; Goldberg and Macphail, 2006; Hassan, 1978). Geoarchaeology is also among the most responsive branches of archaeology when it comes to applied research. In fact, whether sponsoring the re-​enactment of past resource strategies or contextualizing historical knowledge within current debates on environmental conditions and land development, most applied archaeological research deals with the interplay between landscapes and societies in the past and the present (e.g. Arroyo-​Kalin, 2008; Barthel and Isendahl, 2013; Petty et  al., 2015; Stump, 2013; Swetnam et al., 1999; see also Erikson, 1998; Tainter, 2000).

Soils, Plants, and Texts: Archaeology and beyond at Aksum, Ethiopia A succession of cultures flourished in the northern Ethiopian highlands from the early first millennium Bc, culminating in the Aksumite kingdom (50 Bc–​Ad 800). Known for its literate culture and long-​distance overseas diplomacy and commerce, Aksum’s rural economy was fed by indigenous forms of cereal plough farming (Fattovich, 2008, 2010; Phillipson, 2000, 2012). The intensification of this mixed farming system to sustain population growth coupled with a drying climate have long been linked to an ecological breakdown that, eventually, led to the decline of the kingdom in the late first millennium Ad (see Fattovich, 2008 and references therein). This hypothesis was put forward nearly a century ago on the basis of historical records, but it received scientific support in the early 1970s from a pioneering geoarchaeological study by Karl W. Butzer (1981). The results of this work indicated the occurrence of accelerated soil erosion that was then linked to population pressure, agricultural intensification, and increased precipitation, which eventually led to the decline of Aksum. This seminal study revealed for the first time the complexity of Aksum’s landscape history and, significantly, the need for examining local landscape sequences to frame archaeological and historical records concerning the rise and demise of ancient state societies. Butzer’s work also demonstrated the potential of applying an integrated geoarchaeological approach to the study of landscape evolution and urban development by combining the analysis of sedimentary records, a review of historical records, and a critical examination of the then available archaeological evidence. Thus, this ‘interim’ study—​as Butzer himself characterized it (1981: 478)—​represents the first real attempt at writing a composite landscape and cultural history of Aksum, and it remained the first and only one of this kind undertaken in Africa for over three decades. Rather than following this route, later research concentrated on investigating settlement patterns, economy, and architecture of the Aksumite polity, turning to regional and interregional climatic and environmental

250   Federica Sulas records to contextualize a growing body of new archaeological data (e.g. Fattovich, 2008; Michels, 2005). For example, the vegetation history associated with Aksum’s urban development is derived almost exclusively from the analysis of plant remains from archaeological contexts and regional pollen sequences. At the local scale, archaeobotanical research has made significant progress in the understanding of local domestic and rural economies (Boardman, 1999; D’Andrea, 2008), but it contributed little to the vegetation history of the area. The majority of pollen records and, more recently, isotopic and charcoal analyses, in contrast, come from lake cores and buried soils located away from Aksum (Darbyshire et al., 2003; Marshall et al., 2009; Terwilliger et al., 2011). These records thus provide data for regional sequences of a highly diversified environment. Despite a limited and fragmented record, issues of landscape evolution and management have played a determining role in models of Aksum’s history. Forest clearance has been linked to the development of settlement and subsistence strategies (e.g. Darbyshire et al., 2003; Nyssen et al., 2004), whereas the use of irrigation has long been assumed to have been necessary to make profitable agricultural exploitation of a landscape otherwise perceived as unsuitable to sustain the emergence and expansion of complex urban societies (e.g. Bard et al., 2000; Michels, 2005). While new archaeological records now allow for a revision of some of these issues, key questions concerning the long-​term history of this landscape remain open: the most critical perhaps being what happened to Aksum after the decline of the kingdom. This question has significant implications for the understanding of Aksum’s past and present landscape. Indeed, as the collapse of the kingdom was linked to depopulation and abandonment in this interpretation, the area was thought to have been almost deserted ever since and, perhaps as a consequence, no archaeological research has ever been conducted on the second millennium Ad. Even though some aspects of the ancient resource management have been investigated, site-​ specific information was limited until recently. Palaeovegetation patterns, erosional and depositional processes, and traditional practices are fundamental aspects to address how natural resources were managed in the past, particularly in northern Ethiopia where both climatic change and land-​use strategies caused soil degradation. Building on Butzer’s important pioneering work (1981), new integrative geoarchaeological research at Aksum combined geoarchaeological techniques, including soil micromorphology (i.e. analysis of undisturbed soils/​sediments via optical microscopy; see Courty et al., 1989; French, 2003) and the study of plant remains such as phytoliths (or opal silica; see Piperno, 2006) from buried soils and stratified deposits, with a scrutiny of historical written records and ethnographic survey. For the purpose of this chapter, I will use key results from this study to illustrate how different but complementary techniques allowed rethinking important aspects of Aksum’s landscape history (French et al., 2009, 2017; Sulas, 2014; Sulas et al., 2009). The general landscape sequence reconstructed consists of prolonged phases of soil formation interspersed by minor episodes of slope instability spanning broadly the mid-​fourth millennium Bc until about the seventeenth century Ad, when major soil erosion becomes apparent in some parts of the landscape. By the time that Aksum was growing as the capital of a new kingdom, there is evidence from the surrounding

Soils, Plants, and Texts    251 landscape (about 1–​2 km north) for the presence of a buried soil associated with permanent settlement, arable land-​use, and landscape stability. This clayey silty/​sandy clay loam was recorded in the hills and river valleys immediately north of the urban quarters (Fig. 13.1). The buried soil shows a fairly high degree of profile development, with topsoil and subsoil (AB horizons), and indicates different micro-​ecological conditions across the landscape. Soil moisture changes are particularly evident on upland deposits such as at Leto (Fig. 13.2), where the micromorphological analysis of a subsoil deposit (B horizon 184–​174 cm below the ground) revealed the alternation of iron-​impregnated (oxidized) and adjacent iron-​depleted (discoloured) domains resulting from seasonal waterlogging (French, 2003). On uplands, the signature from plant microfossils (phytoliths) associated with this buried soil is consistent with a grassland vegetation cover with a significant arboreal component, including palm trees. In contrast, a larger number of grasses (Pooideae, a grass subfamily which occurs in cool and temperate habitats) and a lesser amount of woody type phytoliths were detected from the buried soil deposits along the slopes. In addition, the incorporation of coarser material, together with mixing of different horizons, point to mechanical disruption due to farming activity (French, 2003). The disturbance of the hilltop soil system provided, in turn, the colluvial input to soil development along the slopes, where the steady and localized movement of fine particles indicates low energy rainfall and physical disruption of surfaces exposed on higher grounds. Here, microscopic particles of organic and excremental matter in thin section, and the high bulk density of this buried soil, points to animal presence and trampling. The soil and phytolith records together reflect an important human presence that is most likely related to the occupation of the area between the mid-​first millennium Bc and the mid-​first millennium Ad, when settlement densities increased across the entire study area. The impact on this buried soil seems more a result of an invasive disturbance (perhaps ard-​ploughing). The signature of earlier occupation and land-​use may have been gradually blurred by the intensifying land management associated with the development and progressive expansion of the Aksumite kingdom. Subsequently, parts of this settled and farmed landscape were destabilized by a combination of environmental and anthropogenic factors. Profile truncation along the slopes of the hills reflects disruption and suggests a certain degree of vegetation clearing, which is most likely associated with a rearrangement of the settlement pattern and land-​ use, following abandonment (temporary or permanent) of sectors of the landscape. By the fourth century Ad, the large settlement complex on the hilltop north of Aksum was no longer in use and, furthermore, there are indications of a significant population decrease during the next few centuries (Fattovich, 2008). In the Aksum plain, Butzer (1981) detected a phase of intense soil erosion with the formation of thick alluvial and rubbly deposits, probably resulting from the impact of heavier rains on lands upslope that were no longer maintained. Palaeoenvironmental records register a peak in regional rainfall at around Ad 700 (Lamb et al., 2007; Machado et al., 1998), whilst archaeological evidence indicates that a social and economic crisis occurred in the sixth century Ad. This has been linked to demographic pressure, over-​exploitation of the land, and a climatic dry fluctuation (Fattovich, 2008). However, the Aksumite social, economic, and cultural

Bt2

Bt1

AhB1

AB

170–206 cm: Bt; dark brown (10YR 4/2) silt clay loam; sub-angular blocky structure

95–170 cm: AhB; dark brown (10YR 5/2) silt clay loam; angular to columnar structure

75–90 cm: B; dark brown (10YR 4/3) silt clay loam; sub-angular blocky structure; diffuse boundary 90–95 cm: orangey brown (5YR 5/6) sandy/silt lamina

20–75 cm: A-B; brown (7.5YR 4/4) sandy/silt loam; crumb structure; diffuse boundary

Scan of thin section

Scan of thin section

Globular echinate cells.

Iron and manganese pedofeatures .x10 PPL. Scale bar: 0.080 cm

Changing soil moisture

Bulliform cell. Scale bar: 0.004 cm

Phytolith from grass plant

Scale bar: 0.004 cm

Phytoliths from palm trees

Buried soil 1 (AhB, 135–147 cm)

x4 PPL. Scale bar: 0.025 cm

Silt crust

See full details in French et al., 2009; Sulas, 2014. Illustration: Federica Sulas.

Figure 13.2  Example of a soil profile from Aksum in the Leto area. Buried soil 1 is associated with the Aksumite period. Buried soil 2 developed after the decline of the Aksumite kingdom and is associated with permanent settlement and arable land-​uses

200

150

100

50

0–20 cm: Topspoil (plough soil)

Buried soil 2 (A-B, 60–70 cm)

Soils, Plants, and Texts    253 pattern survived and continued for another century and a half. Although profile truncation along the hillsides indicates a phase of instability associated with exposed land further upslope and subsequent soil erosion, there are also indications of continuity as this is less pronounced where the slope flattens, and is entirely absent on uplands and hilltops. Instead, the micromorphological analysis detected evidence for a steady and localized movement of fine particles which is associated with the presence of exposed soil surfaces subject to limited erosion during rainfall. Different sectors of the landscape seem to have responded differently to both social and climate change. Significantly, there is now archaeological evidence for continuous occupation which questions the nature and extent of the ‘depopulation’ observed in the core Aksum urban area by the sixth century Ad (Fattovich, 2008). In fact, a palace together with a few hamlets and isolated compounds were occupied on the hilltop just north of the town between c.Ad 550 and 700, and around the same time churches were built on the western slopes leading onto the Aksum plain (Fattovich, 2008). By the time Aksum was no longer the capital (c. Ad 800) the number of small compounds scattered over the hilltop and along the slopes to the north of the town increased slightly. The settlement record also suggests that land management continued, which is supported by soil and phytolith records. The regaining of slope stability allowed for soil formation over secondary deposits. These secondary, buried soils are found in different landscape units and exhibit remarkable similarities such as mixing, textural features, and relatively high contents of fine charcoal, micro-​charcoal, and organic matter. On hilltop and upland locations, the presence of soil crusting in the upper horizons is a common micromorphological feature of these buried soils (Fig. 13.2). The compactness, micro-​bedding, and sorting of these crust fragments indicate cultivated land surfaces under an alternating wetting and drying seasonal climate cycle (Courty et al., 1989: 155–​156). Furthermore, there is micromorphological evidence of in situ burning and potsherds. On hilltop and upland locations, coarser soil texture and distinctive micromorphological features such as silty clay intercalations and striated, clay-​enriched fabrics indicate intensification of mechanical disturbance on exposed soil surfaces. Along the slopes, the same buried soil exhibits limpid clay, relict features (clay coatings and clay-​iron-​phosphate compounds), and the mixing of different horizons that are indicative of low impact disturbance, possibly associated with open pastures. Similarly, minor changes in the vegetation cover are discernible. While grasses are still predominant, a peak in short grasses (Chloridoideae; a grass subfamily which occurs in warm and dry habitats) suggests increasingly arid conditions. However, the arboreal component appears substantially unchanged from the former period, indicating that climate drying was not strong (or long) enough to change the vegetation structure. Also, the buried soil deposits exhibit a remarkably high charcoal content and indication of in situ burning. This phase is associated with significant settlement and land management. An interval of soil formation around Ad 1000 has been recorded about 20 km east of Aksum, at Adwa (Machado et al., 1998), and regional data sets point to maximum rainfall between Ad 1250 and 1500 (Lamb et al., 2007). Archaeological evidence for this period is very limited, but there are survey records of settlement around the cathedral at Aksum

254   Federica Sulas and on the hilltop immediately to the north dating to between the tenth and fifteenth centuries Ad (Fattovich, 2008). This period is marked by the development of aggrading soils within a woody savannah environment, substantially similar to the one present in the former phases but under slightly more arid conditions. The riparian vegetation of the Māy Hebay-​Godā floodplain included acacias, Sudan teak trees, and palm trees. The river sections exhibit thick (c.80 cm) horizons originated from flood deposition of eroded organic topsoil (A horizon) material from the hydrographic basin. Towards the upper surface of this vertic-​like (with expansive clays) soil there was evidence of an in situ fire; the radiocarbon date obtained ranges between cal Ad 1530 and 1630. The phytoliths and charred wood associated with it reflect a riparian vegetation of grasses and acacias with a few palm trees. Historical records document the occurrence of repeated fires at Aksum between the early sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, including the burning of the town at least twice: by Muslim armies in the 1530s and, shortly afterwards, as a result of internal struggles (Monneret de Villard, 1938: 61–​67). The sequence covering the burnt palaeosurface indicates cyclical alternation of slope instability and short-​term stabilizing punctuations. Indeed, this finds some support in the historical sources with alternating descriptions of Aksum: the lush countryside planted with a wide variety of crops, portrayed by Italian and Portuguese priests in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, appears desolated and ruined in sources written a few decades afterwards (e.g. Crawford, 1958: 140–​143; Monneret de Villard, 1938: 78). However, the region seems to have regained its splendour by the time that a second wave of Jesuits arrived in the 1620s. Significantly, both early sixteenth-​century and early seventeenth-​century texts describe Aksum’s surrounding landscape as populated by thorn trees, olive and fig trees, and palms were seen along rivers and streams (e.g. Barradas, 1634: 103–​107; Beckingham and Huntingford, 1954: 48). Axon, a great city . . . there grow corn, vines, beans, cropped twice a year . . . and in the best and richest grounds there grow many trees and date-​palms . . . (Zorzi’s Iter 3, 1522 in Crawford, 1958: 140) Acçumo, ou Acaxumo, que era antiguamente o mayor, que avia em Ethiopia. . . a qual agora està muy arruynada, e destruyda . . .  (Guerreiro, 1611 in Monneret de Villard, 1938: 65) this Kingdom is so rich in sources of water, it does not lack strong showers in certain areas which help make the land even more productive and affluent with the advent of the winter . . . This Kingdom has a great abundance of crops . . . has a large amount of good quality wheat in various places, barley, grains, lentils, beans . . . (Barradas, 1634: 14–​15)

Many of these sources also mention the abundance of springs and the goodness of the water (see Sulas, 2014). These, coupled with a favourable climate, are commonly cited

Soils, Plants, and Texts    255 as accounting for land productivity based on the ox-​drawn plough farming of several crops (e.g. Barradas, 1634: 14–​16; Crawford, 1958: 140–​143), many of which such as finger millet, barley, and tēf (Eragrostis tef) are also attested in Aksumite archaeological deposits (Boardman, 1999). At the top of the soil sequences investigated, we find thick, rubble/​colluvial deposits that are incised by small streams. Along the Māy Hebay-​Godā river valley (Fig. 13.1), orange-​red/​brown silt deposits (c.145–​120 cm in depth below the ground) with abundant angular stones in all orientations are indicative of a colluvial fan, perhaps associated with more recent agricultural practices. In the region, there is often evidence of active, present-​day, gully incision, most probably related to thunderstorm events on the dry, de-​vegetated, ploughed soil surfaces. However, where traditional farming and minimal animal browsing are still practised, such as on the hills and uplands north of Aksum town, moderately to well-​developed subsoils are found about 40–​35 cm below ground level. In contrast, soil erosion is found elsewhere particularly in lands no longer maintained (Fig. 13.3).

Figure 13.3  Views of Aksum’s landscape in May 2006 (top) and November 2007 (bottom). Photo: Federica Sulas.

256   Federica Sulas Aksum’s countryside has been farmed continuously since at least the first millennium Bc. Periods of population expansion/​contraction and changing political settings alternated with repeated episodes of disruptions, including the occurrence of fires at Aksum. This may indicate a cyclical trend of cultural and environmental adjustments that allowed people to continue living at Aksum and its landscape to evolve, probably with no major transformations until very recently. Indeed, photographic records show how this landscape has changed over the last century (see French et al., 2017: figure 5). The rapid rate of change in the vegetation structure since the late twentieth century is remarkable when compared with the substantially consistent plant cover documented by the soil and plant records of the first millennium Ad, and later by the written sources from the sixteenth century onwards.

Applied Archaeology: Pie in the Sky? The Aksum case study presents but one way integrative research can move forward. The study of soil and plant records using geoarchaeological and palaeobotanical techniques allowed identifying general trends within the local landscape sequence. Also, it showed that conditions in, and responses of, different land units can reveal or conceal important aspects of the same landscape picture. However, buried soil and plant records from landscapes with a long history of occupation are, by necessity, blurred by continuous reworking and evolving. The resulting information, thus, needs to be understood in the light of archaeological, historical, and ethnographic data. The presence of charcoal in buried soils, for example, is undoubtedly the result of plant burning, but whether this is associated with natural fires, land clearance, or domestic activities is indeed an issue that requires a wider range of information to be resolved. That said, lake pollen records of decreasing tree species together with evidence of land erosion in Ethiopia have been linked to past land-​uses (e.g. Darbyshire et al., 2003). It is unfortunate that this type of research has seldom contextualized environmental records and their interpretation in the light of what is known (or unknown) about past, local settlement and land-​use trajectories. This, in turn, feeds into narratives linking historical (and, thus, ‘traditional’) resource uses with degraded landscapes and low land productivity, hence the need for intervention to boost yields. The latter usually entails applying large-​scale irrigation in low rainfall regions, eucalyptus tree-​planting in savannah landscapes, and so on and so forth. In these ways of approaching degraded landscapes, the roots of environmental degradation are sought in the ‘far’ past, in a time when grandness was followed by a collapse. At Aksum, there is now evidence for dynamic landscape stability for at least 3,000 years with no major changes in the vegetation structure until the last four to five centuries. There is no evidence whatsoever for changes at the same scale and intensity as those brought in by land development policies since the twentieth century, and in particular the reforms sponsored since the 1950s and associated with land fragmentation, intense terracing and tree-​planting, and damming of water courses across most of modern Ethiopia (see McCann, 1995, 1999). Looking at the denuded landscape of

Soils, Plants, and Texts    257 Aksum today (Fig. 13.3), what are we dealing with? Is this part of the legacy of the ancient Aksumite kingdom, or of much later land management practices? Research on human–​environment interaction is fragmented ‘by subject matter . . . discipline, and outlook’ (Fisher and Feinman, 2005: 64) and the lack of a common language is at the heart of such fragmentation and dispersal of research. A decade after van der Leeuw and Redman’s plea for an ‘archaeology engaged’ (2002: 603–​604), most of our work is still confined to trenches and disseminated within academic circles. Studies focusing on the physical impacts of past land-​use tend to be published in environmental sciences/​ archaeology journals (e.g. Geoarchaeology, Quaternary International, The Holocene), while works addressing the implications of archaeological and historical information for present-​day issues appear now almost regularly in theory (anthropological/​archaeological) journals (e.g. American Antiquity, Current Anthropology, World Archaeology). Conversely, archaeological information and data sets concerning these issues are still few and far between when we consider multidisciplinary journals on ecological, development, and policy-​making studies (Table 13.1). Perhaps the most compelling task research is facing concerns the search for multiple ‘applied dimensions’. Several studies across disciplines have been exploring different ways in which research approaches and findings can be made ‘usable’ (Erikson, 1998; Swetnam et al., 1999; Fisher and Feinman, 2005; French, 2010; Sinclair et al., 2010; Stump, 2013; Wainwright, 2008; cf. also Lane, 2015; Tainter, 2000; Flannery, 2006). Building on the Aksum case study and others, two main issues are particularly

Table 13.1 Archaeological data sets presented and/​or discussed in multidisciplinary journals on ecological, development, and policy-​ making studies. The number of articles (No.) published is derived from an online search of ‘archaeology’ in abstracts or as a keyword in each journal listed from the first issue until July 2015 Journal

No.

Issue

Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment

4

(2010) 138/​3–​4; (2012) 146, 156; (2013) 174

Biological Conservation

2

(2013) 166; (2014) 171, 176

Ecology and Society

3

(2010) 15/​1, 15/​3; (2011) 16/​2; (2014) 19/​4

Environmental Impact Assessment Review

2

(1980) 1/​2; (1990) 10

Environmental Research

2

(1990) 53/​1; (2012) 116

Environmental Science and Policy

3

(2001) 4/​4–​5; (2005) 8/​6; (2006) 9/​4

Geoforum

3

(1972) 3/​1; (1996) 27/​2; (2008) 39/​2

Journal of Environmental Management

3

(2009) 90/​3, 90/​9, 90/​11

Journal of Integrative Agriculture

0

Land Use Policy

2

(1987) 4/​3; (2013) 34

World Development

3

(1977) 5/​6–​7; (1995) 23/​6; (2010) 9/​38; (2015) 70

258   Federica Sulas pressing: (1) what types of archaeological data can contribute effectively to debates on the nature and severity of environmental degradation?; and (2) how can these data be used to improve understanding of, and approaches to, sustainable ways of managing natural and cultural resources? Past societal responses to environmental stresses and opportunities were chosen from within a range of cultural and ecological constraints, and the understanding of these responses may inform contemporary ways of dealing with present and future environmental risks. As the notion of a ‘usable past’ is making its way into African research, it is perhaps unsurprising that the first attempts at an applied archaeology targeted indigenous agricultural strategies in regions of long-​known archaeological significance and threatened by environmental, climatic, and social hazards (e.g. Lane, 2011; Stump, 2013; Sutton, 1984). Also, several studies have begun questioning notions of (un)sustainability of subsistence strategies and ecosystem resilience over different time scales (e.g. Stump, 2013). If claims of ecological breakdowns at several ancient sites, such as Aksum, are not supported by recent research findings, the persistence of lifeways and management strategies, as argued by Stump (2013), cannot be taken at face value for resilience. Ecological and cultural systems survive, change, and decline for a variety of reasons that cannot be explained by looking at a particular aspect only. Those who study processes across time are perhaps the best equipped to contribute conceptual and methodological frameworks for addressing pressing issues such as, for example, the responsible use of natural and cultural resources, or adjustments to a changing climate. To do so, the research agenda should be formulated on the basis of explicit prospects of outcomes and implications (cf. Lane, 2015; van der Leeuw and Redman, 2002; Sinclair et al., 2010). This means that whatever the issue to be addressed, researchers must have an understanding of both the political and social contexts as well as the scholarship debate wherein their study is placed. It is hoped that such an approach will help in overseeing the production and use of historical narratives, irrespective of whether these are forwarding ideas of environmental degradation due to inadequate land-​use or promoting traditional, long-​lived practices considered sustainable within a particular environment and culture. So far as the theory goes, applied archaeology is a pie in the sky (cf. Guttmann-​Bond, 2010: 363), a very appealing prospect but quite hard to put into practice. Archaeology remains voiceless where terms are set within policy meetings addressing land development, environmental conservation, and so on and so forth. Mining companies, for example, in South Africa or the United Kingdom are legally bound to submit an environmental (and cultural) impact assessment to obtain permission for mining or quarrying activities. However, this is not the case for other activities as, for example, commercial farms may well divert watercourses and flood a few more hectares across their premises. Similar questions may also arise on the impact of certain land policies which by sponsoring extensive terracing and tree-​planting have reshaped the morphologies of entire regions, even where archaeological sites and historical landscapes are present and, in some cases, protected.

Soils, Plants, and Texts    259

Conclusions: Slowly but Surely In the case of Aksum, the interpolation of environmental data that informs our wider research question of human settlement was drawn from regional scale environmental proxies and context-​specific archaeological records. From a narrative linking Aksum’s urban development to land clearance and irrigation, and consequent environmental degradation, new research findings show that trees were not a common feature of the local landscape either before or during the Aksumite period, and that rainfed farming to some extent contributed to prolonged landscape stability. Even if some aspects of ancient resource management have been investigated, site-​specific studies and informed research are still very rare and important issues, such as terracing and field systems, have yet to be addressed—​albeit they are clearly priorities within the context of a changing landscape. More environmental and archaeological records are needed, particularly now that relevant comparable data sets are being acquired from elsewhere in the region (e.g. Gebru et al., 2009; Terwilliger et al., 2011). The retrieval of landscape information is key to contextualize non-​environmental factors affecting societal decision-​making over time. We need more data on the types and distribution of rural settlements to address the urban development and decline of the Aksumite kingdom, and to begin building regional histories. The paucity of buried landscape records implies that any attempt at modelling synchronous histories of forest expansion/​clearance or the impact of changing rainfall, to mention just two important topics, has to rely on assumptions of environmental and cultural uniformity across vast regions. Archaeology can and must engage with applied research through developing integrative and inclusive approaches. By linking environmental, archaeological, and historical knowledge, archaeologists can investigate more effectively the past, but also work in concert with others to utilize past experiences so as to inform the present.

Acknowledgements The approach and ideas put forward in this chapter owe much to the inspiration and challenges provided over the years by Manuel Arroyo-​Kalin, Karl W. Butzer, Michael DiBlasi, Charles French, Paul Lane, Marco Madella, Innocent Pikirayi, David and Laurel Phillipson, Paul Sinclair, Daryl Stump, and John Sutton. My research in northern Ethiopia is the result of collaboration with several people and I am particularly grateful to Gosh Assefa, Rodolfo Fattovich, Charles French, Laqe Giyorgis, Marco Madella, Andrea Manzo, David and Laurel Phillipson, and Luisa Sernicola. I  also would like to acknowledge the financial support of the Gates Cambridge Trust, the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, and the British Institute in Eastern Africa. My warmest thanks go to Daryl Stump and Christian Isendahl for developing such a challenging project and making me part of it.

260   Federica Sulas

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Soils, Plants, and Texts    261 Flannery, K. V. (2006). On the resilience of anthropological archaeology. Annual Review of Anthropology 35: 1–​13. French, C. (2003). Geoarchaeology in Action: Studies in Soils Micromorphology and Landscape Evolution. London: Routledge. French, C. (2010). People, societies, and landscapes. Science 328(5977): 443–​444. French, C., Sulas, F., and Madella, M. (2009). New geoarchaeological investigations of the valley systems in the Aksum area of northern Ethiopia. Catena 78(3): 218–​233. French, C., Sulas, F., and Petrie, C. (2017). Expanding the research parameters of geoarchaeology: case studies from Aksum in Ethiopia and Haryana in India. Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences 9(8): 1613–1626. Gebru, T., Eshetu, Z., Huang, Y., Woldemariam, T., Strong, N., Umer, M., Diblasi, M. C., and Terwilliger, V. (2009). Holocene palaeovegetation of the Tigray Plateau in northern Ethiopia from charcoal and stable organic isotopic analyses of gully sediments. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 282(1–​4): 67–​80. Goldberg, P., and Macphail, R. I. (2006). Practical and Theoretical Geoarchaeology. Oxford: Blackwell. Guttmann-​Bond, E. (2010). Sustainability out of the past: how archaeology can save the planet. World Archaeology 42(3): 355–​366. Hassan, F. (1978). Sediments in archaeology:  methods and implications for palaeoenvironmental and cultural analysis. Journal of Field Archaeology 5(2): 197–​213. Lamb, H. F., Leng, M. J., Telford, R. J., Ayenew, T., and Umer, M. (2007). Oxygen and carbon isotope composition of authigenic carbonate from an Ethiopian lake: a climate record of the last 2000 years. The Holocene 17(4): 517–​526. Lane, P. (2011). Possibilities for a post-​colonial archaeology in sub-​Saharan Africa: indigenous and useable pasts. World Archaeology 43(1): 7−25. Lane, P. (2015). Archaeology in the age of the Anthropocene: a critical assessment of its scope and societal contributions. Journal of Field Archaeology 40(5): 485–498. Limbrey, S. (1975). Soil Science and Archaeology. London: Academic Press. McCann, J. C. (1995). People of the Plow:  An Agricultural History of Ethiopia, 1800–​1990. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. McCann, J. C. (1999). Green Land, Brown Land, Black Land:  An Environmental History of Africa, 1800–​1990. Oxford: James Currey. Machado, M. J., Pérez-​González, A., and Benito, G. (1998). Palaeoenvironmental changes during the last 4000 yr in the Tigray, northern Ethiopia. Quaternary Research 49(3): 312–​321. McIntosh, R. J., Tainter, J. A., and McIntosh, S. K. (eds) (2000). The Way the Wind Blows: Climate, History, and Human Action. New York: Columbia University Press. Marshall, M. H., Lamb, H. F., Davies, S. J., Leng, M. J., Kubsa, Z., Umer, M., and Bryant, C. (2009). Climatic change in northern Ethiopia during the past 17,000 years: a diatom and stable isotope record from Lake Ashenge. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 279(1–​2): 114–​127. Michels, J. W. (2005). Changing Settlement Patterns in the Aksum-​Yeha Region of Ethiopia: 700 Bc—​Ad 850. BAR International Series 1446. Oxford: Archaeopress. Monneret de Villard, U. (1938). Aksum:  Ricerche di topografia generale. Rome:  Pontificium Institutum Biblicum. Netting, R. M. (1981). Balancing on an Alp:  Ecological Change and Continuity in a Swiss Mountain Community. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

262   Federica Sulas Nyssen, J., Poesen, J., Moeyersons, J., Deckers, J., Haile, M., and Lang, A. (2004). Human impact on the environment in the Ethiopian and Eritrean highlands: a state of the art. Earth Science Reviews 64(3–​4): 273–​320. Petty, A. M., Isendahl, C., Brenkert-​Smith H., Goldstein, D. J., Rhemtulla, J. M., Rahman, S. A., and Kumasi, T. C. (2015). Applying historical ecology to natural resource management institutions: lessons from two case studies of landscape fire management. Global Environmental Change 31: 1–​10. Pikirayi, I. (2001). The Zimbabwe Culture: Origins and Decline of Southern Zambezian States. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press. Phillipson, D. W. (2000). Archaeology at Aksum, Ethiopia, 1993–​7. London: British Institute in Eastern Africa and Society of Antiquaries. Phillipson, D. W. (2012). Foundation of an African Civilisation: Aksum and the Northern Horn, Bc 1000–​Ad 1300. Oxford: James Currey. Piperno, D. R. (2006). Phytoliths. Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press. Rostain, S. (2012). Islands in the Rainforest:  Landscape Management in Pre-​ Columbian Amazonia. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press. Sinclair, P. J.  J., Nordquist, G., Herschend, F., and Isendahl, C. (eds) (2010). The Urban Mind: Cultural and Environmental Dynamics. Uppsala: Uppsala University. Stump, D. (2013). On applied archaeology, indigenous knowledge and usable past. Current Anthropology 54(3): 268–​298. Sulas, F. (2014). Aksum:  water and urbanisation in northern Ethiopia. In T. Tvedt and T. Ostigard (eds), A History of Water, Series 3, Vol. 1. From Jericho to Cities in the Seas: A History of Urbanization and Water Systems. London: I. B. Tauris, 171–​195. Sulas, F., Madella, M., and French, C. (2009). State formation and water-​resource management in the Horn of Africa: the Aksumite Kingdom of the northern Ethiopian highlands. World Archaeology 41(1): 2–​15. Sutton, J. E. G. (1984). Irrigation and soil-​conservation in African agricultural history with a reconsideration of the Inyanga terracing (Zimbabwe) and Engaruka irrigation works (Tanzania). Journal of African History 25(1): 25–​41. Swetnam, T. W., Allen, C. D., and Betancourt, J. L. (1999). Applied historical ecology: using the past to manage for the future. Ecological Applications 9(4): 1189–​1206. Tainter, J. A. (2000). Problem solving: complexity, history and sustainability. Population and Environment 22(1): 3–​41. Terwilliger, V. J., Eshetu, Z., Huang, Y., Alexandre, M., Umer, M., and Gebru, T. (2011). Local variation in climate and land use during the time of the major kingdoms of the Tigray Plateau in Ethiopia and Eritrea. Catena 85(2): 130–​143. van der Leeuw, S. E., and Redman, C. L. (2002). Placing archaeology at the centre of socio-​ natural studies. American Antiquity 67(4): 597–​605. Wainwright, J. (2008). Can modelling enable us to understand the role of humans in landscape evolution. Geoforum 29(2): 659–​674. Widgren, M., and Sutton, J. E.  G. (eds) (2004). Islands of Intensive Agriculture in Eastern Africa: Past & Present. London and Nairobi: The British Institute in Eastern Africa.

Chapter 14

Grappling w i t h Interpreting a nd T e st i ng People–​L and s c a pe Dy nami c s Charles French

Introduction It is often perceived that intensifying human exploitation of the environment has directly led to degradation and landscape alteration on a grand scale. Nonetheless, a combination of palaeoenvironmental, geoarchaeological, and archaeological investigations demonstrates that this is only one component of the story, and that many potential influences and relationships need to be tested. More often than not, landscape change is driven by a combination of underlying factors and is not just caused by human activity. There are a number of very good studies of stable long-​term interactions between people, society, and landscape change, with any one or associated factors including climate being responsible for tipping a system ‘over the edge’ into instability. Yet throughout, people show remarkable powers of adaptation, and many landscapes perceived as marginal regularly exhibit long-​term resilience. Fortunately, the ability of archaeologists to demonstrate both change and possible routes of change—​past, present, and future—​is now much more multidimensional and precise due to the combination of multidisciplinary interrogations of landscape development and the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS)-​based modelling techniques employed at a human landscape scale. When identifying any archaeological question relating to human–​landscape interactions, combined archaeological, geoarchaeological, and palaeoenvironmental investigations are now the norm, rather than just conventional archaeological field survey dealing with finds points in the landscape on its own (Bintliff, 2005). Multidisciplinary investigations of suites of stratigraphic profiles both across and through the buried

264   Charles French landscape are undertaken with as much spatial and dating resolution as possible (French, 2003: 59–​7 1). These are allied with palynological, palaeosol, and erosion sequence analyses and data concerning the past organization of the landscape gleaned from the archaeological record to put forward possible and probable scenarios of landscape change (e.g. French et al., 2007; Howard et al., 2003; Passmore et al., 2011). This chapter will begin by examining a number of more ‘conventional’ studies of desertifying and eroding Holocene landscapes, before going on to consider modelling approaches to interrogating similar types of data from a number of other landscapes, both temperate and semi-​arid.

Case Studies The Aguas Valley of South-​Eastern Spain In the lower Aguas valley of south-​eastern Spain, Holocene landscape investigations used an extensive suite of geoarchaeological, palaeoenvironmental, hydrological, and archaeological methods. These indicated that the advent of metalwork production was associated with intensive wheat cultivation in the later third millennium bc (or Chalcolithic period) which led to the start of widespread colluviation (i.e. hillside soil and sediment erosion) affecting the hill-​slopes and filling the wide floodplain with c.3–​5 metres of eroded soil or fine-​grained alluvium (Castro et al., 1998, 1999, 2000; French, 2007; French et al., 1998). This appears to have been a stop/​start process with lengthy periods of landscape equilibrium punctuated by briefer periods of severe instability (Fig. 14.1). These events were coincident with the beginning of a longer-​term trend of increasing aridity and erosive disruption of the landscape which was associated with an increasing uptake of land for cultivation. The longer-​term aridifying trend has been witnessed in deep-​sea cores and from a number of case study examples from around the Mediterranean fringes (Barker and Mattingly, 1999; Brandt and Thornes, 1996; Brown, 1999, 2008; Leveau et al., 1999). Nonetheless, this agriculturally based proto-​urban society was able to successfully persist in a gradually desertifying landscape through a combination of alternative land management strategies. These included water capture in cisterns, trickle irrigation, using the floodplain margins as a naturally replenishing agricultural production zone throughout the later prehistoric periods, and eventually constructing terrace systems from c.750 ad (Chapman, 1990: 118–​128; Gilman and Thornes, 1985: 177–​178; van der Leeuw, 1993: 12). Such soil conservation measures curtailed erosion processes, retained dwindling moisture levels, and made subsistence agriculture possible until very recently. However, for the past three decades tourism-​related development, water abstraction, and mono-​culture farming and field amalgamation have led to severe surface instability, dramatic gully incision, and soil/​sediment erosion downslope, denuding large areas to a desert-​like state (Fig. 14.2).

Figure 14.1  Alluvial sequence interrupted by at least three incipient soil formation phases beneath the Roman villa site of Cortijo Cadima in the floodplain at the intersection of the Rambla Ancha and the Aguas River. Photograph by C. French.

Figure 14.2  The recently deeply incised and poorly managed valley (on the right) in contrast to the well-​managed and irrigated land (on the left) at Gatas, near Turre in south-​eastern Spain. Photograph by C. French.

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Highland Yemen and Ethiopia In the Dhamar region of highland Yemen, Wilkinson (2005) observed the drying out of earlier Holocene lakes by about 5000 bc and generally increased aridity from 3000 bc coincident with the beginning of settlement expansion into the immediate highland hinterlands and concomitant soil erosion. Associated deep-​sea core derived climatic data suggest that the rainfall pattern was also changing from a more moist, lengthy rainy season in the spring to one of less frequent but more intense winter rainstorms (Wilkinson, 2005). These factors combined to intensify the consequent hillwash and associated overbank floodplain alluviation. In many sequences in the Dhamar region there is evident soil accumulation on basal slopes of valleys in Neolithic times (during the fifth and fourth millennia bc) burying thick, organic-​rich palaeosols (French, 2007) (Fig. 14.3). In contrast, today it is only the more sparse rural population and concentrated subsistence farming in hinterland valleys that are sustainable without massive deep well irrigation schemes such as in the adjacent alluvial floodplain. Across the Red Sea at Aksum in highland Ethiopia a very different sequence of landscape change was observed despite similar climatic and altitudinal factors to the Dhamar region. Recent geoarchaeological studies combined with intensive archaeological field survey have indicated that the major disruption and erosion of this landscape probably occurred within the last few hundred years (French et al., 2009b; Sulas et al., 2009) (Fig. 14.4). This was despite the longer-​term trend of aridification and the intensive settlement and agricultural base associated with the Aksumite Kingdom from c.400 bc to ad 1200 (see Sulas, Chapter 13).

Figure  14.3  Two phases of Neolithic soil development sandwiched by hillwash deposits at Bet al-​Kowmani, the Dhamar region of highland Yemen. Photograph by C. French.

Interpreting and Testing People–Landscape Dynamics    267

Figure 14.4  The modern eroded landscape (on left) versus a well-​managed arable landscape (on the right) in the May Hebay-​Goda valley north of Aksum, highland Ethiopia. Photograph by C. French.

Unfortunately no GIS-​based modelling of landscape change has yet been undertaken in these three particular landscapes, but the repeated sequence recognition, recording, and analysis could have formed the basis of simple models of landscape change through time. In the following examples, interpretative models are generated from chosen data sets derived from particular archaeological, geoarchaeological, and palaeoenvironmental studies in each case. Throughout it is important to stress that the better the layers of data are, the more the model will be representative of actual change in the real world, or at least illustrative of possible changes that could have occurred.

The Troina Valley of North-​Central Sicily In order to develop our interpretative approach to observed past situations it is crucial to be able to repeatedly model landscape change versus variable human and palaeoenvironmental responses. Relatively new computational approaches utilizing two-​ dimensions plus time and three-​dimensional, GIS-​based, computer modelling of past landscapes has begun to both enhance and alter our perception of dynamic people–​ landscape interactions in the archaeological record (Conolly and Lake, 2006; Kwan and Lee, 2004; Wainwright, 2007).

268   Charles French Erosive potential of intensive pastoralism

Erosive potential of subsistence farming

Roman sites Fiume di Sotto di Troina Potential erosion Least potential

Most potential 0

2

4

6

8

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Figure 14.5  Modelled potential erosion in the Troina river valley in north-​central Sicily during the Roman period. Left: For intensive pastoralism being undertaken (after Ayala and French, 2005:  figure 14.8). Right:  For mixed subsistence farming being undertaken (after Ayala and French, 2005: figure 14.7). Source: After Ayala and French, 2005: figure 8

For example, in the Troina valley of north-​central Sicily, the Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE) and GIS modelling (in ArcGIS) were used to investigate the potential impact of Roman agriculture on the erosion record (Ayala, 2004; Ayala and French, 2005; Kirkby et al., 1996; Wischmeier and Smith, 1978). Only one major phase of erosion and sediment accumulation of the four observed in this landscape through geoarchaeological survey was modelled. Overlaying the archaeological survey data for the Roman period on the erosion model shows erosion, burial and site displacement are visible in terms of artefact densities. The mixed agriculture model (Fig. 14.5) suggested that exploitation and erosion would have been more localized and tied to clearance, and therefore would not necessarily have led to large swathes of open land and extensive downslope soil movement. On the other hand, the pastoralist model (Fig. 14.5) suggested that much more widespread clearance for winter and summer pasture land was the major driving force in causing the intensification of soil erosion across the wider landscape. Although neither the model of mixed subsistence agriculture nor that of intensive pastoralism is necessarily an accurate representation of the past, both are plausible scenarios. On balance though, the latter model is certainly a better fit to the geomorphological and soil data recovered in the project for distinctive phases of widespread and major soil erosion and aggradation in the valley bottom.

The Upper Allen Valley of Cranborne Chase, Dorset Another approach is to use dynamic spatial models commonly employed in landscape ecology to test the development of past landscapes. These are being used in an attempt to predict the future effects of current and potential human activities upon ecosystems, and to understand ecosystem behaviour (e.g. Ares et al., 2003), but are only beginning

Interpreting and Testing People–Landscape Dynamics    269 to be applied to palaeoecology (e.g. Heiri et al., 2006). Two strengths of this research framework are that both the dynamics of ecological processes and the effects of spatial adjacency can be represented together (Costanza and Voinov, 2004; Mladenoff and Baker, 1999: 1–​4; Turner et al., 2001: 47–​70). In the specific context of the early Holocene of the upper Allen valley, these two combined strengths enable the interplay to be explored between the tendency for livestock grazing and anthropogenic vegetation clearance to fragment woodland versus the propensity for woodland to regenerate if the land is not over-​grazed. An extensive geoarchaeological project in the upper Allen valley of Cranborne Chase in the chalklands of southern England (French et al., 2007) was used as a test case for the development of a dynamic spatial model (Samarasundera, 2007). As a first stage, this research project created a deposit and palaeovegetational sequence for the Holocene using conventional geoarchaeological survey, aerial mapping, and soil/​molluscan/​palynological analytical work combined with targeted archaeological excavation. The results of these studies suggested that the landscape was already partially open in the Mesolithic and Neolithic, and that an extensive grassland landscape was ubiquitous by the later Neolithic when several large and lengthy monuments were constructed in this landscape, in particular the c.6 km long Dorset Cursus (two parallel earthen banks of possible ceremonial function) and Wyke Down henges (small circular interrupted ditched enclosures). In contrast to expectations, there was minimal soil erosion and valley aggradation in this landscape (Fig. 14.6). This landscape appears to have remained ostensibly as a stable and managed pastoral landscape throughout the Bronze Age (second and earlier first millennia bc), with little change in soil development and almost no hillwash accumulating in the valley bottoms. Hillwash processes associated with intensifying arable agriculture did not really begin until the very late first millennium bc and subsequent Roman period. In order to test the plausibility of the pastoral economy hypothesis for the Neolithic of the study area under different landscape scenarios and different grazing ecology models, a GIS-​based simulation model (using the Spatial Analyst extension within ArcGIS9.0 in SQL syntax) was designed and applied to this landscape (Samarasundera, 2007). This approach utilized well-​dated, repeated, and spatially related archaeological, palaeosol, palynological, and molluscan data of the Neolithic period as well as modern data on livestock feeding impacts on the vegetation, human clearance effects on landscape structure, and ecological succession scenarios to develop a range of landscape use models and comparison of simulation outcomes to compare against the palaeoenvironmental record (Fig. 14.7). The grazing model used with associated meadow/​pasture communities showed that under an ungulate preference for open vegetation communities, feeding can cause major forest fragmentation if livestock densities are sufficient, that is with a rapid rise in livestock population and final stock of 400 livestock units. The tentative conclusion of this study was that livestock grazing and feeding impacts could have caused and maintained forest recession in the earlier Neolithic period. It is a plausible alternative to arable intensification as suggested hitherto, and for which there is little concrete evidence. Moreover, this

270   Charles French Cropmarks Total dry valley zones Total valley floor catchment zone Cursus Roman road River

Oakley Down

Gussage Hill

Study area

0

1

2km

Figure  14.6 Conventional two-​dimensional plot of hillwash and valley alluvial deposits compared to the known archaeological record (seen as cropmarks) of the upper Allen valley, Cranborne Chase, Dorset. Map by R. Palmer.

scenario may have pre-​adapted this downland landscape for its extensive use and exploitation in the later Neolithic and Early Bronze Age. Indeed, research in the nearby Durrington Walls–​Stonehenge River Avon valley landscape of the chalk downlands to the north of Cranborne Chase reveals a similarly extensive grassland-dominated landscape by the later Neolithic (French et al., 2012).

Interpreting and Testing People–Landscape Dynamics    271

250 100

75 20 Livestock number 5 per 100 hectares over 50 years 91–100 81–90 71–80 61–70 51–60 41–50 Degree of 31–40 openness 21–30 11–20 0–10 Late Neolithic henges Bronze Age round barrows and settlement Dorset cursus Bronze Age round barrows

Figure  14.7 A  dynamic archaeological and palaeoenvironmental GIS-​ based simulation model:  an oblique aerial view of the prehistoric sites of the Wyke Down area of Cranborne Chase, Dorset (lower), overlain by a model of arboreal cover in the earlier Neolithic based on pollen data representing 64 per cent open ground (middle) with a superimposed model of associated grazing intensity expressed as livestock numbers over a 50-​year period per 100 hectares required to keep that landscape open (upper). Model figure by D. Redhouse after Samarasundera, 2007: figures 3.103 and 3.105

The Rio Oso and Puerco Valleys of Central New Mexico Other approaches to modelling landscape change have utilized a combination of modelled palynological and climatic evidence set against alternating valley fill and palaeosol stratigraphic records. Two good examples of this type of work have dealt with eroding and desertifying landscapes in central New Mexico: the Rio del Oso (Hall and Periman, 2007; Periman, 2005) and the Rio Puerco (French et al., 2009a). An interdisciplinary research project utilizing historical, geoarchaeological, and palynological data traced the Holocene landscape development of the Rio Del Oso in north-​central New Mexico (Periman, 2005). These data were integrated using a three-​ dimensional GIS model to examine changing past vegetation and landscape conditions. Gradual alluvial deposition took place between c.4000 bc and ad 1768, interrupted by seven cumulic A  horizon palaeosols (or interrupted accumulating organic soils in a floodplain situation) (Holliday, 2004: 91–​94). Subsequently there was c.5–​8 m of gully

272   Charles French incision associated with the arrival of Spanish livestock farming and village development in the seventeenth century ad. Tree and shrub densities from the modern surface pollen plots were used to create three-​dimensional visual reconstructions against a digital elevation model and vegetational data to give three-​dimensional landscape perspective scenes at several time periods to model vegetational patterns and valley form change (Periman, 2005: ­figures 5–​7). For example, Fig. 14.8 shows a model of Rio del Oso vegetation patterns just after the Puebloan period (ad 1500). It was suggested that sedimentation rates had doubled from a mean of 7.65 cm to as high as 16.4 cm per century during the Puebloan period occupation with tree densities reduced dramatically from a variable 20–​50 per cent arboreal pollen to 1 individual respondent from the high forest and fallow forest tree lists. Although the number of informants for high forest is less than the ideal lower limit of sample size, patterns may still be evident in the comparison, to be determined in the cluster analysis below. Of the 29 actual Ka’apor tree terms listed as pertaining to high forest and the 68 names of trees found in fallow forest, there were only 19 shared terms. If one were to use a simple coefficient, such as the Jaccard coefficient, to determine the incidence of shared terms, the number of Ka’apor tree names in common between both high forest and fallow forest is 19/​78 = 24.4 per cent. One can further discern patterns of difference as to the cultural kinds of species listed as most important. The current project is designed to show whether in freelisting with Ka’apor adults, high forests (ka’a-​te) are distinguished from cultural forests (taper), which are where the archaeological sites are found in the area. The reality of taper (fallow forest or cultural forest) in a cognitive sense has been argued previously (Balée, 2010). In both cases of high forest and fallow forest, respondents were asked in their language to identify the tree names they knew pertaining to each forest type. There are several ways to answer any of the questions posed for eliciting freelists, so researchers tried to keep the questions simple, straightforward, and consistent across respondents. Respondents were also not prodded to give more names or to elaborate on names of trees or on terms for kin, and were permitted to stop naming items on a freelist when they felt they were ready; this did not require any prompting and most respondents simply said anjó (‘there is no more’), pe jo (‘there, done’), or upá (‘finished’) at the end of the interview. For trees of the fallow forest, respondents were initially asked Ma’e myra-​ta taper rupi ha ngi nde rekwaha pe (‘What are the trees of the anthropogenic forest to your knowledge?’) with additional synonymous questions in case the respondent seemed confused, such as Ma’e

Freelisting as a Tool for Assessing Cognitive Realities    373 myra-​ta taper rupi xo? which is literally ‘What trees fallow-​through one finds?’ or ‘What trees does one find in the fallow forest?’ The question for high forest was: Ma’e myra-​ta ka’a-​te rupi xo? (‘What trees high forest-​through one finds?’ or ‘What trees does one find in the high forest?’). The question for kinfolk was a little more difficult to render sensibly, partly because of the polysemy of the term for relative (anam, which also means ‘sister’ [female speaking]). It was generally Eme’u ihẽ pe anam-​ta rer awa je’ẽ ha rehe’ (‘Tell me relative “names” [= “terms”] in the Ka’apor language’). The Ka’apor label cultural forest and high forest differently. Not all indigenous groups do that, as pointed out above. That labelling together with the extensional attributes from freelisting can render valuable clues to traditional knowledge of anthropogenic landscapes. In terms of the two different freelists, four palms appear on the fallow forest list and none, except for one only mentioned once, appear on the high forest list (Table 19.1). Two of these palms are cryptogeal in germination (meaning they are adapted to fire, and can germinate underground after a swidden fire has occurred, and can also grow in highly disturbed anthropogenic zones), as with inaja’y (Attalea maripa) and inajayvi (Attalea sp.). In the forests south of the Amazon River, the well-​armed palm Astrocaryum vulgare (tukumã) is ‘more often found in association with babaçu palms [also Attalea sp.] . . . in dense groves of secondary forest’ (Dudley, 1996: 49). The highly desirable (for its fruits) palm Oenocarpus distichus (pinuwa) persists in clearings after burns, though it does not have cryptogeal germination, and it may be facultative with high and fallow forest, though that is not indicated in the freelists discussed herein. All these palms have edible fruits, among other uses. Edible fruits from forest trees are important in the diet of the Ka’apor and many other Amazonian groups. Table 19.2 shows the edible (to the Ka’apor, at least) fruit trees of the fallow forest and those of the high forest, with their respective ranks on the freelists of each. The percentages of edible, dicotyledonous fruit trees from the lists in the two different forests are not remarkably different with 26 of 68 (or 38.2 per cent) of the fallow

Table 19.1 Palms listed in fallow forest (with S rank; n = 23). No palms with a frequency >1 (of which there were 29 valid tree names, in contrast to fallow tree names of which there were 68) were listed in the high forest tree list (n = 11); of the 94 items listed by one or more individuals, only one palm was mentioned one time, pinuwa (Oenocarpus distichus), which appears to be facultative between high forest and fallow Inaja’y (Attalea maripa) r = 7 Tukumã (Astrocaryum vulgare) r = 9 Inajayvi (Attalea sp.) r = 56 Pinuwa (Oenocarpus distichus) r = 67

Table 19.2 Comparison of dicotyledonous fruit trees of fallow forest (n = 23) and high forest (n = 11) with S ranks (r) from freelists. Ka’apor named taxa may occur on one or both lists Fallow forest fruit trees

High forest fruit trees

jeta’i’y (Hymenaea parvifolia) r = 1

yrykywa’y (Manilkara huberi) r = 4

tarapai’y (Hymenaea reticulata) r = 2

akaú’y (Pouteria bilocularis) r = 8

akuxityrywa’y (Pouteria macrophylla) r = 11*

akaju’y (Anacardium spp.) r = 11*

akaú’y (Pouteria bilocularis) r = 15

kanei’y (Protium spp.) r = 12

taperiwa’y (Spondias mombin) r = 16*

pakuri’y (Platonia insignis) r = 15*

mamawiran (Jacaratia spinosa) r = 17

jeta’i’y (Hymenaea parvifolia) r = 18

kakawiran (Theobroma speciosum) r = 18*

tarapai’y (Hymenaea reticulata) r = 20

ynga’y (Inga spp.) r = 19*

paju’ã’y (Couepia spp.) r = 21

japukwai’y (Lecythis pisonis) r = 20

waruwa’y (Tetragastris altissima) r = 22

akaju’y (Anacardium spp.) r = 21*

yngahu’y (Inga capitata, I. cinammonea) r = 27

yrykywa’y (Manilkara huberi) r = 25 merahytawa (Byrsonima sp.) r = 26 xixirupe’y (Inga alba, I. brevialata) r = 29 kypyhu’y (Theobroma grandiflorum) r = 35* jurupepe’y (Dialium guianense) r = 37 yngahu’y (Inga capitata, I. cinammonea) r = 38 kandei’y (Protium spp.) r = 39 paju’ã’y (Couepia spp.) r = 41 paruru’y (Sacoglottis spp.) r = 42 myra’i (Mouriri spp.) r = 44 akuxityrywahu (Pouteria macrocarpa, Pouteria sect. Franchetella sp. 1) r = 48 kupapa’y (Pouteria spp.) r = 51 pakuri’y (Platonia insignis) r = 53* pakurisõsõ’y (Rheedia spp.) r = 61 pyky’a’y (Caryocar villosum) r = 62* kujeri’y (Lacmellea aculeata; Ambelania acida) r = 66 *  Major fruit tree species (one that people make a specific point to go to in order to gather its fruits).

Freelisting as a Tool for Assessing Cognitive Realities    375 trees exclusive of palms and 10 of 29 (or 34.5 per cent) of high forest trees. If palms are included, and all on the fallow list are edible, then the total number of fruit trees in the fallow is 31 of 68 (or 45.6 per cent) compared to 34.5 per cent in the high forest. What is probably more indicative of the orchard-​like nature of the fallow forest—​in contrast to the high forest—​concerns major fruit tree species. We define major fruit tree species as ones that people actually make intentional expeditions to for the purpose of gathering and returning to the village. These species are indicated separately in the two columns in Table 19.2. They include eight well-​known, big-​seeded, juicy fruits like taperebá or cajá in Brazilian Portuguese (taperiwa’y; where taper = fallow, iwa = fruit, and ‘y = tree, so the term literally means ‘fruit tree of the fallow forest’ [Spondias mombin]); cupuaçu (kypyhu’y; Theobroma grandiflorum, in the chocolate genus and one of the most popular fruits in Amazonia), and piquiá (pyky’a’y; Caryocar villosum), among others. There are only two in the high forest—​akaju’y (several wild cashew species, facultative to old fallow, and used more for making a ceremonial brew once a year or less frequently for infant naming ceremonies) and pakuri’y (the bacuri tree, one of the most important juicy fruits in the Amazon [Clement, 2006: 172]), though it seems that dominance of the tree (which is reflected in the term ‘bacuri groves’—​that is, pakuri-​ty) is only established in old fallow forests, at least in the Ka’apor habitat (Balée, 1994: 144). In other words, fallow forests, in terms of indigenous perception, include a substantial number of palms and important dicotyledonous fruit trees; high forests are significantly different in these regards, as we demonstrate further below. Such knowledge derived from freelisting—​where a distinction between high forest and old fallow forest is made—​could be used to predict areas of ancient human settlement and resource management, of intrinsic interest to archaeology and historical ecology.

Cluster Analysis of Fallow and High Forest Tree Freelists Here we employ a cluster measure (C) to assess the strength of any semantic category distinctions in these Ka’apor freelists. When freelists are elicited from respondents, similar items are often listed together in sequence, forming adjacent ‘runs’ or ‘clusters’ of related items. To illustrate, in a study of American cognition of animal domains (Nolan and Robbins, 2001), Midwestern US college students were asked to freelist the names of as many fish as possible in the course of three minutes. Respondents generally listed freshwater fish early in their lists, in distinct ‘clusters’ (such as, trout, bass, and bluegill), followed by smaller clusters of ‘marine fish’ (including tuna, salmon, and mackerel), ‘aquaria fishes’ (guppies and angelfish), and ‘inedible fishes’ (suckers, gars, and others). Recalling similar items in sequence is known as ‘semantic clustering’ in freelisting and free-​recall tasks. Clustering has been observed in a number of studies on memory and information retrieval (e.g. Henley, 1969; Hutchinson, 1983; Nolan, 2007; Robbins and

376    William Balée and Justin Nolan Nolan, 2000; also see Bousfield, 1953). Measuring semantic clusters in freelisting is first assessed by identifying the constituent subsets, or subgroups of related items, within cultural domains (e.g. ‘freshwater fishes’, ‘fruit trees,’ ‘matrilineal relatives’, ‘illnesses of old age’). These may be identified by researchers, though not immediately apparent to respondents themselves. When cluster measures are applied, the degree of clustering in freelisting can be determined for each subset or category on each respondent’s freelist, as well as for the freelist overall. To accomplish this, the degree of adjacency between items of the same subset can be established by determining the inter-​item ‘distances’ within subsets on freelists (e.g. Frankel and Cole, 1971). Put another way, when all items of given subsets are adjacent on a respondent’s freelist, maximal subset clustering is said to occur. Accordingly, when items from different subsets are interspersed (or evenly distributed) on freelists, minimal semantic clustering is observed. Clustering is therefore a reliable indicator of the cognitive reality of a semantic domain. Although a number of measures for semantic clustering are available (including Frankel and Cole, 1971; Romney et al., 1993), we here apply Robbins and Nolan’s (2000) C cluster measure in order to assess semantic clustering within subsets of freelisted items in the present domain analyses among the Ka’apor. Measuring semantic clustering, as detailed below in the freelists of kin terms, can prove valuable to archaeologists, historical ecologists, and environmental historians, or any others interested in how human–​ecological models are patterned cognitively, in the minds and lives of respondents whose knowledge systems we seek to elicit and convey in the ethnographic process. Strong cluster scores for any designated subset generally indicate high cognitive and cultural salience. They denote conservative areas of cognitive reality that have the potential to illuminate not only phenomena of the present, but long-​lived phenomena from the past that have persisted into the present, and are evidenced in patterns of free recall by living respondents. As such, significant clustering scores render vital and necessary insights for historical ecologists, cognitive anthropologists, cognitive archaeologists, and any others deploying freelisting in exploratory cultural domain research. Here we apply the C measure to fallow tree types, forest tree types, and kin terms, in an effort to illustrate the use value of freelisting in the investigation of human–​ecological interactions. To accomplish this, freelisted items were coded. The freelists of fallow and forest trees were coded as ‘fruit trees’ or ‘non-​fruit trees’; kin terms were coded into one of three subsets: ‘lineal’, ‘collateral’, and ‘affinal’, for reasons to be discussed below. The number of subset runs was established on each list as detailed in the example calculations to follow. The C measure provides a ratio of the difference between the minimum and observed semantic subset clustering to the difference between the minimum and the maximum semantic subset clustering, or

C = min − obs / min − max = N − R / N − 1

Freelisting as a Tool for Assessing Cognitive Realities    377 where N is the number of items in the semantic subset and R is the number of runs, and where 0 ≤ C ≤ 1. Note that one may also compute an overall composite C score, a measure of the universal set or total list clustering as

C = N − R/N − K

where N is the number of items in the list (or universal set), R is the number of runs in the list, and K is the number of semantic subsets, and 0 ≤ C ≤ 1.

Clustering in the Fallow Forest and High Forest Freelists The C score was applied to the fallow tree freelists (n = 23) and the high forest freelists (n = 11) (Appendices 1 and 2) in an effort to approximate the cognitive cohesiveness of fruit trees as a semantic subset within the domains of fallow and forest trees overall. Table 19.3 illustrates an example of a C score computation for fruit trees listed in a sample freelist of fallow tree types. In the example above, six fruit trees (N) were listed within three total runs (R) on the list. Using the formula above, a C score of 0.6 is found for fruit trees on the list. For the total sample of fallow forest freelists, the mean C for fruiting trees was actually 0.688. Assuming that C is normally distributed, with mean M = 0.5 and standard error = square root [1/​(4N)], the standardized normal deviate z can be calculated. In the case of fruit trees listed among the fallow tree lists, z = 1.803 (p = 0.035). In other words, when ‘fallow forest trees’ are elicited, fruiting trees are listed in sequence, clustering together significantly in freelists. Put another way, they occur in statistically significant ‘runs’ in freelists (and are not interspersed at random). However, for the total sample of ‘high forest’ tree types, a mean C of only 0.319 was found, indicating very moderate and non-​significant clustering for fruit trees on these lists. These results collectively suggest that fruiting trees are more meaningful, relevant, salient, and numerous within fallow forests, and considerably less so within high forests. It also means that anthropogenic forests are perceived locally by the Ka’apor as orchards (Balée, 2003, 2010).

Clustering in the Kin Term Freelists To check whether clustering of this sort occurs or not in another very different—​yet to the Ka’apor very familiar—​kind of freelist, kin terms were collected with many of the same Ka’apor respondents. Kin term data were collected from 22 respondents in the

378    William Balée and Justin Nolan Table 19.3 Example of cluster calculation of fruit trees in a freelist of fallow tree types. Based on the calculation: C(fruit trees) = N –​ R /​ N –​ 1 = 6 –​3 /​6 –​1 = 3 /​5 = 0.6 = C(fruit trees) = 0.6 List order of tree

Tree

Category

Taxon

1

tarapai’y

fruit tree

Hymenaea reticulata

2

pina’y

non-​fruit tree

Duguetia spp.

3

kakawiran

fruit tree

Theobroma speciosum

4

akaú’y

fruit tree

Pouteria bilocularis

5

pytyminem

non-​fruit tree

Couratari oblongifolia

6

parawa’y

non-​fruit tree

Eschweilera coriacea

7

yrary

non-​fruit tree

Cedrela fissilis

8

tajy

non-​fruit tree

Handroanthus impetiginosus

9

tajypo

non-​fruit tree

Handroanthus spp.

10

xixirupe’y

fruit tree

Inga alba, I. brevialata

11

kypyhu’y

fruit tree

Theobroma grandiflorum

12

akuxityrywa’y

fruit tree

Pouteria macrocarpa, Pouteria sect. Franchetella sp. 1

present study. For each freelist of kin terms, C was calculated for all subsets (lineal, collateral, and affinal relatives) represented on the lists (Table 19.4, Appendix 3). In addition, the overall composite C was computed to determine the total semantic subset clustering. Results of our semantic clustering calculations indicate statistically significant mean subset clustering of lineal relatives (C = 0.787, p < 0.001), but not for collateral relatives (C = 0.324, not significant) or affinal relatives (C = 0.177, n.s.). Although in the recent past Ka’apor kinship terms conformed to a classificatory model (e.g. Ribeiro, 1996) wherein collateral relatives (such as mother’s sister, father’s brother) were lumped with lineal relatives (so, mother’s sister = mother and father’s brother = father), increasingly people are making distinctions such as ‘my other father’ (amu-​hẽ-​pai; literally, as a morpheme-​by-​morpheme gloss, ‘other-​my-​father’), which could refer to father’s brother or father’s male parallel cousin, but not ‘father’ (pai) per se. A parallel cousin is a child of one’s mother’s sister or one’s father’s brother, or both. It contrasts with cross-​cousin, the child of one’s mother’s brother or one’s father’s sister, or both. For the present analysis, we employ the approximate glosses of the various kin terms as given in Table 19.4. There was also a time when collaterals were lumped with affinal relatives (in a Dravidian type of classificatory nomenclature), which is likewise changing for it is not salient at present among the current population living in the village of Xiepihun (Balée, 2014), where the research for this chapter was conducted. Dravidian nomenclatures tend to equate some or all affines (i.e. in-​laws) with consanguines (i.e. ‘blood’ relatives); for example, one’s father-​in-​law might be referred to by the same term as one’s uncle,

Freelisting as a Tool for Assessing Cognitive Realities    379 Table 19.4 Ka’apor kin terms from Appendix 3, with rank (m.s. = male speaker; f.s. = female speaker; if m.s. or f.s. is not indicated the term is the same for both sexes) Lineal terms: 1. hẽjari (grandmother), 2. hẽmai (mother), 3. hẽramũi (grandfather), 4. hẽpai (father), 5. hẽanam (sister, f.s.), 6. hẽkywyr (brother, f.s.), 7. hẽmu (brother, m.s.), 8. hẽrenyr (sister, m.s.), 9. hẽra’yr (son, m.s.), 10. hẽrajyr (daughter, m.s.), 14. hẽrainõ (grandson/​grandchild), 17. hẽmemyr (child, f.s.), 21. hẽramũipai (great grandfather), 30. hẽpaimai (father’s mother), 34. hẽkywyranam (my brother’s sister, f.s.; possibly: my brother’s sister, when both the brother and the sister had a different mother or father from ego’s), 35. hẽrajyrkywyr (my daughter’s brother; possibly: my daughter’s brother who had a different mother from my daughter), 36. hẽrajyrmemyr (my daughter’s child) Collateral terms: 11. amuhẽjari (great aunt), 12. amuhẽpai (father’s parallel cousin or brother), 13. amuhẽmai (mother’s parallel cousin or sister), 15. amuhẽramui (grandfather’s or grandmother’s brother or parallel cousin), 16. hẽjarianam (grandmother’s sister or parallel cousin), 19. amuhẽkywyr (male parallel cousin, f.s.), 20. amuhẽanam (female parallel cousin, f.s.), 22. amurerenyr (female parallel cousin, m.s.), 23. amuhẽmu (male parallel cousin, m.s.), 24. hẽrenyrmembyr (sister’s daughter, m.s.), 25. hẽmaianam (my mother’s sister), 26. hẽmura’yr (brother’s son, m.s.), 27. hẽkywyrra’yr (brother’s son, f.s.), 28. hẽarikywyr (grandmother’s brother), 29. hẽkywyrrajyr (brothers daughter, f.s.), 32. hẽpaimu (father’s brother), 33. amuhẽraino (my grandniece/​nephew), 37. hẽramũianam (grandfather’s relative), 38. hẽanamemyr (sister’s child, f.s.), 39. hẽramũimu (grandfather’s brother), 40. hẽjarimemyr (my grandmother’s child; possibly: my grandmother’s child who is a distant collateral relative to ego), 42. amuhẽmura’yr (male parallel cousin’s son, m.s.), 43. amuhẽrajyr (brother’s or male parallel cousin’s daughter, m.s.), 44. amuhẽrenyrmemyr (female parallel cousin’s child, m.s.), 48. hẽramuirenyr (grandfather’s sister) Affinal terms: 18. hẽrakehar (wife, m.s.), 31. hẽmemyrekohar (my child’s spouse, f.s.), 41. hẽsawa’e (husband, f.s.)

or mother’s brother. People traditionally have a preference for cross-​cousin marriage, which would be easily reconciled with a Dravidianate system; it can also exist to some extent side-​by-​side, in principle, with a Sudanese (or extremely descriptive) type of nomenclature. In classic Sudanese, each individual’s relative is specifically designated differently from all others. So instead of a term like ‘aunt’, Sudanese labels mother’s sister, father’s sister, father’s brother’s wife, and mother’s brother’s wife by four unique, different terms. We have not in this analysis compared the two nomenclatures, Dravidian and Sudanese. Terms that traditionally merged affinal with consanguineal relatives (such as tutyr = mother’s brother = father-​in-​law) appeared on a freelist, but were only mentioned once by one respondent. Therefore, they do not qualify at this point as shared and culturally significant in the present moment of Ka’apor kinship terminology. That is, Ka’apor kinship has increasingly been developing a Sudanese (or bifurcate collateral) aspect that is evident in these freelists. There has also been some borrowing of Portuguese or Língua Geral (an Amazonian creole) in Ka’apor kinship terms, but this borrowing appears to be of ancient origin (Balée, 1984), at least since 1928 (when peaceful relations were established with surrounding Luso-​Brazilian society) and probably much earlier than that. The possible reasons for this transition in kinship terminology, which appears to be ongoing, will be reserved for discussion elsewhere.

380    William Balée and Justin Nolan Taken together, significant kin group clustering was observed for the sample overall (C  =  0.811, p < 0.001; see Robbins and Nolan [2000] for additional information on obtaining the exact probability for any given mean C score computation). For the Ka’apor, lineal relatives appear to have particularly strong cultural relevancy, which substantiates ethnographic observations about inter-​generational land use patterns and transmission of cultural knowledge of Ka’apor landscapes (see Table 19.5 for an example of cluster calculations from a sample list). It is also consonant with a system in which everyone is a ‘relative’ (another meaning of the term ‘anam’, which can also denote ‘sister’ [female speaking] [Balée, 1984]) and hence, whether one marries them or not, they will have a very specific linkage to one or more of one’s relatives (i.e. ego’s relatives—​from whose reference point one evaluates relatedness to others), however distant. The term anam is part of a larger cosmology that holds all Ka’apor to be related consanguineally in some general way, meaning that all of them can be therefore described using the language. That linkage to ego’s distant relatives can be expressed in a Sudanese, or bifurcate-​collateral nomenclature, where every alter or kin type, in principle, has a specific indigenous label. Perhaps for that reason, the data here reveal significant cognitive privileging of what we are calling lineal kin among the Ka’apor. It can be demonstrated, moreover, that subsets of trees from fallow forests and kin terms, which

Table 19.5 Calculating kin term category clustering and overall clustering on a freelist. C(lineal) = N –​ R /​ N –​1 = 12 –​3/​12 –​1 = 9 /​11 = 0.818; C(collateral) = N –​ R /​ N –​1 = 3 –​2 /​3 –​1 = 1/​2 = 0.50; and C(overall) = N –​ R /​ N –​ K = 15 –​5 /​15 –​2 = 10 /​13 = 0.769 List order of relatives

Kin term

Category

1

hẽjari

lineal

2

hẽmai

lineal

3

hẽmu

lineal

4

hẽmupai

collateral

5

hẽrenyr

lineal

6

hẽrenyrmai

lineal

7

hẽmumai

lineal

8

hẽjarimai

lineal

9

amuhẽmu

collateral

10

amuhẽrenyr

collateral

11

hẽrainõ

lineal

12

hẽrajyr

lineal

13

hẽra’yr

lineal

14

hẽpaimai

lineal

15

hẽarikywyr

lineal

Freelisting as a Tool for Assessing Cognitive Realities    381 are both finite domains, show patterns of clustering of terms that in both cases instantiate strongly, in a statistical sense, cognitive reality.

Conclusion Assessing the strength of association among related words retrieved successively in freelisting provides generative insights and meaningful interpretations of data sets. When multiple cultural domains are considered together, a comprehensive ethnographic portrait becomes increasingly visible. Assessing clustering in freelists, as we have shown here, provides relevant discoveries about the cognitive salience of the very categories that comprise the cultural models navigated in the daily lives of the Ka’apor. Understanding how people think about their worlds through semantic analyses can effectively extend efforts to reconstruct historical–​ecological interactivity when ethnographic data lend themselves accordingly. Such methods can supply a replicable window into past landscape transformations with which people live and interact today.

Appendix 1 Freelist of trees of the old fallow with frequency >1 (n = 23), ranked by frequency Rank

Ka’apor tree name

Frequency

% occurrences

Avg. rank

Smith’s S

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

jeta’i’y tarapai’y parawa’y tajy ximoran tajypõ inaja’y akuxityrywa’y tareka’y para’y tukumã pina’y jaxiamyr’y pywa’y akaú’y kakawiran ynga’y japukwai’y akaju’y taperiwa’y pytyminem

15 14 14 13 11 10 9 7 7 7 7 6 6 6 6 5 5 5 5 5 4

65 61 61 57 48 43 39 30 30 30 30 26 26 26 26 22 22 22 22 22 17

6.333 6.429 5.929 5.000 7.273 7.600 9.778 11.429 7.286 7.714 12.286 6.667 8.000 9.333 10.667 6.400 13.000 11.400 7.200 4.400 10.250

0.431 0.418 0.417 0.419 0.287 0.272 0.199 0.133 0.193 0.195 0.137 0.160 0.143 0.137 0.136 0.144 0.086 0.102 0.111 0.173 0.075

382    William Balée and Justin Nolan

Rank

Ka’apor tree name

22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

tamaran’y mamawiran kumaru’y ywyse’y merahytawa yrykywa’y ama’y kupa’y kypyhu’y kanei’y karãtu’ã’y paruru’y paju’ã’y patuwa’y yngahu’y tekwerypihun jurupepe’y yraki’ĩ’y xixirupe’y myra’i kyky’y kururu’y jindiro’y xamato’y pakuri’y ajuwa’y yrairupe’y paraku’y amangaputyr’y kupapa’y tekwery ama’yãtã axiwa’y taxi’y ajãkywa’y tajytawa kujeri’y pytymy jeju’y apa’y pyky’a’y inaja’yyvi pu’ypirang’y marato’y pakurisõsõ’y pinuwa akuxityrywahu

Frequency 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2

% occurrences

Avg. rank

Smith’s S

17 17 17 17 17 17 17 13 13 13 13 13 13 13 13 13 13 13 13 13 13 13 13 13 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9

18.500 7.750 4.000 9.250 13.000 9.250 10.000 5.333 9.667 5.333 12.667 10.667 7.000 16.667 16.333 11.000 14.333 13.000 12.333 4.333 7.000 12.667 7.000 8.333 14.000 10.000 16.000 10.500 16.500 11.000 15.000 11.500 10.500 9.000 12.500 11.000 12.500 11.000 10.500 13.000 14.000 9.500 13.000 10.000 24.000 14.000 20.000

0.028 0.116 0.145 0.098 0.084 0.099 0.112 0.098 0.061 0.078 0.053 0.086 0.101 0.023 0.036 0.058 0.068 0.031 0.038 0.106 0.071 0.056 0.083 0.075 0.032 0.051 0.014 0.030 0.032 0.051 0.020 0.047 0.048 0.059 0.043 0.048 0.048 0.011 0.045 0.041 0.019 0.036 0.053 0.049 0.005 0.026 0.024

ANTHROPAC 4.983/​X Copyright 1985–​2002 by Analytic Technologies.

Freelisting as a Tool for Assessing Cognitive Realities    383

Appendix 2 Freelist of trees of the high forest with frequency >1 (n = 11), ranked by frequency Rank

Ka’apor tree name

Frequency

% occurrences

Avg. rank

Smith’s S

1

parawa’y

9

82

4.000

0.688

2

jaxiamyr

5

45

4.600

0.347

3

tajy

5

45

2.200

0.386

4

yrykywa’y

4

36

3.000

0.305

5

pytyminem

4

36

8.000

0.244

6

tajypõ

4

36

4.750

0.236

7

pytymyte

4

36

8.000

0.252

8

akaú’y

3

27

15.333

0.071

9

kyky’y

3

27

6.000

0.204

10

ararakã’y

3

27

7.000

0.156

11

akaju’y

3

27

8.667

0.183

12

kanei’y

3

27

12.667

0.132

13

irayrupe’y

3

27

15.000

0.075

14

pani’y

3

27

6.667

0.206

15

pakuri’y

3

27

5.000

0.180

16

yrary

2

18

15.000

0.071

17

tareka’y

2

18

12.000

0.094

18

jeta’i’y

2

18

11.500

0.045

19

parawa’ywi

2

18

13.000

0.066

20

tarapai’y

2

18

11.000

0.099

21

paju’ã’y

2

18

4.000

0.143

22

waruwa’y

2

18

17.000

0.055

23

kupi’i’y

2

18

15.000

0.051

24

kupa’y

2

18

18.500

0.010

25

sekatãi’y

2

18

11.500

0.097

26

karaiperan’y

2

18

8.000

0.091

27

yngahu’y

2

18

10.500

0.091

28

pina’yhu

2

18

13.500

0.063

29

taxi’y

2

18

14.000

0.059

384    William Balée and Justin Nolan

Appendix 3 Freelist of Ka’apor kin terms with frequency >1 (n = 22), ranked by frequency Rank 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

Ka’apor kin term

Frequency

% occurrences

Avg. rank

Smith’s S

hẽjari

17

77

5.824

0.510

hẽmai hẽramũi hẽpai hẽanam hẽkywyr hẽmu hẽrenyr hẽra’yr hẽrajyr amuhẽari amuhẽpai amuhẽmai hẽrainõ amuhẽramũi hẽjarianam hẽmemyr hẽrakehar amuhẽkywyr amuhẽanam hẽramũipai amuhẽrenyr amuhẽmu hẽrenyrmemyr hẽmaianam hẽmura’yr hẽkywyrra’yr hẽarikywyr hẽkywyrrajyr hẽpaimai hẽmemyrrekohar hẽpaimu amuhẽrainõ hẽkywyranam hẽrajyrkywyr hẽrajyrmemyr hẽramũianam hẽanammemyr hẽramũimu hẽjarimemyr

17 17 15 12 10 9 9 7 7 6 6 6 6 5 5 5 5 4 4 4 4 4 4 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 2 2 2 2 2 2

77 77 68 55 45 41 41 32 32 27 27 27 27 23 23 23 23 18 18 18 18 18 18 14 14 14 14 14 14 14 14 14 14 9 9 9 9 9 9

3.824 6.353 3.133 6.417 5.800 5.444 7.000 9.143 11.000 11.833 8.500 8.833 12.667 10.600 10.600 7.400 12.400 8.750 7.750 5.750 14.750 10.750 9.500 6.000 12.667 5.333 17.667 6.000 9.667 9.667 9.333 13.667 14.000 16.000 10.000 9.500 4.500 18.500 11.000

0.620 0.474 0.579 0.338 0.314 0.301 0.266 0.150 0.114 0.074 0.138 0.130 0.075 0.088 0.108 0.108 0.071 0.073 0.116 0.130 0.055 0.091 0.104 0.096 0.059 0.089 0.021 0.095 0.046 0.075 0.067 0.029 0.045 0.030 0.036 0.050 0.075 0.021 0.027

Freelisting as a Tool for Assessing Cognitive Realities    385

Rank

Ka’apor kin term

41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48

hẽsawa’e amuhẽmura’yr amuhẽrajyr amuhẽrenyrmemyr hẽmemyrsawa’e hẽruwajar amuhẽmemyr hẽramũirenyr

Frequency 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2

% occurrences 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9

Avg. rank

Smith’s S

17.500 14.000 5.000 15.000 12.000 8.000 10.000 16.000

0.022 0.027 0.070 0.022 0.032 0.051 0.041 0.027

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PA RT   I I I REVIVING PAST TECHNOLO GIES

I n t rodu ction Daryl Stump and Christian Isendahl

Although the term ‘applied archaeology’ has been used to cover a variety of approaches, the authors in this section tend to employ the term in the way it was first employed by Clark Erickson (1992), i.e. in reference to the potential benefits of reusing abandoned technologies, or of extending the use of technologies or practices that are in the process of falling into disuse. Indeed, four chapters in this section (Cooper and Duncan, Kendall and Drew, Herrera, and Spriggs) make direct reference to Erickson’s ground-​breaking attempts in the 1980s to reconstruct and reuse agricultural raised fields in highland Peru, the majority of which date to the first millennium AD. Herrera presents a brief history of Erickson’s project and of those elsewhere in Peru and Bolivia that drew inspiration from it, while chapters by Spriggs and by Kendall and Drew outline the histories of projects with similar aims: Kendall and Drew offering insights from the work of the Cusichaca Trust to renovate and reuse Inca and pre-​Inca agricultural terraces and irrigation channels in Peru, whereas Spriggs summarizes his own attempts to re-​establish irrigated taro faming on Aneityum Island in the South Pacific. The chapter by Caponetti, in contrast, makes no reference to this earlier work in applied archaeology but instead offers the crucial perspective of a farmer who is currently using ancient irrigation structures on his own land, in this case an Etruscan tunnel connected to an aquifer that has supplied water to the author’s community for over 2,500 years. The chapters thus present important insights resulting from the successes and failures of these projects, with three (Caponetti, Kendall and Drew, and Spriggs) written by people who have actually tried to put these ideas into practice. Taken together all five chapters highlight issues that all previous attempts to revive or extend technologies have had to deal with. At the risk of overly simplifying these issues, these broad themes can be loosely categorized as (1) the need for active and informed community involvement if these projects are to be a success; (2) the recognition that technologies are or become socially embedded, making it difficult to understand or even maintain them without knowledge of these social, cultural, or economic relationships;

392    Daryl Stump and Christian Isendahl (3) that it is necessary to think about the scales (both in terms of time and place) at which former or current resource-​use strategies operated or continue to operate; (4) that the ‘revival’ of a resource-​use strategy must be seen as a new approach, not simply as the recreation of an old one; and (5) that someone—​and certainly not necessarily the person or group that initiated the project—​needs to decide what the developmental aims of the intervention actually are, for example whether it is designed to produce a saleable surplus and thus improve livelihoods by increasing monetary wealth, or whether production and surpluses are for subsistence and are thus intended to increase food security. The first of these—​the need for community ‘buy in’—​might seem blindingly obvious (particularly to professional development practitioners) but as Herrera points out projects continue to be initiated without community consultation, either in terms of what the project is designed to do, or in terms of whether the approach to be applied is suitable for all locations. This can lead to multiple problems, with the chapters by Spriggs and by Kendall and Drew noting that the communities they worked with were understandably reluctant to commit without guarantees of entitlements to land, while Herrera notes that some projects in the Andes took a ‘one size fits all’ approach to constructing raised fields regardless of local soil or climatic conditions (see also Renard et al., 2012), and in several cases used mechanical excavators to construct mere facsimiles of raised fields that inverted the sub-​and topsoils, restricting agricultural productively as a consequence. This need for commitment by the local community is also highlighted by Kendall and Drew who note that the revival of technologies is often impossible without the simultaneous revival or replacement of systems that organize the labour needed to operate and maintain these technologies; a fact highlighted as a cause of project failures by Herrera, and succinctly illustrated in the history of the Cusichaca Trust when it became clear that the traditional system of reciprocal labour exchanges and communal maintenance days had fallen into disuse. Systems that perform these functions need to be instituted, but this does not mean that they should necessarily attempt to mimic earlier systems, not least because, as Spriggs notes, socially embedded technologies can also become enmeshed in cultural or religious taboos that may be impossible to recreate or might conflict with the aims of the developmental initiative (see also Sheridan, 2002). Perhaps the most important lesson to be drawn from these chapters is that these systems—​both the technologies themselves and the social and economic structures that support them—​can and should be allowed to evolve, with both Herrera and Spriggs reporting that local communities have successfully revived agricultural technologies long after external attempts to recreate them had failed. ‘Rehabilitated’ technologies are not living museums, which means that participants should be free to choose whether projects should be subsistence or market oriented, and indeed individuals are likely to adapt their strategies between these two extremes as conditions change and opportunities arise. For those of us who study human history in one form or another this recognition that change and adaption is inevitable is something of a truism, so it should seem foolish to contribute to developmental initiatives that ‘fetishize’ market production (to use the term preferred by Herrera), or which ignore the potential benefits of combining old and new technologies: for which see Caponetti’s account of connecting solar-​powered

Reviving Past Technologies     393 pumps to a 2,000-​year-​old water tunnel and, conversely, Kendall and Drew’s early rejection of using modern concrete within reconstructed irrigation channels. Recognizing that systems change through time also means appreciating that systems might be designed to operate over time scales that are not immediately obvious. Herrera, for example, notes that some raised field rehabilitation projects in South America failed to factor in the need for periodic fallowing, while Cooper and Duncan argue that house design in the Caribbean factored in the devastating effects of hurricanes that might hit a particular community only once in a decade. As importantly, just as temporal scales need to be understood, so do spatial scales, with Herrera critiquing some rehabilitation initiatives for focusing on individual fields or communities rather than on entire watersheds, and with Cooper and Duncan noting that a disruption in settlement patterns in the Caribbean following European colonization meant that local communities became focused on their immediate surroundings and thus less connected to a wide range of resources and to neighbouring communities that could assist them in times of crisis. Spriggs makes a similar point, concluding that his first attempt to kick-​start commercial taro production on Aneityum Island failed because the project did not originally ascertain whether a market existed for the crops produced, or whether the island was sufficiently connected to the markets that did exist. This reminds us that demand for commodities fluctuates (as does the desirability of particular lifestyles), and that the factors influencing these changes may take place at national, regional, or even global scales. This point is aptly made by Kendall and Drew who note that in the 1990s the threat posed by Sendero Luminoso terrorists faded and thus created opportunities for local communities to benefit from a growth in tourism, thereby decreasing the need for, and attraction of, labour-​intensive terraced and irrigated agriculture. Thinking on a global scale also raises the issue of climate change and its local impacts; a concern highlighted in one form or another by all the authors in this section. Although Herrera is right to note that this concern has sometimes been used somewhat rhetorically to justify developmental interventions, Spriggs nevertheless ends his chapter with the personal observation that decreasing rainfall levels and an increase in destructive storms is now more of a threat to the ‘traditional’ agriculture on Aneityum Island than the loss of the agricultural knowledge that his original project was designed to redress. Ultimately, particular local technologies—​whether in existence for centuries, or revived and adapted after a period of abandonment—​may prove unsustainable in the face of future climate change, but the chapters in this section discuss important issues of scale, connectedness, and adaptation that were evidently relevant to communities in the past, and will remain so in the future.

References Erickson, C. L. (1992). Archaeology’s potential contribution to the future. Journal of the Steward Anthropological Society 20: 1–​16.

394    Daryl Stump and Christian Isendahl Renard, D., Iriate, J., Birk, J. J., Rostain, S., Glaser, B., and McKey, D. (2012). Ecological engineers ahead of their time: the functioning of pre-​Columbian raised-​field agriculture and its potential contributions to sustainability today. Ecological Engineering 45: 30–​44. Sheridan, M. J. (2002). An irrigation intake is like a uterus:  culture and agriculture in precolonial North Pare, Tanzania. American Anthropologist 104(1): 79–​92.

Chapter 20

A 1980 At te mp t at Reviving Anc i e nt Irrig ation Prac t i c e s i n the Pac i fi c Rationale, Failure, and Success Matthew Spriggs

A Young Man’s Quest As a committed Marxist, the archaeologist V. Gordon Childe (1892–​1957) was unsettled towards the end of his life by the seeming lack of relevance of archaeological practice to solving the world’s problems: Pure contemplation is no more creative activity than is the cyclical movement of a wheel. Knowledge is not to be contemplated but to guide action. That is not to say that the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, pure science, is futile or meaningless. Major scientific discoveries of the greatest practical utility were indubitably made for precisely that motive without any reference to possible use. Yet the practical results, however long delayed, provide the sole conclusive test of the truth of the discovery, the proof that it is a contribution to knowledge and not just superstition . . . I am an archaeologist and devote my time to trying to gather information about the behaviour of men long since dead. I like doing this and my society pays me quite well for doing it. Yet neither I nor society can see any immediate practical applications for the information I gather; we are indeed quite sure that it will not increase the production of bombs or butter. Still, we like to think that even archaeological knowledge may someday prove useful to some society. (Childe, 1956: 127)

396   Matthew Spriggs I had long been a supporter of the ‘Left’ in an anarchist-​hippy sort of way before I started university education in 1973. My exposure to French-​derived Marxist anthropology during my first year of an Archaeology and Anthropology degree was, however, a life-​ defining moment. It gave me a somewhat coherent theoretical framework to organize both my studies and—​in what now seems an extremely partial sense—​my life. I certainly believed (with McGuire, 2008: xii) that ‘a theoretically informed and politically guided archaeology might make a difference in people’s lives and might contribute to a more humane world’. Moving on to doctoral studies in 1977, I  conceived of a project to test Karl Wittfogel’s (1957) ideas about the importance of management requirements of irrigation systems in the creation and maintenance of what was picturesquely called at the time ‘Oriental despotism’. The region of study was the Pacific, by design, and more serendipitously the island of Aneityum in southern Vanuatu; at the time part of the Anglo-​French Condominium of the New Hebrides (Spriggs, 1981a). Archaeologist Les Groube had worked on the island in 1972 and reported extensive stone-​terraced irrigation systems, long abandoned and covered by dense secondary forest (Groube, 1975).

Population and Irrigation on Aneityum The extent of such irrigation systems on Aneityum suggested a settlement pattern approach to reconstruct population and production on the island at European contact in 1830. This date was taken to represent the maximum extension of the irrigation systems because subsequent massive population decline began in the following decade and continued until the 1940s. By this time the population had shrunk from a censused population in 1854, after two historically attested epidemics of unknown mortality, of 3,800 down to 186 inhabitants in 1941 (McArthur, 1974, 1978; Spriggs, 1997: 255–​259). After that time population recovery commenced, the population having reached 464 during 1979, soon after I commenced fieldwork, and in 2014 upwards of 1,000. By utilizing measures of labour input and garden yield, derived from ethnoarchaeological studies on Aneityum and other islands in Vanuatu and New Caledonia, the archaeologically mapped areas of irrigation on the island, and various levels of notional surplus/​social production, I was able to suggest a pre-​contact population for the island of between 4,600 and 5,800 (Spriggs, 1981a, 2007). I had expected that irrigation of the root crop taro (Colocasia esculenta), being such a notable feature of many Pacific island gardening systems, would have been well studied by local agricultural authorities; I was soon disabused of this idea. In fact, studies of traditional agriculture in the Pacific were surprisingly few and far between, and virtually non-​existent in the details which the demographic model I was using—​derived from the

Attempt at Reviving Ancient Irrigation Practices in the Pacific    397 work of the geographer Tim Bayliss-​Smith (1978, 1980)—​required in terms of yield figures, labour inputs, and so on. With the levels of population collapse documented for Aneityum being depressingly common throughout the Pacific in the wake of European contact (see Kirch and Rallu, 2007), there came a concomitant collapse of much of the traditional knowledge of traditional agriculture, particularly that pertaining to the more labour-​intensive methods such as large-​scale irrigation practices. At the end of the 1970s the agricultural potential of intensive systems of taro irrigation was not recognized, and the knowledge built up over some thousands of years of use of such techniques was in danger of being lost. As well as catastrophic population decline, additional reasons for the abandonment of such systems included novel forms of labour mobilization and reward attendant on European colonization, forced or voluntary relocation of population, new crops and animals, an increasing reliance on cash crops that competed directly with traditional agricultural pursuits for land and labour, land alienation to European plantations, and transformations of traditional leadership patterns which had a role in agricultural production. In some areas new crop diseases and pests have also been significant factors (see Brookfield, 1972; Ward, 1982). The archaeological surveys on Aneityum had revealed the presence of an extensive and sophisticated set of agricultural practices that had involved the construction of a stone-​built infrastructure that was essentially permanent (although cf. Doolittle, Chapter 3, regarding the maintenance requirements of ‘permanent’ structures). Under the forest canopy the ancient irrigation canals, although silted up, still maintained the optimum grade to supply water to fields, the stone terraces remained with their surface angled for better flow of water using furrow irrigation, and networks of storm drains and stone-​lined creeks ensured diversion of heavy run-​off in storms and cyclones away from the garden areas. And yet in 1979 only one small furrow irrigated garden (Aneityumese: incauwai) on the island was in operation, built by a somewhat eccentric ‘loner’ who had removed himself and his family away from the three population centres on the island and lived in the remote valley of Igarei. There were at the time only a handful of active gardeners who knew how to build or reactivate such systems and none were contemplating such activities in the foreseeable future. Prominent among these garden experts was Chief David Yautaea at Umej who had undertaken furrow irrigation gardening in the early 1970s. Island bed swampland irrigation systems for taro (inhenou) were in a healthier state of production on the island, but even there the median age of active gardeners was skewed towards the oldest active generation, men then in their forties and fifties. The archaeological study led me to conclude that irrigation on Aneityum allowed a greater control over environmental factors, a higher yield/​ha than dry land crops grown in equivalent conditions, and a greater potential for further intensification (see Spriggs, 1989: 6–​9 for a more detailed listing of the advantages of irrigation over dry land agriculture on islands such as Aneityum). As the infrastructure, once constructed, was semi-​ permanent there was a better return for labour than in dryland agriculture where the garden had to be recreated from scratch at every iteration.

398   Matthew Spriggs

Neglect of Traditional Agricultural Knowledge It seemed to me that in the Pacific overseas-​trained economists and agricultural officers were being fed a particular line of economic development (embarrassingly, largely emanating from the university I was enrolled in) destined to undermine the subsistence autonomy of the traditional agricultural systems through neglect and discouragement. This was to be replaced by the promotion of commercial production of coconut and of cocoa and other introduced crops. The result would be that the newly-​created peasant class would be permanently trapped within capitalist relations of production while, almost as an inevitable result, losing their land to outside interests. One of the reasons for the seemingly easy acceptance of such enforced socioeconomic change in the region was the denigration by generations of missionaries and other outsiders of the traditional cultures of the archipelago, their past seen as an ignominious ‘time of darkness’. Independence was eventually to change such attitudes to a large extent in Vanuatu, but they were still very much to the fore in the late colonial period. An alternative and less sinister interpretation might be that the effectiveness of traditional practices in subsistence agriculture was obvious to agricultural officers and therefore needed no comment or interference; hence the concentration on trials and research on commercial crops. For instance, in Papua New Guinea, Macauley (1976) wrote: ‘Major changes are unlikely as their present systems have been perfected over thousands of years.’ But such an attitude was misplaced at a time when these practices were in fact being radically transformed and much traditional knowledge and many crop varieties were disappearing. Land-​use surveys at the time certainly presented a very misleading picture of Aneityum’s potential for further agricultural development. The published soil survey (Quantin, 1979) took no account of the traditional techniques of irrigation that would allow high yields to be obtained even on soils of seemingly low fertility. If it was true that with a population density at the time of 2.5 people/​sq km some three-​quarters of the cultivable land of the island was being used, then how could the island have supported nearly 24/​sq km in 1854 and a population perhaps considerably higher 30 years previously? Clearly the potential productivity of the island’s soils had been drastically underestimated in the survey. The Quantin report mentioned hydromorphic soils but said their area was negligible and they were said to be of mediocre fertility (Quantin, 1979: 50). The archaeological survey showed this to be simply untrue. First, the swamp soils, although often found in small patches, formed a measurable percentage of total land area and were distributed all over the island. Second, the yields of taro obtained from such supposedly mediocre soils when partly drained and mulched were among the highest ever recorded for the crop. The soil report concluded that ‘The utilisation of potentially cultivable soils is considerable and almost total on . . . Aneityum’ and that ‘on Aneityum . . . the possibilities for

Attempt at Reviving Ancient Irrigation Practices in the Pacific    399 agricultural development are very restricted’ (Quantin, 1979: 11; English translation by Spriggs). Again the archaeological survey of large areas of intensive agricultural land under secondary forest in 1978–​1979 showed these conclusions to be completely erroneous. Vanuatu was in the late 1970s in a difficult phase of decolonization from the British and French colonial authorities. The nationalist Vanuaaku Party (henceforth VP) led the country to independence on 30 July 1980 on a platform of the return of all alienated land to the traditional owners and a version of ‘Melanesian socialism’. My, in retrospect extremely naïve, Marxist political analysis of the situation found a sympathetic ear among the young VP activists and some of the more left-​leaning expatriate advisers, particularly on the British side of the colonial administration. I felt most smug at reading in the VP manifesto ahead of the 1979 pre-​independence elections the following policies in relation to agriculture: (a) Recognition of the vital role of custom and subsistence agriculture in the rural areas and far from denying this role, it must be recognized as the basis for the development of the cash economy. (b) Responsibility of Government to ensure that cohesion of community structures based on custom links is maintained. (c) The encouragement and revival of traditional techniques in root crop farming; and (d) The introduction of traditional agricultural techniques in the Agricultural school (Vanuaaku Pati, 1979).

Attempting to ‘Walk the Walk’ In late 1979 the new Director of Agriculture, an expatriate long-​time VP supporter, Barry Weightman, and I formulated a successful application to the British government for project aid of the princely sum of £7,533 to revitalize traditional taro agriculture on Aneityum. The two-​year project was approved on 26 June 1980 in a letter to the Chief Minister of the New Hebrides Government, Father Walter Lini. I took leave of absence from writing up my doctoral research in Canberra and returned to Vanuatu to set up the project immediately after independence on 30 July of that year. The details of the project can be found in a 1981 report, called somewhat triumphantly ‘Bombs and Butter’ (Spriggs, 1981b); further accounts can be found in Spriggs (1982, 1989, 1993). The aim of the project was to ensure that a younger generation had a chance to learn the traditional techniques for taro production, and to give an initial ‘push’ to the development of taro as a cash crop on Aneityum. It was felt that taro irrigation offered one of the more promising avenues for cash generation on the island. Coconuts and cocoa yielded poorly under local conditions. A major and ongoing problem in the country was recognized as urban drift, particularly from the remoter islands where there were few economic opportunities.

400   Matthew Spriggs Project funding provided money for paying people to undertake the major initial garden tasks, such as dam and canal reconstruction, forest clearance, and the cleaning of swamp ditches (see Figs. 20.1 to 20.5). Tools such as crowbars, spades, forks, and pickaxes were provided and the government undertook to arrange the marketing of the taro. Why was such a ‘push’ and cash incentive needed? One important reason was the decline in chiefly power as the organizers of the labour force. The chiefs could no longer command people to turn out for communal labour as in the past (see also Kendall and Drew, Chapter 22). Although the people were genuinely interested in growing taro as a cash crop, they would not invest time and effort in such labour-​intensive tasks as re-​digging canals. There were two reasons for this: the vast majority of people on the island had never made such canals before and were sceptical they could complete the task successfully. If paid, they would at least attempt it and then come to realize the comparative ease with which it could be accomplished. Second, without a guaranteed market the Aneityumese felt that they would be wasting their time in producing large quantities of taro that they could not sell.

Figure 20.1  During canal construction on the Nijiemhang River a lot of effort was required to remove colluvial boulders along the line of the re-​cut canal. Photo by the author.

Figure 20.2  Group re-​cutting the Nijiemhang irrigation canal near its take-​off point. Photo by the author.

Figure 20.3  The author (left) and government agricultural officer Andy Welford sitting on the oil drum aqueduct to carry the Nijiemhang irrigation canal over an old logging road which had cut the line of the canal. Photo by the author.

402   Matthew Spriggs There were thus a series of vicious circles preventing the development of taro as a cash crop on the island. Many of the people did not have faith that they were capable of re-​digging the irrigation canals, having never tried to do so before nor even ever having seen such systems in operation. The chiefs and older gardeners who had made such canals in the past and knew it could be done no longer had the power to coerce the people to assist in re-​digging the canals. Paying for the initial reconstruction of the canals and digging over and mulching of swampland garden beds, the most labour-​intensive of the tasks, broke this circle. The question of a market for the taro was a more difficult one. The local communities did not possess the required expertise in negotiating for buyers and ships to transport their produce. They were thus discouraged from planting. On the other hand commercial buyers saw no evidence that sufficient amounts of taro were being or could be produced on the island. Therefore they would not come forward to negotiate for the purchase of taro that had not yet been planted. The way out of that impasse was by the National Cooperative Federation guaranteeing to buy any taro produced under the project, and by them organizing its transport and sale. Promising discussions were held at the start of the project along these lines but were not followed up; not least because the very nature and organization of the Cooperative Federation changed immediately after independence and it later became essentially moribund. The support of the colonial powers had been critical in regular scheduling of shipping and other aspects of cooperative management, and once that was withdrawn, more hardline commercial imperatives came into play. The project got off to a good start at Anelcauhat, one of three population centres on the island. A labour force of up to 30 individuals was employed and at the Nijiemhang River incauwai site a 500 m canal was repaired with the first 50 m of its course and the take-​off dam having to be completely rebuilt because of earlier flood damage (see Figs. 20.1, 20.2, and 20.3). No living person had ever seen this furrow irrigation system in use, its abandonment having taken place at least 100 years previously. A large area of forest covering the irrigation terraces and subsidiary canals of this 5 ha system was cut and left to dry for a few months prior to being burnt off and planted. Drains at the large swamp behind Anelcauhat were cleaned out (Fig. 20.4) and taro planted experimentally in the middle of the swamp to see if it would grow in an area never before used for taro. At the second main centre of Umej a completely new furrow irrigation system with a complex canal network was dug convenient to the present village in an area of formerly dryland agriculture. The considerable authority of Chief David Yautaea of Umej led to this major engineering work being undertaken, with advice from Johnny Tamadui, the Igarei taro expert. The large taro swamp adjacent to Umej village was also brought into a larger scale of production. The project took longer to get going at Port Patrick on the north coast, not least because of the small pool of available labour at this relatively minor centre. Eventually an area of former taro swamp was cleared and planted towards the end of the project, and some work was undertaken rejuvenating an abandoned furrow irrigation garden (Fig. 20.5).

Attempt at Reviving Ancient Irrigation Practices in the Pacific    403

Figure 20.4  Men and women cleaning out old drains in the swamp behind Anelcauhat village. Photo by the author.

At the time of the formulation of the original project I was dimly aware that archaeological knowledge of ancient agricultural practices elsewhere in the world had the potential to contribute to modern land use practices. A key text I had access to was Ford (1973) which noted Israeli efforts in this regard in relation to arid zone agriculture

404   Matthew Spriggs

Figure 20.5  A raised bed or island bed taro system (inhenou) in operation on Aneityum. Photo by the author.

(Evenari et  al., 1971). Arriving at the Australian National University (ANU) in 1977 I was appraised in general terms by regional specialist Ian Farrington of attempts at experimental revival of ancient irrigation practices in Central and South America. I later assisted with the organization of a conference at ANU in August 1981 on ‘Prehistoric Intensive Agriculture in the Tropics’ to bring together American and Pacific perspectives, not least on the applicability of archaeological approaches to rural development. Ian Farrington’s introduction to the two volumes resulting from the conference recalled that this topic ‘produced a lively discussion’ (Farrington 1985: i). My own recollection is that Americanist colleagues largely shied away from the political implications of such practice. My own, surely doctrinaire, rantings on the issue were not very popular at the meeting. Experimental construction of irrigated garden plots of ancient type had indeed been a feature of Americanist archaeology during the 1970s, but in general the purpose was strictly ethnoarchaeological; that is to inform the interpretation of the archaeological record. The published paper in the conference volumes that most directly addressed issues of archaeological knowledge and revival of ancient techniques as an alternative to current development strategies was recruited later by the editor and had not in fact been given at the conference (Erickson, 1985; see Farrington 1985: ii). Erickson continued to pursue this aspect of applied archaeology in later years

Attempt at Reviving Ancient Irrigation Practices in the Pacific    405 (see for instance Erickson’s 1992 paper, later reprinted with additional references as Erickson, 1998).

Failure and Success The story of what transpired after I  handed the project over to the Agriculture Department in late 1980 can be reconstructed from field officer reports on visits to Aneityum (information from unpublished reports of the Department of Agriculture and Forestry, Vanuatu, in the author’s possession). The project’s progress had remained promising in November 1981, a year or so after its inception, despite some problems of local organization, but had subsequently foundered. The last report was dated to October 1982, soon after the ‘official’ end of the project. It was at that stage declared to be a complete failure, with little local interest in restarting it. One aim of the project had, however, been accomplished by October 1982:  some knowledge of furrow irrigation techniques had been passed on to another generation at two of the three main centres on the island. But commercially the project was a failure and was not self-​sustaining after two years as had been hoped. There had been some technical problems such as the lack of sufficient planting material and extensive damage to one of the canal take-​offs in a flood. But the major problems were a lack of respect for garden taboos by younger workers, the inability of the various communities to cooperate in gardening and management tasks, and uncertainty about marketing opportunities. While questions of land tenure had been worked out at two of the three villages, this surfaced as a problem late in the project at the other village when the traditional owner of one of the garden sites demanded 50 per cent of the proceeds. This turned out to be the occasion for final abandonment of the project at that location. The garden taboos involved not eating certain foods and refraining from sexual activity for a period prior to working in the gardens. The problem is a common one of intergenerational and to an extent religious conflict. Irrigated garden skills were known to older men, but the hired labour force consisted primarily of younger school-​educated individuals who were sceptical of traditional beliefs. There had also been a recent history of disputes over village councils, cooperative organizations, land matters, and political and religious divisions in the lead-​up to independence. These had left a legacy of distrust both within and between the different communities on the island. Such disputes weakened chiefly power on the island and so created something of a leadership vacuum. A reafforestation project which started earlier in the 1970s and was ongoing at the same time as the taro project was successful precisely because there was a designated outside manager, a forestry officer permanently stationed on the island who oversaw all stages of the project. In the taro project it was at the point where outside organization and payment gave way to a phase requiring communal and unpaid labour organization in anticipation of returns from marketing of the crops that it failed. In later informal discussions with Aneityumese participants they suggested that production from private

406   Matthew Spriggs gardens (that is, by small family groups) would work better because those outside the family could not be trusted to respect the garden taboos, and also there would be no disputes from sale of the taro or over the division of labour. As far as I was concerned, there matters rested essentially until 2010. I had visited Aneityum on several occasions in the interim, but there seemed to be little further to be said on the matter. Aneityumese friends felt that their own internal problems had contributed to the failure of the project, and I was embarrassed that the project had not been better conceived at its outset, particularly in ensuring a regular market for the produce. In 1995 my principal fieldwork assistant during the thesis project, Jack Yauotau, showed me a quite extensive furrow irrigated garden he had brought back into use on his land in the Anauwau valley. It was his third incauwai in the valley since the taro project, and he had further plans for his family to reactivate other furrow irrigation systems near the valley mouth. Jack had been a key figure in transmission of the techniques, having studied Tamadui’s solitary garden at Igarei with me in 1979, and having put that knowledge to use in the reactivation of the Nijiemhang River irrigation system behind Anelcauhat in 1980. Jack noted that perhaps five or six other incauwai had been planted at different times since 1980, including ones at Umej, Igarei, and Imtania (this last by a son of Tamadui).

Discussion: A Dangerous Archaeological Fantasy? In 2010 I had a chance meeting in the Vanuatu capital Port Vila with Theodore, a son of Chief Yautaea of Umej who said he was very pleased to meet me because as a young man in 1980 he had worked on the taro revival project under my direction. I mentioned the abject failure of the project, but was pleasantly surprised to hear his opinion that ‘a seed had been sown’. He contended that as the population of Aneityum continued to grow rapidly there was a pressing need to intensify agriculture there to feed the population, particularly in areas that did not have access to monies coming in from cruise ship visits to ‘Mystery Island’, the sand cay off Anelcauhat on which the airstrip is situated. His generation, now in their forties and fifties, carried with them the knowledge passed on in 1980 by the then-​older generation. A few of them had continued to make small furrow irrigated gardens in the interim, but he could see the need to pass on the techniques to a burgeoning younger generation on the island. I had further discussions along these lines in early 2011 with Joel Simo, a university-​ educated Aneityumese who was then Director of the Land Desk at the Vanuatu Cultural Centre and who is a prominent land rights activist (see for instance Simo, 2005, 2010; Naupa and Simo, 2008). Based on these discussions, in June 2011 Joel formulated an application to the Genographic Legacy Fund of the National Geographic Society to set up a formal process to teach aspects of traditional agricultural and fishing techniques

Attempt at Reviving Ancient Irrigation Practices in the Pacific    407 to the young people of Aneityum. The grant application was successful and at the time of writing the project is ongoing. Tools were provided and irrigated gardens have been planted at several different locations under the guidance of experienced older gardeners, many of whom learned their irrigated gardening skills in 1980. Discussions have begun on organizing a traditional competitive feast (nakaro) to mark the end of project funding, the first to take place since the missionaries suppressed such practices in the 1850s. It has to be noted that the comparable work of Erickson and others in attempting to reactivate traditional raised field agricultural systems in Central and South America has been dismissed as a failure by Swartley (2002), based on detailed study of such a project in Bolivia. She sees the revival projects as the pernicious result of the archaeologists’ and some NGOs’ fantasies of traditional, ecologically sound agriculture that condemn local farmers to poverty when there are better avenues of advancement they could participate in (see also Herrera, Chapter 24). As with the Aneityum case, once the direct funding of labour was withdrawn the projects collapsed. But the Aneityum case suggests that any truly beneficial results—​as perceived by the local population—​may take decades to become evident as the socioeconomic and demographic situations in an area change. A return visit to Aneityum in 2011, in part to discuss the new project with the Island Council of Chiefs who sponsored the application, allowed a ‘census’ of recent furrow-​ irrigated gardens (incauwai) and the learning networks of the farmers involved. Moving anti-​clockwise round the island, at Anuayac, farmer James Kayawei had harvested one incauwai in 2010, and had now brought another one into commission. He had learned how to make such gardens during the 1980 irrigation project. At Umej, interim Chief Clement Japarahor reported that there had been an incauwai in use there a few years previously, constructed by the youths of the village under the direction of Theodore, the Chief I had met in Port Vila in 2010 and who had learned his craft too in 1980. The Umej garden had not produced taro because the youths had not taken the garden taboos seriously. It was mentioned that a new incauwai was in progress in the area but I was unable to obtain information about it during my time in the village. A walk of several hours round the east coast of the island brought us to Isino in the Uca/​Uea district, where an operating incauwai was seen, its canal tapping the Uca River. Theodore had taught the farmers here. At Ahaij, further west along the island’s north coast, a now dry incauwai was seen, its canal tapping the Inwanma. Most of the taro had been harvested but the drug-​plant kava (Piper methysticum) planted between the furrows was still growing in the garden. The farmer, Louie Inmejcop, had again been taught by Theodore. He had planted some irrigated beds here in 2009 and more in 2010. No further incauwai were seen over the half of the island to the west, which includes the north-​west dry side of the island. Discussions with Jack Yauotau revealed changes in rainfall patterns and the incidence of extreme weather events on that side of the island have made furrow-​irrigated gardening impossible over the last few decades. Streams such as the Uche River, to the west of Anelcauhat, which were perennial in 1980 have now become seasonally dry as rainfall has decreased and become less predictable in leeward areas. Larger rivers such as the Anauwau originating deep in the uplands have

408   Matthew Spriggs become subject to a higher incidence of flash-​flooding as extreme rainfall events have seemingly increased. Yauotau’s more recent attempts at bringing old incauwai back into use that tapped the Anauwau all ended in failure as the canal take-​off points were washed out in flash floods and damage was caused to the garden areas. He noted river down-​cutting as another problem, leaving the former canal take-​off points high and dry. Pipes would have to be purchased to enable the incauwai on this side of the island to be reused. These intimations of significant climate change are confirmed by my own observations. In 1978–​1979 I recorded many incauwai, inhenou (taro swamps), and other garden sites at the mouths of rivers and creeks on the leeward side of Aneityum. Many of these must have been abandoned more than 80 years previously because of demographic collapse, but remained as a permanent infrastructure that could be brought back into use. In 1979 one of the elderly taro experts, Balau, had brought a stone-​ terraced inhenou at Anuonopul back into use, after clearing the dense vegetation from it. According to Yauotau a major flood in 1996 destroyed this taro garden and several near-​coastal incauwai sites. In 2011 the mouth of the Anauwau River at this point had changed so much that I could no longer recognize the area. Similarly, walking past one of the major areas of archaeological investigation in 1978–​1979, a terraced dryland garden system at Imkalau, floods had completely altered the lie of the land. The ancient agricultural infrastructure that had existed in these areas for some hundreds of years had been completely destroyed in little over 30 years. The symptoms of irreversible climate change have clearly narrowed subsistence choice over a significant part of the island.

Conclusion When I initiated the taro revitalization project on Aneityum in 1979 I had few models to follow, having only the most cursory awareness of other such initiatives in the Americas and Israel. Academic Marxist archaeology of a non-​Soviet kind was at the time very much a minority interest and it took me several more years to assemble enough examples for an edited volume on its scope (see Spriggs, 1984). ‘Community Archaeology’ and ‘Indigenous Archaeology’ were certainly not terms I was aware of at the time—​I am not sure that the former term had even been coined by then! My own intervention into what has since been termed ‘Applied Archaeology’ certainly derived its impetus from my Marxist leanings, as a means (I thought) to help empower and give choice to the indigenous Ni-​Vanuatu of Aneityum, faced with the loss of aspects of their own traditional culture through colonialism while having little opportunity to gain the benefits of the conservative vision of modernity currently on offer at the time. But it was the archaeological discovery of a largely intact agricultural infrastructure on the forest floor of the island, and the high yields of taro possible under an intensive but sustainable gardening system that led to action rather than merely ‘talking the talk’. The

Attempt at Reviving Ancient Irrigation Practices in the Pacific    409 ethnoarchaeological study of gardening practice had been initiated originally merely to provide data for the archaeological model of prehistoric population levels. The search for these data led to a lonely garden at Igarei and the realization that this kind of information most likely would not be recoverable in future, either by archaeologists or descendants. The stone terraces and canals would then become truly ‘prehistoric’ and only of archaeological interest. The project outlined above was conceived and a new generation of Aneityumese was introduced to these unique gardening practices. Now, just over 30 years later, we are doing it all again in order to feed a burgeoning local population rather than to sell taro to distant markets. Certainly older, and hopefully wiser this time, the aim is the passing on of techniques and values. How people choose to use them will be their choice. It is enough that these practices aren’t forgotten and that the choice remains. The current threat to these productive systems is no longer the loss of knowledge, but the destruction of the gardens themselves because of climate change: less reliable rainfall and more extreme rainfall events when it does rain have clearly taken their toll over the last 30 years.

References Bayliss-​Smith, T. P. (1978). Maximum populations and standard populations:  the carrying capacity question. In D. Green, C. Haselgrove, and M. Spriggs (eds), Social Organisation and Settlement, vol. I.  B.A.R. International Series (Supplementary) 47. Oxford:  British Archaeological Reports, 129–​151. Bayliss-​Smith, T. P. (1980). Population pressure, resources and welfare: towards a more realistic measure of carrying capacity. In H. Brookfield (ed.), Population–​Environment Relations in Tropical Islands: The Case of Eastern Fiji. MAB Technical Notes 13. Paris: UNESCO, 61–​93. Brookfield, H. C. (1972). Intensification and disintensification in Pacific agriculture. Pacific Viewpoint 13: 30–​47. Childe, V. G. (1956). Society and Knowledge. London: Allen & Unwin. Erickson, C. L. (1985). Applications of prehistoric Andean technology: experiments in raised field agriculture, Huatta, Lake Titicaca, Peru, 1981–​3. In I. S. Farrington (ed.), Prehistoric Intensive Agriculture in the Tropics, vol. I. B.A.R. International Series 232. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, 209–​232. Erickson, C. L. (1998) [orig. 1992]. Applied archaeology and rural development; archaeology’s potential contribution to the future. In M. B. Whiteford and S. Whiteford (eds), Crossing Currents:  Continuity and Change in Latin America. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-​Hall,  34–​45. Evenari, M., Shanan, L., and Tadmore, N. (1971). The Negev:  The Challenge of a Desert. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Farrington, I. S. (ed.) (1985). Prehistoric Intensive Agriculture in the Tropics, 2  vols. B.A.R. International Series 232. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports. Ford, R. I. (1973). Archaeology serving humanity. In C. L. Redman (ed.), Research and Theory in Current Archaeology. New York: John Wiley, 83–​93. Groube, L. (1975). Archaeological research on Aneityum. South Pacific Bulletin, 3rd Quarter: 27–​30.

410   Matthew Spriggs Kirch, P. V., and Rallu, J.-​L. (eds) (2007). The Growth and Collapse of Pacific Island Societies. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Mcarthur, N. (1974). Population and prehistory: the late phase on Aneityum. PhD dissertation, Australian National University. Mcarthur, N. (1978). ‘And, behold, the plague was begun among the people’. In N. Gunson (ed.), The Changing Pacific: Essays in Honour of H. E. Maude. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 273–​284. Macauley, D. W. (1976). Subsistence cropping and the extension officer. In K. Wilson and M. Bourke (eds), 1975 Papua New Guinea Food Crops Conference Proceedings. Port Moresby: Department of Primary Industry, 295–​297. Mcguire, R. H. (2008). Archaeology as Political Action. Berkeley, CA:  University of California Press. Naupa, A., and Simo, J. (2008). Matrilineal land tenure in Vanuatu: Hu i kakae long basket? Case studies of Raga and Mele. In E. Huffer (ed.), Land and Women: The Matrilineal Factor—​ The Cases of the Marshall Islands, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu. Suva: Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, 73–​122. Quantin, P. (1979). Archipel des Nouvelles-​Hébrides:  Sols et quelques Données du Milieu Naturel: Erromango, Tanna, Aniwa, Anatom, Foutouna. Paris: ORSTOM. Simo, J. (2005). Report of the National Review of the Customary Land Tribunal Program in Vanuatu. Port Vila: Vanuatu National Cultural Council. Simo, J. (2010). Land and the traditional economy:  ‘your money, my life’:  Hu i kakae long basket blong laef? In T. Anderson and G. Lee (eds), In Defence of Melanesian Customary Land. Sydney: Aid Watch, 40–​44. Spriggs, M. (1981a). Vegetable kingdoms: taro irrigation and Pacific prehistory. PhD dissertation, Australian National University, Canberra [published by University Microfilms in 1986]. Spriggs, M. (1981b). Bombs and Butter: The Revival of Ancient Irrigation Techniques for a Market Economy. A Pacific Example. Occasional Papers in Prehistory 2. Canberra: Department of Prehistory, RSPacS, ANU. Spriggs, M. (1982). Traditional uses of fresh water in Papua New Guinea: past neglect and future possibilities. In L. Morauta, J. Pernetta, and W. Heaney (eds), Traditional Conservation in Papua New Guinea: Implications for Today. IASER Monograph 16. Boroko: Institute of Applied Social and Economic Research, 257–​271. Spriggs, M. (ed.) (1984). Marxist Perspectives in Archaeology. Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press. Spriggs, M. (1989). The Past, Present and Future of Traditional Taro Irrigation in the Pacific: An Example of Traditional Ecological Knowledge. SPREP Occasional Paper 3. Nouméa: South Pacific Commission. Spriggs, M. (1993). The current relevance of ethnohistorical and archaeological systems. In N. M. Williams and G. Baines (eds), Traditional Ecological Knowledge: Wisdom for Sustainable Development. Canberra:  Canberra Center for Resource and Environmental Studies, Australian National University, 109–​114. Spriggs, M. (1997). The Island Melanesians. Oxford: Blackwell. Spriggs, M. (2007). Population in a vegetable kingdom:  Aneityum Island (Vanuatu) at European contact in 1830. In P. V. Kirch and J.-​L. Rallu (eds), The Growth and Collapse of Pacific Island Societies. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 278–​305.

Attempt at Reviving Ancient Irrigation Practices in the Pacific    411 Swartley, L. (2002). Inventing Indigenous Knowledge: Archaeology, Rural Development and the Raised Field Rehabilitation Project in Bolivia. London: Routledge. Vanuaaku Pati (1979). Vanuaaku Pati Platform. Port Vila: Vanuaaku Pati. Ward, R. G. (1982). Changes in subsistence cropping. In R. J. May and H. Nelson (eds), Melanesia: Beyond Diversity, vol. II. Canberra: Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University, 327–​338. Wittfogel, K. (1957). Oriental Despotism. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Chapter 21

T he Invisible L a nd s c a pe The Etruscan Cuniculi of Tuscania as a Determinant of Present-​D ay Landscape and a Valuable Tool for Sustainable Water Management Lorenzo Caponetti

The Best Possible Past The zucchini should not be here. Nor should the other New World plants such as tomatoes, eggplants, or peppers that form the bulk of what grows in our garden every year. Indeed even the various artichokes or olive trees, those quintessential Mediterranean cultural crops, are not fully ‘historically entitled’ to grow here, and are not today what they were when the Etruscans farmed this land. In many ways, we are as far from Etruscan agricultural methods as we might be if we were on the other side of the planet. As such we do not want to recreate a farm of the past, as attractive an idea as that may be; a tourist trope that claims authenticity in its apocrypha. Indeed it would be fairly simple to develop this concept: after all, the farm is located on the necropolis of San Potente (also known as Casale Galeotti and Sasso Pizzuto) with hundreds of partially and unexcavated tombs dotting the landscape. But the spirit of such a revival would run counter to our aims and, indeed, to what we believe the spirit of Etruscan engineering embodies. Instead, our goal is to manage a farm that meets contemporary challenges through sustainable methods that are both efficient and effective, and that allow us to compete in the global market. Trying to resurrect the engineering methods and cultivation practices of what can be loosely identified as ‘Etruscan’ would be futile and a gross oversimplification, since even the necropolis itself cannot be tied to one specific period in history. Established as a monumental burial ground over some 200 years by the Etruscans during the seventh and sixth centuries Bc, it was a witness to the paving of the Via Clodia (the Roman road that connected Rome with Etruria) around 225 Bc, whilst the tombs mentioned previously were added later and subsequently converted

The Invisible Landscape    413 into dwellings during the Middle Ages. The medieval church of San Potente, from which the site takes its name, was used as a dwelling house as recently as 50 years ago (Forbes, 1964: 146, 184; Quilici Gigli, 1970: 16, 20, 31), and indeed this city of the dead has been at the centre of social life for thousands of years. Viewing the past as an indicator for the present is as important in agriculture as it is in scholarship; living and working on a living palimpsest as we do, one cannot help but view history as a continuum that crunches beneath one’s feet. The past is not a repository of romantic sentiment: it is a catalogue of potential solutions neatly organized by human innovation. Particularly when considering the challenges of managing natural resources, the past may be instructive. For indeed de Certeau (1984: 43) is right that ‘in spite of a persistent fiction, we never write on a blank page, but always on one that has always been written on’. Could the considerable challenges that Etruscan engineers faced be comparable to our own, and could their solutions provide us with our own answers? I suggest that we take these practices as a dynamic starting point so that we may, as an Italian proverb goes, make of this present the best possible past for a future that will come. Having said that, I must confess that when this project began it was so incredibly daunting that we suffered from a series of miscalculations and mistakes. Undeterred by our own naïvety and inspired by the heritage of our surroundings, we chose to reconsider some of the choices we had made and realized that we were standing in the middle of some of the most sustainable designs that mankind had ever produced. In particular, we were struck by the cuniculum (derived from the Latin cunīculus originally meaning ‘burrow’) that faces the medieval church of San Potente, and realized we were looking at something that would change the course of our development on the farm. There it stands, a small and rather understated structure: a water tunnel coming out of the hillside that one may miss altogether if one is not looking for it. However, that it had remained intact and indeed fully functioning for millennia clearly proved it to be a sustainable solution for water collection and distribution. The knowledge we were able to gather on the function of the cuniculum led us to drastically change our entire water management system on the farm.

Understanding Water Systems The structures referred to here by their Italian name of cuniculi are man-​made underground tunnels dug into the bedrock that perform different functions in different settings, the nature and complexity of which are explained in more detail in what follows. Their function can be summarized, however, as the control of water, and they serve to either tap groundwater or aquifers to supply water for irrigation or domestic consumption, or to collect surface water that seeps through overlying deposits, and thus in some instances act as both water collection features and as drainage features that draw water away from waterlogged areas, and indeed in some cases act as culverts to divert the flow

414   Lorenzo Caponetti of rivers. As a general rule these are composed of near-​horizontal tunnels excavated directly into the bedrock, wherein the unlined walls allow for water exchange between the surrounding deposits and the inside of the tunnel, both by water seeping in through the material through which the cuniculi are cut and by condensation forming on the walls of the tunnel. A series of vertical shafts connect the tunnel with the surface, and are mainly instrumental in the construction of the cuniculi as these are excavated first, and then the bottom of each shaft is connected to the next (see Fig. 21.1). This allows for not only the control of the gradient in relation to the ground surface—​and hence the rate of water flow—​but also means several teams can work simultaneously. In arid regions, however, the sides of the shafts also act as exchange surfaces between the air and the relatively cool shaft walls, thereby increasing the area where condensation will form and flow into the tunnel. Lifting water through these shafts themselves (for example, by lowering buckets) is possible but rarely undertaken, and as such it is a misnomer to refer to these shafts as wells. Indeed, although there are known examples where one or more of the shafts extends down below the depth of the tunnel it is not clear that this performed a hydrological function, and seems more likely to be a miscalculation given that the shafts are dug prior to the construction of the connecting tunnel, though this interpretation remains conjectural at present. Within this general definition several different variations are found in an area stretching from Spain to north-​west China, each specific to a particular topography or geological context. Constructed in many regions, they are known as qanats in Arabic and karez in Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, which is also the preferred term for those Schematic of water tunnel, known variously as cuniculum, qanat, foggera, kerez & khettara

Construction and maintenance shafts Sediments and geological strata. Tunnel and shafts may be cut into bedrock where necessary

Either end of tunnel draws water from aquifer

Water vapour condenses on cool walls of shafts and tunnel adding to overall water flow Surface water percolating through deposits drawn into area of relatively low air pressure Tunnel outlet for in tunnel and irrigation and/or shafts potable water

Or tunnel cuts across level of water table, ideally accounting for any potential fluctuations of water table height

Slight gradient of tunnel ensures constant gravity-fed water flow

Area of irrigated agriculture

Figure 21.1  Schematic of water tunnel. Illustration: Daryl Stump.

The Invisible Landscape    415 introduced to central Asia and north-​west China, probably via the Silk Road. They are falaj in Oman, ghayl or miyan in Yemen, qanat Romani in Syria, foggara in Egypt, Libya, and Algeria, and khettara in Morocco. In Spain, where the Islamic Umayyad Empire probably introduced this technology, they are mayrit or galeria, and they are called galeria or puquio in Mexico (cf. Beaumont, 1973, 1989; Goblot, 1979). In Italy, similar devices are found both in Puglia and in Sicily, where the town of Palermo still takes a proportion of its water out of a network of qanats (see Todaro, 2014); the Arabic term being employed in Palermo since the town’s history as the capital of the Emirate of Sicily has led many to assume that the structures are of Arabic origin. Elsewhere within modern Italy the structures are found in the areas formerly known as southern Etruria and northern Latium which now comprise the volcanic region surrounding Rome. Here the term cuniculi (Latin for smallest-​possible tunnels) is used to define hydraulic works whose main structure consists of a tunnel dug into the bedrock with an opening at one end on a hill flank. Although the dimensions of each tunnel may vary from case to case and according to the specific context, as a general rule the height and width of these tunnels are reduced to the minimum space necessary for carrying out the excavation (Fig. 21.2). In our area of former Etruria and Latium Vetus of central Italy, these are in general 1.5 to 2 m in height by 0.4 to 0.6 m in width. There are of course numerous cases where these dimensions are much bigger, either because they were dug with the purpose of storing water as well as capturing it, or because they have been enlarged through the passing of time from the eroding action of flowing water. The length of these tunnels can vary considerably, from a few metres up to a few kilometres according to the purpose of the tunnel and the topography of the place. Even though the main purpose of excavating these tunnels in most cases is water collection, this function may vary for each specific geology or climate. This is particularly true for former southern Etruria (present-​day southern Tuscany and northern Lazio), where long and varied seismic activity has at different times deposited a compact layer of volcanic rocks (Fig. 21.3). This has created a complex geological profile where the bedrock is composed of many heterogeneous layers in which permeable substrates are continuously alternated with palaeo-​soils and other impermeable formations. This unique geology is reflected in the availability of underground water: volcanic materials, due to their non-​homogeneous qualities, are generally characterized by water circulation over many interacting layers of varying density, while the levels of low permeability, even within the volcanic formations, are responsible for ‘suspended circulation’, which has a locally varied areal and strong lateral discontinuity. The point of contact between volcanic and impermeable material, instead, can be considered the bed of the ‘basal stratum’ which, compared to the suspended stratum, presents a higher potential and a greater area of distribution, and is therefore the main water table exploited by wells. Consequently, in these areas the same type of structures may have been excavated for different purposes, and while the majority would have been dug for water collection and/​or drainage, others would have been constructed to divert water from a surface stream into the adjoining valley or to create an outlet for a reservoir.

416   Lorenzo Caponetti

Figure 21.2  A view looking out of the mouth of the cuniculum of San Potente. A width of 40 to 60 cm and a height of 1.5 to 2 m are typical measurements. The ogival shape is typical of archaic cuniculi. Photo: Cees Franke, 2011.

In other cases, tunnels were used in road-​building to divert surface streams underground, thus circumventing the need to build an actual bridge. This solution was common in Etruscan engineering and featured in major works such as the Ponte del Ponte aqueduct near Corchiano (Quilici Gigli, 1987; Ward-​Perkins, 1961). Once again we see that these tunnels were rarely constructed for a single function, and were instead

The Invisible Landscape    417

Figure 21.3  Lamp niches on the wall of the cuniculum of San Potente. A quite common feature, lamp niches are usually at shoulder-​height and spaced 40 to 50 cm apart. Construction pick marks are clearly visible on the tunnel wall surface. Photo: Cees Franke, 2011.

multi-​use structures. For instance, draining land upstream from the tunnel can also provide water downstream from it. Thus, although it is possible to distinguish drainage tunnels that collect surface water along their entire length from those that are dug for the storing or distributing of water for irrigation, these functions are often combined together as parts of a whole system (cf. Zevi, 1993). Therefore while each of these examples falls within the parameters of drainage tunnels, the differences in geography and rainfall of central Italy have led to variations in construction when compared to those structures found in arid regions. Indeed climate and topography may be crucial indicators of construction: in areas of substantial rainfall, water management systems with different or even opposing hydraulic functions (such as water collection or irrigation, run-​off or collection in aqueducts) share common structural traits that may indicate the importance of local conditions for hydrological engineering. The attention to local conditions may also help us to understand how, despite their age, these structures are still working today. The cuniculi thus represent an extraordinary example of a sustainable hydro-​technology for engineers designing new infrastructures, and a challenge for archaeologists aiming to understand how these tunnels were such a crucial element in various types of infrastructures during the Etruscan period.

418   Lorenzo Caponetti

Sustainable Water Systems: Key Points Despite differences between case studies there are key design principles upon which all drainage tunnels are based which may help to explain their sustainability. First, each system utilizes gravity as the only force directing water flow. With one end of the tunnel probing deeper into the hill and the other opening up on the hill flank, water that is collected into and within the tunnel finds its way naturally to the surface, thus eliminating the need for an additional energy source. The passive function is crucial for sustainable design: the water that flows through the tunnels is always and only the water that the system is able to provide, thereby limiting the potential for overexploitation and therefore guaranteeing that the system can function over time. This is because, unlike systems which actively pump groundwater and can therefore continue to function until the subterranean reservoir is exhausted, the futility of constructing too many cuniculi would be quickly obvious since this would reduce the flow of all of the existing tunnels. Barring a change to precipitation levels or to run-​off or infiltration regimes, therefore, the system can, and has been proven to be, highly sustainable for millennia (though for an example of possible aquifer exhaustion through the use of foggara in Libya during the Garamantian period, c.500 Bc to Ad 500, see Mattingly, 2000: 175). Added to this sustainability, since cuniculi require no energy to operate, their ‘carbon footprint’ is non-​existent. The gravity-​based movement of water is a slow process that requires a large contact surface in order to collect the volume necessary to support habitation. Therefore the long, tall porous walls of the cuniculi which create exchange surfaces through the length of the tunnel are a second critical element of its design. Thus, although there have been experiments to attempt to replenish wells during periods of high rainfall by directing water back down the well shaft, the amount of water that can be drained into the opening of a vertical well is limited, whereas the volume of water that can percolate through the overlying deposits and seep through the length of a tunnel is an order of magnitude higher due to the far greater surface area provided by the tunnel and connecting shafts. This becomes crucial particularly in arid regions with limited availability of subsurface water to collect. The porous walls also serve as a conduit for a number of very small, sometimes undetectable movements of water, which when combined and employed over time, result in a large and steady supply of water. Seeping, condensation of atmospheric humidity, even oozing from cracks in the bedrock, if combined, may produce significant amounts of water that becomes available for human use. This would be impossible were it not for the exchange surface provided by the long, unplastered, permeable walls of tunnels dug directly into the bedrock, allowing extraction of water that flows out towards the hill flank. Designing the tunnel to give it the proper slope makes it possible to create a continuous water flow at a fast enough rate to avoid in-​silting, yet slow enough to limit the erosion of the tunnel itself. What better proof of sustainability is there than that the small cuniculum of San Potente still gives us water, centuries after its construction?

The Invisible Landscape    419 These tunnels rarely belong to a single user but are shared by the community; more than an example of the success of social contracts, this is another key engineering feature. Those who use the tunnel may be the descendants of the original builders, or a group that over generations has assumed the responsibility and maintenance necessary for the structure to continue functioning. When a common resource is shared there are rules and regulations to ensure its survival and benefit to the entire community; protecting a resource as precious as water is therefore everyone’s responsibility. This also suggests that the duration of the resource is acknowledged to be longer than a single lifespan, and measures are taken so that it can be passed on to future generations (another strong connection between one’s personal story and the flow of history). Even in Italy, where the juridical discourse surrounding water is nowhere near to that of more arid states, and where the memory of the excavators of a tunnel or the reasons for its construction have long since been forgotten, a link still exists. Indeed, when I purchased the farm in 1994 I was instructed by the previous owner how to enter the tunnel to de-​silt it, thus making me the latest member of a 2,500-​year-​old community.

A New/​Old Water System No faucet should be open while the sun is out. The Tetraflux pump that our well is equipped with is connected directly with the photovoltaics that power it, and the flow of water it lifts from underground is directly determined by the sunshine hitting the panels. There is no battery to store electricity; there is no switch to decide when to activate the pump. Instead, we have built a series of reservoirs to store the water that the pump lifts every day: containers located at various points along the slope of the hill and connected by a water line that links the overflow of each container with the intake of the next. Every day at sunrise water starts flowing into the container highest on the hill, then from there into the next, and so on until by the end of the day they are all full and ready to use. Opening faucets during this time would mean diverting water from the line, resulting in the containers downstream not filling enough. This rule is easily applied as evening is the best time to water a garden in the hot, dry Italian summer. The pump itself collects small, even insignificant amounts of water. But with ten hours of sun on a summer day, it adds up to a few thousand litres every day. This is more than enough to water our one hectare garden; the levels we collect are higher in the summer when it is most needed, and to run the whole system does not cost us a penny. Withdrawing this amount of water little by little over time has a much lower impact on the water table than if we were to withdraw it all at once, as with a conventional pump. We have once again found ourselves supplying water to these fields with a passive system that requires no energy and acts in concert with, rather than in opposition to, the natural conditions of our surroundings. So it seems that the past is very much alive and well, though admittedly manipulated with our contemporary tools. And we could not be more pleased.

420   Lorenzo Caponetti Do photovoltaics or plastic piping have any relation to archaeology? A priori, certainly not; yet the knowledge of the cuniculi we gathered through archaeological investigation was instrumental when designing the water system. As I said at the outset of this chapter, it was never our goal to reproduce the past dynamics or techniques, but we did want to find a way to embrace the remnants of history that still populate the farm, and to better manage our resources on an everyday basis. We wanted to innovate but at the same time we knew that for it to be successful, the system had to be as simple as possible, like opening a faucet on the entire property. The result is a water management system that relies as much on contemporary technology as it does on the fundamental features that we found in the ancient cuniculi: it is gravity-​driven, it creates an almost constant flow, and the final amount of water is the result of combining very small quantities—​the instantaneous flow acting throughout the day—​to produce very large volumes. These are two of the three keys to sustainability that all water tunnels share, as I discussed earlier. But what about the third rule, the social cooperation and feeling of collective responsibility that inspires people to care for their shared resources, to invest in their shared future? As of yet we have not formed a community of people on and around the farm who share the water system with us and with whom our futures are so inextricably tied as those of our ancestors. Ours is, after all, partially a private property and we are not yet at the point of production or profit where we can invite the entire community to garden with us. But we have begun to learn, and the constraints of our water system have forced us to rethink our habits and the way we use natural resources, which is a good beginning. The need to manage a constant flow of—​and subsequent need for—​water involved careful decision-​making about where and how to allocate resources. Where each of the tanks should be placed, how large they should be, and what purpose each should serve are the same fundamental questions that those designing a water system in the desert need to address. Deciding in advance how best to share resources, prioritize needs, and maintain practices are the basic questions for any possible sustainable development. And as this knowledge was passed on when we purchased the farm, I hope to pass it on to whoever follows us on this land. Much of this may sound banal to the reader, but it was an extraordinary exercise in applied learning for those of us involved on the farm. For over ten years we operated the farm, and the water tunnel with it, before we decided to switch to a zero-​emission water management system. Moreover, we were so fascinated by the cuniculi and so curious to learn more about the system that we were inspired to try to enact a large-​scale change in our own practices. Even now, with more than a decade of research behind us, the ability of the previous tenants of this land to create such incredible structures leaves us in awe, and we can only hope to leave such a legacy for the generations who follow us on the farm. We can only hope that there will be more investigations made, and more efforts to apply the knowledge gained through excavations to contemporary challenges. We know that scholarly collaborations can bring incredible practical innovations, and that our continuing efforts may inspire others. Here on the farm, we know that we have got our work cut out for us. Archaeologists, we are waiting for you.

The Invisible Landscape    421

References Beaumont, P. (1973). A traditional method of ground-​water utilisation in the Middle East. Groundwater 11(5): 23–​30. Beaumont, P. (1989). The qanat:  a means of water provision from groundwater sources. In P. Beaumont, M. Bonine, and K. McLachlan (eds), Qanat, Kariz, and Khettara. Wisbech, UK: Menas Press, 13–​31. de Certeau, M. (1984). The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. S. Randall. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Forbes, R. J. (1964). Studies in Ancient Technology, Vol. I. Leiden: Brill. Goblot, H. (1979). Les Qanats: Une Technique d’Acquisition de l’Eau. Paris: Mouton. Mattingly, D. (2000). Twelve thousand years of human adaptation in Fezzan (Libyan Sahara). In G. Barker and D. Gilbertson (eds), The Archaeology of Drylands: Living at the Margin. London: Routledge, 156–​175. Quilici Gigli, S. (1970). Tuscana (Forma Italiae, Regio VII—Volumen secundum). Rome: De Luca. Quilici Gigli, S. (1987). Ponte del Ponte presso Corchiano: un esempio di deviazione in cunicolo di un corso d’acqua per il passaggio di un acquedotto. In: Il trionfo dell’acqua. Proceedings of ‘Gli antichi acquedotti di Roma: problemi di conoscenza, conservazione e tutela. Roma 29-​ 30 Ottobre 1987,’ 129-​133. Rome: Comune di Roma Todaro, P. (2014). Sistemi d’acqua tradizionali siciliani: qanat, ingruttati e pozzi allaccianti nella Piana di Palermo. Geologia dell’Ambiente 22(4): 19–​28. Ward-​Perkins, J. B. (1961). Veii:  the historical topography of the ancient city. Papers of the British School at Rome 29: 1–​119. Zevi, F. (1993). Per l’identificazione della Porticus Minucia frumentaria. Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome. Antiquité 105: 661–​708.

Chapter 22

The Rehabi l i tat i on of Pre-​H i spa ni c Agricu lt u ra l Infrastru c t u re to Supp ort Ru ra l Devel opment i n t h e Peruvian   A nde s The Work of the Cusichaca Trust Ann Kendall and David Drew

Introduction From the beginnings of plant domestication and settled human occupation in the high Andes, effective strategies of resource management were key to mitigate the variable and often extreme climatic conditions of the mountain environment. The result, by the first millennium ad, was the development of highly sophisticated agricultural technologies finely adjusted to local environments. On the Pacific north coast of Peru, the Moche (about ad 100–​800) coped with the prevailing desert conditions away from the rivers by developing complex irrigation systems that brought water long distances across the desert from the mountains inland (Bawden, 1996). In the altiplano or high plains above 3,500 m, a range of solutions included man-​made reservoirs or wet cultivation areas called cochas (Flores Ochoa and Paz Flores, 1986) as well as raised fields known as camellones or waru waru at the edge of Lake Titicaca (Erickson, 1985). The latter formed much of the agricultural base for

The Rehabilitation of Pre-Hispanic Agricultural Infrastructure    423 the civilization of Tiwanaku that flourished across what is now highland Bolivia and southern Peru between about ad 500 and 900. At much the same time the Wari empire, with their state centre near Ayacucho in the central highlands of Peru, developed an agricultural economy that expanded the extent of highland cultivation between 2,400 and 3,400 m above sea level. Their example was followed to even greater levels of organization and achievement by the Inca, whose empire, at its height in the early sixteenth century, extended from their capital Cuzco, in what is now Peru, as far south as north-​west Argentina and the Rio Maule in Chile, and in the north to the modern border between Ecuador and Colombia. Most evident in their heartland area of the Urubamba Valley, the Inca invested a great amount of labour in long-​term agricultural developments, involving ambitious construction projects. Their main practical concern was preventing soil erosion as well as reducing the risks posed by climatic change/​variation. They did this by building sophisticated, stone-​built irrigated terrace systems and organizing the enormous labour effort of moving quantities of field stones and good-quality soils and gravels to create depth and drainage on valley side terraces (Kendall, 1997). Gravity-​based irrigation on terraces secured the annual priority crop of maize, cultivated alongside the nutritious grains quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa) or kiwicha (Amaranthus caudatus). These agricultural terraces are among the most impressive and distinctive features of the Andean landscape, over half a million hectares of which are still visible in Peru today (Fig. 22.1) (see also Herrera, Chapter 24). Food surpluses were stored in specially designed storehouses, collcas (sometimes rendered as qoll’qas), many of which still survive. These structures, and indeed their whole agricultural system, endured because of extremely well-​organized maintenance responsibilities, accepted by all farming community members and, above all, through the sheer scale of human labour that was available to them through the labour tax or mit’a, whereby populations were obliged to work periodically on state lands, sometimes far from their homes. The mit’a system, though archaeologically largely invisible, is well attested in documentary sources of the early colonial period and was taken advantage of by the Spanish in their drafting of native labour, especially for work in mines, most famously in the great silver mine of Potosi in Bolivia (Nash, 1993; Bakewell, 2010). Currently available palaeoenvironmental research suggests that climate change may well have been influential in the rise and fall of past Andean civilizations (Moseley, 2001). Thus John Rowe’s (1946) well-known chronological system of alternating regional and pan-​Peruvian cultures that he termed Intermediate periods and Horizons, may to some extent reflect the ebb and flow of past climate change. Certainly, the rapid expansion of the Inca from Cuzco around ad 1400 has been linked by a number of scholars to a marked warming period in the Andes from at least ad 1100, for which there is now extensive evidence (Chepstow-​Lusty, 2003; Chepstow-​Lusty et al., 1998, 2009; Thompson and Mosley-​Thompson, 1987). These warmer conditions enabled them to cultivate maize on formal terrace systems at higher altitudes than before, using irrigation canals fed by glaciers, and combined on occasion with agroforestry techniques such as the purposeful planting of the nitrogen-​fixing alnus or alder as an additional aid to

424    Ann Kendall and David Drew

Figure 22.1  The Inca settlement and terrace systems at Patallacta, just above the confluence of the Cusichaca and Urubamba rivers, the strong point of Huillca Raccay in the foreground. Photo: Cusichaca Trust.

help counteract soil erosion. Part of the evidence for this late pre-​Hispanic warming period comes from a lake sediment pollen core taken from one of the areas where the Cusichaca Trust has worked: the site of Marcacocha, in the Patacancha Valley at c.3,300 m altitude and 10 km above the Inca town of Ollantaytambo. The first in-​depth study of past environmental development in this part of the Andes, the Marcacocha pollen core analysis, suggests that the Inca were able to generate sizeable agricultural surpluses that may have sustained the standing armies that imposed the authority of the Inca state at the beginning of their imperial expansion. It also indicates the abandonment of the agricultural systems in the Patacancha Valley after the arrival of the Spanish (Chepstow-​Lusty,  2003). The Spanish conquest undoubtedly led to the decimation and dispersal of indigenous populations through imported European diseases and the enforced removal of communities to mines and other locations. Much of the pre-​Hispanic agricultural infrastructure was left deserted, and where systems survived in use, administrative breakdown often resulted in a lack of investment in land improvement and maintenance, while changes in land-​use could also lead to the deterioration of canals and terraces. For example, large-​hoofed animals from Europe, such as cattle, horses, and goats, were increasingly brought in to replace delicate-​footed camelids at lower, temperate altitudes.

The Rehabilitation of Pre-Hispanic Agricultural Infrastructure    425 These newly introduced animals would graze near water sources such as canals, often resulting in significant damage to the walls of canals and terraces. In the 1980s, studies by the Peruvian Oficina Nacional de Evaluación de Recursos Naturales (ONERN) estimated that between 50 and 75 per cent of terraces had been abandoned. In some very remote areas the work of looking after community resources, such as irrigation systems, remained incorporated within the political and ritual organization of native communities, all households being obliged to work on canal maintenance at least once a year (Isbell, 1985). The outlines of the pre-​Hispanic systems had thus survived, but their hold was already tenuous when Isbell was writing in the 1980s.

The Cusichaca Trust The non-​governmental organization (NGO) the Cusichaca Trust was founded as a non-​ profit organization or UK-​registered ‘charitable trust’ in 1977. Based on the author’s (Kendall’s) prior archaeological reconnaissance studies of the Cusichaca Valley carried out in 1968–​1975, the Cusichaca Archaeological Project (CAP) was a substantial extension of the earlier work whose first full field season in 1978 was designed to carry out excavations and interdisciplinary studies of an extensive series of occupation sites located in the south-​east corner of the Machu Picchu National Park (Fig. 22.1). The main focus of the CAP’s work was around the confluence of the Urubamba and Cusichaca rivers (cusi and chaca meaning ‘happy bridge’ in Quechua). Much of the programme of research and excavation was concerned with the agricultural exploitation of this region and obtaining detailed information on past rural development strategies, from the first millennium bc (the Early Horizon) through to the present. Archaeological excavations at the Inca promontory site of Huillca Raccay led by Hey (1984), as well as at other sites around and above the junction of the two rivers, revealed a sequence of distinct occupations from c.700 or 600 bc to the time of the Spanish conquest in the 1530s. It was clear that before the Inca occupation the area was already well populated and cultivated, but that the Inca extensively remodelled the landscape, constructing formidable systems of agricultural terraces, extending earlier irrigation canals, and building new ones. Local populations were evidently relocated to exploit the land more intensively, and one of the area’s main functions would almost certainly have been to provide Machu Picchu, 25 km downstream, with maize and other crops. Among the specialists in the early years of fieldwork were soil scientists, botanists, and ecologists, whose contributions helped to establish that in Inca times, when the canals and terraces were fully functioning, the immediate Cusichaca drainage could have fed some 5,000 people. Yet, by the 1980s, there were only 15 families in the lower valley practising subsistence farming among the remains of terraces and canals that were no longer functioning. Much of the lower Cusichaca Valley, which had been so intensively cultivated in the Inca period, was abandoned shortly after the Spanish conquest. By the seventeenth

426    Ann Kendall and David Drew century it was being farmed sporadically by the Bethlemite order who controlled the hacienda of Sillque, some 10 km up the Urubamba Valley (Kendall, 1979). From the early nineteenth century the area was taken over by individual landowners who brought farmers with them from other areas. When the CAP members arrived for the first full-​ scale field season in 1978 the families living at the confluence of the rivers in the community of San José de Chamana were part of a private hacienda and controlled little or no land of their own. The latest arrivals in Chamana had come with the new hacendado (landowner) from Maras, in the direction of Cuzco, in 1956. Until 1979 the Chamana community had neither the time nor any incentive to maintain the agricultural infrastructure on land which in no real sense pertained to them. Andean peoples have suffered a long history of reorganization and manipulation by colonial authorities, national governments, landowners, and the Church. In the 1970s feelings of uncertainty and mistrust had been exacerbated by raised expectations, but there was slow implementation of an agrarian reform programme, started in 1964 by President Belaunde and greatly extended under the military government headed by General Velasco Alvarado (1968–​1975). These reforms promised to return large tracts of land from hacienda estates to the ownership of indigenous communities and cooperatives. Although the reforms began in the 1960s, they took many years to implement in places such as Chamana, at some remove from regional political authorities. It was only in 1979 that the process began whereby the people of Chamana were finally to receive title to the lands that they occupied and farmed. In order to improve the economy of the households in Chamana and the rest of the lower valley, among whom the archaeologists were grateful to be living for part of the year, the CAP sought to bring the community together in a cooperative labour project that would both improve the annual yield from the land and help to develop the social organization and the skills needed to maintain the canal system in the future. CAP recognized that the process of explaining and implementing such a development project was complex and could unwittingly aggravate tensions rooted in territorial concerns and distrust between local interest groups. The presence of the CAP itself was probably a major concern for many community members since it consisted of a multinational team of up to 80 people camping on community fields for two to three months each year. Thus the caution of local people about the intentions of a foreign rural development project saying that it wanted to improve their land was understandable. Concerns included who was going to do the work? Would the CAP contract workers? If some workers had to be brought in would they try to claim land rights? In essence, the CAP had to earn local families’ trust and clarify that the work would be carried out together with the community group, taking on board their concerns since they were now the landowners and would remain so. No one could take away their lands if they formalized their status as a legally recognized ‘Grupo Campesino’. Although the procedures for them to become a formally recognized community were initiated in 1979, Chamana did not finally achieve its independent community status until 1987. Thus it was that the Cusichaca Trust learnt the lesson that any work of ‘applied archaeology’ carried out in the service of rural development among local farmers had to be

The Rehabilitation of Pre-Hispanic Agricultural Infrastructure    427 based on thorough acquaintance with the local community, the strength and coherence of their traditional identity and culture, and by gaining an understanding of their feelings of vulnerability after centuries of colonial domination and uncertainty as to their hold on local lands. Compared with these social challenges, the technical ones were real enough but more predictable. In the Cusichaca area, most of the terrace systems were found to be in a remarkably good state of preservation, though some of the major irrigation canals had irretrievably broken down. The most important abandoned irrigation system was the Quishuarpata canal that had irrigated the pre-​Inca and Inca terraced lands of Quishuarpata and Huillca Raccay, totalling 45 ha. All these lands, then used for grazing, could be permanently cultivated again if the canal were to be restored. It was therefore decided, in consultation with local community members, that detailed feasibility studies for an agricultural restoration project would focus on Quishuarpata (Kendall, 1991).

The Cusichaca Restoration Project Testament to the intensity with which this area had been cultivated in the past, four main types of terracing were documented in the more immediate Cusichaca area. First, and difficult to date, there was a large amount of more casually created, un-​irrigated terracing located on high gradients some way above ancient settlements. These had been formed by stabilizing natural soil erosion through the compacting of the topsoil at the lower end of a section of land and placing occasional fieldstones and vegetation to encourage the formation of natural banks. Second, there was pre-​Inca (about ad 1000–​ 1440) irrigated agricultural terracing, visible today since 95 ha survive on steep slopes up to 3,700 m altitude. Many of these terraces were constructed following the slope contours and built up at the lower end where the support wall is of single stone-​faced type. A third variety represented was Inca-​period rehabilitation of the late pre-​Inca irrigated terracing, which had some similar features to Inca terraces, but possessed only a single stone-​faced support wall and where less attention had been paid to the needs of drainage. Finally, there were some 79 ha of high-quality Inca agricultural terraces (ad 1440–​1532) with integrated irrigation systems and constructed as level platforms, with inclined double-​faced stone walls and sand and gravel fill for drainage (Fig. 22.2). A special feature of Inca terracing is its retention of soil humidity, which encourages the transformation of the soil through microbiological activity, raises soil temperature (which helps diminish climatic risks), and promotes the recycling of nutrients, which can enable continuous cultivation (Kendall, 1997; Kendall and Rodriguez, 2001). For their canals they used local materials: good-quality stone, often originating from field clearance; clay, particularly for sealing the canal interior; and sand and gravel, for good drainage (Kendall, 1997). Though recognizing that terraces and canals would require periodic maintenance, they also built with the constructions’ longevity in mind, attested by the evident care taken in their construction and by choosing the right terrain, deftly

428    Ann Kendall and David Drew Selected agricultural soil Irrigation canal

Level of stones and gravel fill against the terrace wall Unselected soil

Figure 22.2  A schematic section of prime Inca platform terracing. Drawing: Ann Kendall.

controlling the speed of water flow in canals, and adapting stonework to cope with slow and fast gradients. Some intriguing details were in due course to be discovered and experimented with, such as the ethnographically recorded tradition of the use of the grated juice of the ‘giganton’ cactus (Echinopsis peruviana), which was mixed in as a binding component. Adding it did indeed seem to increase the resilience and waterproofing of the clay that lined and sealed the interior of a canal. Archaeological reconnaissance work along the route of the Quishuarpata canal was combined with agroecological studies, research on local soils and vegetation, and detailed analysis of the main canal route and the complex engineering that had been involved to control water velocity and its distribution (Keeley, 1984; Farrington, 1984). Studies of the main Huillca Raccay tableland and terrace systems involved excavations, which showed that although the soils were deep and had a good structure, in order to reach appropriate fertility with irrigation they would need manure to increase the nitrogen content. Additionally, a specialized hydraulic engineering survey was undertaken, which indicated that in this area prone to tectonic movement the overall gradient of the canal could not have changed much, if at all, over the centuries. It was still admirably fit for purpose (Green, 1978; Becerra, 1982). Sociological and anthropological studies were also carried out which provided evaluations of local commercial networks and the potential of wider markets (Michel, 1981; Villafuerte, 1981). These studies were necessary to evaluate whether or not the reconstruction of the ancient systems would provide sustainable agricultural land, whether the local residents would use these fields, and whether there was a viable market for the increased production anticipated. In 1980, after the basic research and feasibility studies had been completed, and the more technical and commercial prospects seemed positive, the project awaited the

The Rehabilitation of Pre-Hispanic Agricultural Infrastructure    429 decision of the Chamana community as to how they wanted to proceed. For some time there had been no response from them and the feeling was that there must be continuing mistrust of the motives of the foreign interests involved in the project. By the end of the year there was still no sign of a positive move by the community. But then the owner of terraces at the top of the agricultural system at Quishuarpata, where the project was to begin, let it be known that his family accepted the proposition and were keen to get started. Very soon he had brought other community members with him. The only thing now required, they agreed, was to carry out the appropriate ritual preparations. A local religious specialist was thus enlisted to make the necessary offerings to the apus, or forces perceived to inhabit the neighbouring mountains, to ask for their blessing. After these offerings were successfully made, the work proceeded. The Cusichaca Trust had the organization, materials, and the operational funding for the work to go ahead and in order to carry out the project a permit was obtained and a joint agreement signed with the Peruvian National Institute of Culture (INC). A major benefit of this was that one of the INC’s own master-​masons, and members of his local team of restorers, would offer their assistance. Ignacio Aragon was a highly experienced mason, with extensive knowledge of Inca and traditional building methods and materials. He took great interest in the whole concept and periodically worked with the local community on restoring and conserving the canal, building on local knowledge and ingenuity. This allowed members of the community to be trained in the necessary maintenance skills for the future. He helped them to identify appropriate raw materials of clay, sand, sod, and stone, all of which were locally available. In 1981 the canal was restored from the third of the four original secondary intakes. The following year the 2 km to Huillca Raccay was completed and in 1983 work continued to extend the reconstruction back to the canal’s original intake off the Huallancay River, at 3,700 m above sea level. In 1983, during the final year of the canal restoration work in which the Quishuarpata canal was extended back to the upper reaches of its original intake off the Huallancay River, it was the local people who took over and ran the implementation of the project with their own foreman supervising the 20–​25 local workers. In October the canal became operational in its entirety and has remained so to this day (Fig. 22.3). For its inauguration in September 1983, the canal carried irrigation water for the first time to prepare the terraces for ploughing and sowing potatoes. Inaugurations in Peru are seen as important occasions for asking favours of local institutions and prominent regional administrators. This inauguration managed to attract the support of some powerful dignitaries, who were impressed by the work underway and able to help ensure the future socioeconomic success of the now irrigated terrace systems. They included the Prefect of the Cuzco Region, a representative of the Ministry of Industry and Tourism, the local Mayor, and agronomists from the Faculty of Agronomy for Agricultural Research (KAYRA) at the National University San Antonio Abad of Cuzco (UNSAAC). This led to two important commitments. First, the local government action group Cooperación Popular was sent to build a new bridge over the Urubamba just downriver at Km 88 (the distance on the railway from Cuzco), to enable the valley

430    Ann Kendall and David Drew

Figure 22.3  The Huillca Raccay tableland in 1991, planted once again after rehabilitation of the Quishuarpata canal. Photo: Cusichaca Trust.

inhabitants to export their produce as well as to provide better access for tourists to the famous Inca Trail to Machu Picchu. And second, KAYRA was to play a vital role in providing agricultural extension support for the community in what had now become a significant pilot scheme for the rehabilitation of the terraces of Huillca Raccay. An experimental area of 7 ha of terracing was initially set up as a trial and the project achieved its objectives as planned. Tools and seed capital were supplied by the CAP and KAYRA and there was regular technical assistance through the visits of KAYRA agronomist Andres Peña. Most important of all, perhaps, was the community’s own concerted manual work and their appropriate cultivation and care of the newly restored terraces. Varieties of Andean cultivars including potatoes, tarwi (lupinus mutabilis,) quinoa, and varieties of kiwicha were to be cultivated to complement local maize in a crop rotation carefully monitored by Peña. This was combined with the planting of colonial introductions such as barley and broad beans. Cultivation of the latter demonstrated that the project was not simply an exercise in experimental archaeology to recreate pre-​Hispanic conditions. Instead, the practical intention was to test out the modern commercial agricultural possibilities that the community could best exploit (for an analogous situation in the Pacific see Spriggs, Chapter 20). Andres Peña and KAYRA were also concerned to assess the need for fertilizers and pesticides in relation to performance results.

The Rehabilitation of Pre-Hispanic Agricultural Infrastructure    431 In summary, the monetary value of the seed capital and labour input trebled in the first year, enabling the programme to be widened. In the second year, community conflicts began over sharing out of land and the exclusion of animals. Some plant hybrids required more fertilizer and were not resistant to pests. There were also problems with transportation for exporting the surplus. Internal conflicts intensified during the year following completion of the restoration work until the farmers realized that the responsibility was entirely theirs and tackled the problems themselves by dividing the land between the different extended family groups and creating effective boundaries to keep animals out. In 1992 an evaluation visit was made to Chamana as one of the field trips associated with a seminar in Cuzco, Infraestructura Agricola e Hidraulica Prehispanica. Presente y Futuro, organized by the Cusichaca Trust. This visit to Chamana was undertaken to see the state of the canal and the productivity of the lands on the terraces (Kendall, 1992). By then the entire upper tableland was under cultivation and the lands were divided between three extended family groupings. Each had constructed an enclosure to keep out roaming animals. The restoration of irrigation had resulted in a significant increase in the production of maize, potatoes, quinoa, and broad beans, products that were being sold in Machu Picchu, Ollantaytambo, and Urubamba. An Irrigation Committee, formed in 1983, had successfully maintained the canal, although an overenthusiastic use of cement was noted. As the seminar group pointed out, it was clear that cement repairs were already cracking and that this problem would only be solved with a reduction of dependence on the use of this costly, brittle, though attractively ‘modern’ material, and a return to the more appropriately flexible clay and stone, all available locally at no cost except the labour involved. The community was farming all the irrigated areas successfully and had plans to further extend them. The community members’ feedback focused particularly on the question of productivity versus costs and the role of fertilizers and pesticides. They said the rehabilitated lands on the tableland were more productive than the lower lands of Chamana that were not within the rehabilitation programme. This was because fewer chemical fertilizers and pesticides were needed. Their input of work and investment on the rehabilitated lands was therefore more economic, but it was still relatively low because of low market prices and use of some chemical products. For this reason they wanted to know more about compost and other economic farming methods. The use of seeds appropriate to the area was recommended in preference to hybrids, which required the input of expensive fertilizers and herbicides. Important measures of the success of the project and the strengthening of the community over the intervening years were evident in other ways in 1992. The local school had expanded from a single-​room thatched structure to more substantial buildings making up four classrooms. A new chapel had been built beside the school by the community of Chamana and, what is more, another smaller canal had been restored in a locally organized project. Finally, it was reported that no one had recently migrated out of the area. On the contrary, a number of community family members had returned to the valley, some bringing husbands or wives with them.

432    Ann Kendall and David Drew Six years later a further brief evaluation visit by the Cuzco agronomist Juan Guillen found that the canal was still benefiting 13 families in Chamana and three families in Quishuarpata, with sufficient irrigation water and soil fertility to permit up to three crops a year, in some cases incorporating horticulture. Even two crops a year is exceptional today across much of the Andes, yet here two crops a year had become the standard. A minimal use of fertilizers was also recorded and local people were found to be following traditional agricultural practices, mixing plantings of maize with beans and quinoa, with rotations practised for nitrogen fertilization of the soil. The Irrigation Committee’s authority had been strengthened by being made a part of the overall Community Directorate and they had now introduced twice-​yearly cleaning and maintenance works along the entire canal. Food security was assured by major crops of maize, followed by potatoes, wheat, and varied horticultural crops, and the market at Machu Picchu was a secure one for surplus early maize and potatoes. Local people reported that they could now afford improved medical treatment and education in local towns. Thus the beneficial impact of the restoration seemed evident enough and it was hoped that the Cusichaca experiment might be an effective demonstration to encourage further rehabilitation of abandoned canals and terracing using traditional technology. As will be outlined in the next section, the long-​term effects were not quite so simple or clear cut, but more immediately the Cusichaca work did lead to invitations from other communities to work with them on more ambitious projects, and offered a chance to continue learning and developing a model with which to interest government institutions.

The Patacancha Valley Project 1987–​1997 In 1987, impressed by the success at Cusichaca, the communities in the nearby Patacancha Valley, above Ollantaytambo, approached the Trust for assistance. Here too there was a scarcity of productive agricultural land, which had meant an exodus of farming families and the stagnation of many communities. The project received funding from agencies in the United Kingdom and Europe and the considerable practical achievement of the Patacancha Project’s work was the rehabilitation of the 6 km long Pumamarca canal, an original pre-​Inca structure extended during the Inca period, along with the restoration of 160 ha of related agricultural terracing in the Patacancha Valley. The scale of this project was much greater than that at Cusichaca and its successful completion demonstrated once more that, though buried or broken down, much of the ancient farming infrastructure remained in place in Andean valleys and represented a reservoir of technology that could be reused today. Here the valley’s farmers worked throughout the year in a rota system under the guidance of a local master-​ mason, who trained younger foremen and thus equipped them to lead restoration projects in other valleys. Around this canal and terrace restoration centre-​piece other

The Rehabilitation of Pre-Hispanic Agricultural Infrastructure    433 components of an overall, wider, and more ‘integrated’ rural development project were designed, after extensive local consultation, which catered to the varied other needs of farming communities in the valley. Amongst the latter were environmental concerns. For a long time, pressure on the land, without adequate management, had meant a vicious circle of damage to the environment. Overworked and often abandoned soils were thin and eroded; native tree and forest cover, nurtured in ancient times, had largely gone and was often replaced by extensive stands of eucalyptus, an alien species that is fast-​growing and particularly attractive as construction material but whose roots tend to suck water and nutrients from the surrounding soil. Project agronomists and field workers ran courses for local farmers in soil conservation and embarked on an extensive reforestation programme with native species of trees. The first of a series of workshops and seminars on such environmental issues was held in Cuzco in 1991. Health was another concern. In particular, local people were used to taking water from streams running close to their villages. These were regularly contaminated and infections were commonplace, especially among children, who were also often malnourished since the subsistence diet, largely based on potatoes, was extremely poor. Thus the project supported low-​cost potable water schemes, piping water from springs and high altitude streams, and encouraged the introduction of kitchen gardens to grow vegetable crops not previously cultivated such as cabbage, lettuce, carrots, and onions. The gardens, tended by the women, were irrigated by the new piped water systems. Extended family greenhouses were also installed to further improve the range of the diet at high altitude and provide extra opportunities for the marketing of produce. Thus it was at Patacancha that a pattern of such integrated projects developed, that would be sustained in other areas. Also a model for the future was that when the project ended in 1997 local Cusichaca staff formed their own independent NGO, which was to be funded for further work in the area. It should not be forgotten that here too, as at Cusichaca, there was a sizeable archaeological component to the Trust’s work, especially at the pre-​ Inca and Inca sites of Pumamarca and around the impressive promontory site of Hatun Aya Orqo. Indeed, it was here in the ancient lake bed at Marcacocha, beneath Hatun Aya Orqo, that the pollen core mentioned earlier was taken, providing the important palaeoenvironmental data that revealed much of the vegetation and agricultural history of the valley. The success of the Patacancha Project as an ‘integrated project’, combining agricultural rehabilitation with several other valuable components, was thus considerable. It also ended with the establishment of a cultural centre and museum in Ollantaytambo, to which all the communities in the Patacancha Valley contributed and which was designed to act as a local resource, training centre, and store of indigenous knowledge. In the late 1990s, when the project ended, few could have foreseen the scale of the changes in the Ollantaytambo area that were to come. For much of the work in the Patacancha Valley had taken place in the years of Sendero Luminoso or ‘Shining Path’ insurgency, a time of considerable uncertainty and instability when the number of foreign visitors to Peru declined markedly. Since the 1990s Peru has recovered and is now a

434    Ann Kendall and David Drew magnet for international tourism, especially in the region of Cuzco and the Urubamba Valley as far as the famed Machu Picchu. This tourist boom has created better communications and varied employment opportunities along the Patacancha Valley. As a result agriculture, for many inhabitants of Ollantaytambo and the valley, has become a secondary pursuit and only sections of the canal and terrace systems are now being maintained. They are certainly being used, but, as is now also the case at Chamana, agriculture is integrated within a varied economic picture, where local communities have begun to prosper, not just from agriculture, but from a diversity of often tourism-​related pursuits.

The Pampachiri Project 1998–​2013 In other, more remote rural areas of Peru this is not the case and subsistence farming remains the predominant way of life. It is in such a region that the Cusichaca Trust’s work has been concentrated since 1998, in the Departments of Apurimac and Ayacucho, to the ​west of Cuzco (see Fig. 22.4). These include some of the very poorest parts of the country, especially badly hit by the activities of Sendero Luminoso and the violent reaction of counter-​insurgency forces in the 1980s and early 1990s.

Figure  22.4  Location map indicating the areas of Peru in which the Cusichaca Trust has worked. Note: ‘Pampachini’ referred to in the text as Pampachiri, and ‘Cusco’ transliterated here as Cuzco. Map: Cusichaca Trust.

The Rehabilitation of Pre-Hispanic Agricultural Infrastructure    435 Many of the original approaches from the Patacancha Project were adopted here too (see, for example, Kendall and Green, 1997), and after a two-​year period of research and feasibility studies a series of integrated projects were put together with local communities. These have focused on health and nutrition, conservation of the environment, agricultural extension, and the setting up of a series of skills centres, including carpentry and blacksmith workshops, horticultural centres, and other facilities. For most farming families in this region food security has been the primary consideration and Cusichaca projects have concentrated on stabilizing the livelihoods of marginalized families while developing a long-​term strategy for expanding agricultural production and attempting to open up markets for crops in order to increase household income. The need to increase agricultural production has initiated major projects to restore pre-​Hispanic irrigation canals and terrace systems. These have been accompanied by awareness-​raising programmes among local communities, but also aimed at local and national government. Recent years have seen interest and active involvement in the restoration of traditional agricultural systems advance to a new level (see Herrera, Chapter 24). Some 18,000 people have benefited from Cusichaca Trust projects in the Apurimac/​ Ayacucho region, principally in the Chicha-​Soras and Sondondo valleys, and there have been intensive programmes of seminars, courses, and major conferences to promote traditional Andean technology more widely. These included a ‘National Seminar’ organized by the Cusichaca Trust and other agencies in Lima in 2006 where it was agreed that a coordinated national plan to rehabilitate irrigated terrace systems would make a significant contribution to rural development and to water conservation in the Peruvian highlands. In June 2014 the second International Terraces Conference was held in Cuzco, the first such conference having taken place in China in 2012. Given these experiences and based on the work carried out more recently, some broad observations and conclusions will be offered here. Andean communities have demonstrated that they can revive traditional technology and restore the pre-​Hispanic agricultural infrastructure of irrigation canals and terraces to significantly increase their economic potential. But for many areas of the highlands the question might be asked, why have terraces seldom been rehabilitated by farmers themselves and why is it often very difficult to mobilize voluntary community labour for maintenance of terrace systems? This is partly due to a shift of focus in the Andean economy. Nowadays crop production is just one of a range of survival strategies that poor farmers adopt, which include livestock production and temporary migration to cities for employment. In recent years it has largely been livestock production that has provided farmers with cash income. In the Chicha-​Soras Valley the equivalent monetary value of subsistence crops recently averaged $380 a year per family, whereas livestock production provided an average family with $530 per annum. Irrigation systems have also fallen victim to poor coordination of users and insufficient maintenance. Communities in this area are now more fragmented than in the past. Traditional authorities, once central to an efficient system of communal resource management, are now weaker. Traditional systems of land management have often been

436    Ann Kendall and David Drew abandoned, such as the layme system which involved the sectoralization of cropping rotations, with particular sectors assigned by community authorities for cultivation or fallow each year, the fallow sectors being used for communal grazing. Cultivation in many areas now tends to be uncoordinated, with cultivated and fallow plots scattered over various sectors, which results in animals grazing near cultivated areas and corresponding crop damage. Economic analysis of terrace cropping shows that low yields and lack of access to markets mean little economic incentive for terrace improvement. Yields will not cover the costs of rehabilitation unless combined with other improvements in agriculture. After family food requirements have been met, crops also need to be sold, which farmers often find difficult or impossible due to their remote location and still inadequate roads. Today, migration to urban centres, as well as weak rural infrastructure and community organization, continue to be problems. Loss of management is particularly noticeable in the lack of integrated planning at the local level, leading to conflicts between animal husbandry and the needs of agriculturalists. Better transport facilities providing greater access to markets are now becoming available in many, but not all, areas, although these can be costly to use, limiting the economic benefits that greater access to markets should bring. Better communications can bring technical developments, but these are not always in the best interests of the rural poor; the import of chemical pesticides and fertilizers is harmful to the biomass system inherent in terraces, and the use of cement is costly and the material is prone to cracking in areas of seismic activity. The cost of rehabilitating a canal without cement is almost entirely labour related, which brings one back to the key question of social organization (see also Kendall, 2005). It certainly has to be borne in mind, as noted earlier, that indigenous pre-​Hispanic technology in the Andes originally developed in economic and social circumstances very different from today. In Inca times the deployment of the mit’a workforce and concerted local water management that demanded community participation were in full, highly efficient operation. Today systems of centralized organization have often collapsed, and community structures for organizing canal cleaning and maintenance have deteriorated. This accelerated in the time of Sendero Luminoso, when migration to urban centres resulted in a major loss to community organization in the mountainous interior. Yet this is not the whole story. There are exceptions to the rule. The district of Andamarca, in the Department of Ayacucho, provides a contrasting, positive example of terrace management, and indeed of contemporary rural social organization as a whole. In Andamarca the outsider is struck by the rows of magnificent, well-​maintained terraces that cover the hillsides (see Fig. 22.5). The community here is well organized, coordinating the maintenance of canals each year, and they still use the pre-​Hispanic canal system to irrigate most of their terraces. Once a year an elaborate water or sowing festival is held which combines traditional religious observance and ritual with regular maintenance activities, the cleaning and repair of canals and terraces. This is also the time of year when many members of community families who have left to work in coastal cities return to participate and renew their ties with home. These ties are often

The Rehabilitation of Pre-Hispanic Agricultural Infrastructure    437

Figure 22.5  Inca terraces at Andamarca during ‘Pata Raymi’, the annual terrace sowing festival organized around community maintenance of Andamarca’s agricultural systems. Photo: Cusichaca Trust.

now reinforced by commercial relationships, with arrangements made to ship agricultural surpluses to the cities. In Andamarca one can note telling organizational details, especially in the integration of crop with livestock. Special ramps have been constructed here so that cattle can climb from one terrace to another without stepping on the walls. Large areas of alfalfa are grown on the terraces, and the revenue from the sale of this Old World cattle feed now pays for repairs to the terraces and irrigation system. Exactly why indigenous forms of social organization have survived so tenaciously in Andamarca is still not clear, though its sheer isolation since the Spanish conquest may have been a contributory factor. This traditional community has been able to maintain the integrity of what has come to be known as its ‘irrigation culture’ better than anywhere else and there is much to be learnt from them. The Cusichaca Trust has organized a series of intercambios or exchange visits to enable the community of Andamarca to pass on their experiences to others. It will only be clear in the longer term whether the lessons learned in Andamarca will serve to promote terrace rehabilitation in other areas, but it is noteworthy that in the wider Sondondo Valley around Andamarca 90 per cent of over 4,000 hectares of terraces continue to be farmed. Much the same is true of the Colca Valley north-​west of Arequipa and Cuyo Cuyo and Sandia close to Puno near Lake Titicaca. In some places local communities have begun to rehabilitate and

438    Ann Kendall and David Drew even build new terraces where there is a clear commercial benefit. An example of this is Candarave near Tacna, where farmers have paid groups of young people who have become specialists in the construction of new terraces. The crop grown here is oregano, for export, and the farmers recover the costs of terrace construction within a few years. Agricultural production has to improve so that the benefits of terraces can be maximized. Improved crop rotations, increased use of natural fertilizer, more efficient use of irrigation water, and an improved portfolio of crops all have a part to play, as does the regular and more efficient connection of crops to markets. Nevertheless, rural poverty remains a major problem in the Andes, the economics of terrace agriculture are marginal, and the returns for farmers’ labour remain very low, due to low yields and the distances and costs involved in access to markets. Ultimately solutions cannot be imposed. Change can only be facilitated by the sharing of information, appropriate extension, and training. The potential effects of climate change have now become of major concern to Andean countries. Severe climatic events—​both droughts and unusually heavy rains—​are more common. Warmer temperatures are already melting the glaciers, which in the past have acted as an insurance policy against drought. There is evidence that the summer wet season is becoming shorter. These factors are already leading to a reduction in water available for irrigation and domestic use, creating an urgent need to improve water management practices. In this time of concern archaeology continues to demonstrate the creativity of ancient Andean technologies, including a particularly ingenious method of water storage which involved diverting water in the rainy season into impermeable underground cave systems, which would act as natural cisterns where water was effectively stored until it was needed in the dry season, when it would emerge at a lower altitude in the form of springs. An example of this system of so-​called amunas was identified in Pampachiri five years ago. Very recently the vestiges of an extensive similar system, thought to date from Wari times but extended by the Inca, have been discovered in the mountains immediately above Lima. This has now been heralded as a means of helping to solve the capital’s water crisis as it ‘struggles to meet the demands of its 9 million residents year-​round’ (Forest Trends Water Initiative, 2015). There are now clear indications that the Peruvian government is showing an increased interest in future projects and that an integrated national strategy is envisaged to revive the abundant remains of the agricultural systems of the pre-​Hispanic past (Herrera, Chapter 24). The British-​based Cusichaca Trust’s Peruvian successor institution, the Asociación Andina Cusichaca (AAC), is currently acting in an advisory capacity to the Peruvian government agency Agro Rural in its support of a project of terrace rehabilitation funded by the Inter-​American Development Bank. Within this project AAC is designing a field school which will teach farmers from different parts of Peru how to best reconstruct and maintain the terrace systems in their area. Over the last two millennia, Andean systems of terraces, canals, raised fields, and reservoirs have gone through cycles of construction, adaptation, abandonment, and restoration in

The Rehabilitation of Pre-Hispanic Agricultural Infrastructure    439 response to changing social and economic demands and shifts of population. It is certainly arguable that the next decade will see a fresh cycle of renewal in highland Andean agriculture.

References Bakewell, P. (2010). Mines of the Red Mountain: Indian Labour in Potosi 1545–​1650. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press. Bawden, G. (1996). The Moche. Oxford: Blackwell. Becerra, H. (1982). Canal Quishuarpata: Recomendaciones para uso, cuidado y mantenimiento del canal. Binnie & Partners unpublished report for Cusichaca Archaeological Project (CAP). Chepstow-​Lusty, A. J. (2003). A late Holocene record of arid events from the Cuzco region, Peru. Journal of Quaternary Science 18(6): 491–​502. Chepstow-​Lusty, A. J., Bennett, K. D., Fjeldsa, J., Kendall, A., Galiano W., and Tupayachi Herrera, A. (1998). Tracing 4,000 years of environmental history in the Cuzco area, Peru, from the pollen record. Mountain Research and Development 18(2): 159–​172. Chepstow-​Lusty, A. J., Frogley, M. R., Bauer, B. S., Leng, M. J., Boessenkool, K. P., Carcaillet, C., Ali, A. A., and Gioda, A. (2009). Putting the rise of the Inca empire within a climatic and land management context. Climate of the Past 5(3): 375–​388. Erickson, C. L. (1985). Applications of prehistoric Andean technology:  experiments in raised field agriculture, Huatta, Lake Titicaca, Peru 1981–​1983. In I. S. Farrington (ed.), Prehistoric Intensive Agriculture in the Tropics, Part  1. BAR International Series 232. Oxford: Archaeopress, 209–​232. Farrington, I. S. (1984). The archaeology of irrigation canals, with special reference to Peru. World Archaeology 11(3): 287–​305. Flores Ochoa, J. A., and Paz Flores, P. (1986). La agricultura en Laguna Qocha. In C. de la Torre and M. Burga (eds), Andenes y camellones en al Peru andino: Historia, Presente y Futuro. Lima: Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnologia, 85–​106. Forest Trends Water Initiative (2015). Online press release, 8 April. . Green, D. W. (1978). Proyecto Cusichaca:  Informe sobre la rehabilitación de las obras de ingenieria y el desarrollo agricola. Binnie & Partners unpublished report for Cusichaca Archaeological Project (CAP). Hey, G. (1984). Early occupation on the Huillca Raccay promontory site, Cusichaca: the archaeological evidence. In A. Kendall (ed.), Current Archaeological Projects in the Central Andes. BAR International Series 210. Oxford: Archaeopress, 291–​304. Isbell, B. J. (1985). To Defend Ourselves: Ecology and Ritual in an Andean Village. 2nd edition. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press. Keeley, H. C.  M. (1984). Soil studies in the Cusichaca Valley, Peru. In A. Kendall (ed.), Current Archaeological Projects in the Central Andes. BAR International Series 210. Oxford: Archaeopress, 323–​343. Kendall, A. (1979). Hacienda Silque durante 1751–​1822 con relación a los libros del convento de los Betlemitas. Unpublished manuscript. Presented at the IV Congreso Peruano del Hombre y la Cultura Andina, Cuzco.

440    Ann Kendall and David Drew Kendall, A. (1991). The Cusichaca Archaeological Project, Cuzco, Peru: a final report. Bulletin of the Institute of Archaeology 28: 1–​98. Kendall, A. (ed.) (1992). Infraestructura agricola e hidráulica prehispanica presente y futuro. Cuzco: Cusichaca Trust, Asociación Grafica Educativa. Kendall, A. (1997). Obras de tecnologia tradicional Andina en la restauración de la infraestructura prehispanica. In A. Kendall (ed.), Restauracin de Sistemas Agrícolas Prehispanicos en la Sierra Sur, Peru: Arqueologia y Tecnologia Indigena en Desarrollo Rural. Cuzco: Editorial Amauta, 76–​84. Kendall, A. (2005). Applied archaeology:  revitalizing indigenous agricultural technology within an Andean community. Public Archaeology 4(2): 205–​221. Kendall, A., and Green, D. (1997). Irrigando el Futuro:  Manual para la restauración de sistemas de irrigación prehispanicos en la sierra sur, Peru. Cuzco:  Cusichaca Trust, Amauta Press. Kendall, A., and Rodriguez, A. (2001). Restauración agricola en los Andes: Adaptacion de los sistemas tradicionales de andenes irrigados al contexto moderno. II Encuentro sobre Historia y Medio Ambiente, Sesión 17 del Congreso de Historia Económica de Buenos Aires ‘Transferencia de técnicas, modos de producción y usos del agua en Europa y en América Latina’. Huesca, Spain, 26–​27 October. . Michel, K. (1981). Trade and Exchange in the Cusichaca Valley. Unpublished report for Cusichaca Archaeological Project (CAP) and unpublished dissertation for the School of Agriculture, Wageningen. Moseley, M. (2001). The Incas and their Ancestors. London: Thames & Hudson. Nash, J. (1993). We Eat the Mines and the Mines Eat Us. New York: Columbia University Press. Rowe, J. (1946). Inca culture at the time of the Spanish conquest. In J. Steward (ed.), Handbook of South American Indians, vol. 2: The Andean Civilizations. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 183–​330. Thompson, L. G., and Mosley-​Thompson, E. (1987). Evidence of abrupt climate change during the last 1,500 years recorded in ice cores from the tropical Quelccaya ice cap, Peru. In W. H. Berger and L. D. Labeyrie (eds), Abrupt Climatic Change:  Evidence and Implications. Norwell, MA: NATO ASI Series C, Vol. 216, 99–​110. Villafuerte, F. (1981). Campesinado y antropología: el caso de Cusichaca. PhD dissertation, Department of Anthropology, UNSAAC, Cuzco.

Chapter 23

Applied Archa e ol o g y i n the Am e ri c as Evaluating Archaeological Solutions to the Impacts of Global Environmental Change Jago Cooper and Lindsay Duncan

Introduction The time depth of human experience is key to understanding how our species, as individuals and collective communities, lives through the impacts of climate variability and environmental change. A deep time perspective is essential for understanding the multi-​ temporal cycles of climatic and environmental hazards and identifying how past mitigation strategies can potentially inform modern-​day populations and guide strategies for preparedness and adaptation. Traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) is a valuable resource that, via long-​term inter-​generational observations, allows communities to identify environmental change, mitigate impacts, and avoid place-​focused environmental disasters (Cooper and Sheets, 2012; Huntington et al., 2004; Lefale, 2010; Watson et al., 2003). Its value for local and government-​supported mitigation and adaptation schemes is also acknowledged (Kronik and Verner, 2010: 134). Archaeology complements TEK by offering an opportunity to increase time depth and build a broader knowledge base that is highly relevant to current disaster management discussions. The Caribbean region is particularly vulnerable to climate change with its communities at risk from the anticipated impacts of rising sea levels and temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, more frequent intense weather events, flooding, coastal erosion, ocean acidification, and sedimentation of coastal waters (Lane and Watson, 2010). These changes have both physical and economic impact (Lane et al., 2013: 470), as communities rely heavily on coastal environments for livelihoods such as fishing and tourism (Mercer et al., 2012: 1911). Governmental and intergovernmental organizations

442    Jago Cooper and Lindsay Duncan have identified impending climate changes, such as precipitation variation and extreme storm events, to be one of the biggest threats to sustainable development in the Caribbean region (CCCCC, 2009; CEPAL, 2014; ECLAC, 2013, 2014; Magrin et al., 2014; UNEP, 2008). The identification of potential solutions to mitigate and prepare populations for the inevitable environmental changes is therefore critical. The archaeology of the region, with its record of over 6,000 years of human experience, may provide an important pathway towards resilience. This chapter will discuss some of the lessons from past examples of applied archaeology in the Americas. We examine how these lessons can be successfully learnt and applied to build community resilience in the Caribbean.

Defining Applied Archaeology in the Americas Broadly, applied archaeology refers to ‘the application of archaeological research and its results to address contemporary human problems’ (SAA, 2008) including cultural resource management, public engagement, and human–​environment dynamics, which arose from increased disciplinary concern with how to ‘contribute to society at large’ (Cooper and Isendahl, 2014; Isendahl et al., 2013: 136–​137). If applied archaeology aims to address modern-​day challenges with relevant solutions from the past, then the Americas have witnessed some of the most well-​known and long-​running applied archaeology projects. Indeed, the famous Bolivian and Peruvian raised field and terrace restoration projects have been active since the 1980s (Erickson, 1985, 2003; Herrera, Chapter 24; Kendall and Drew, Chapter 22). At its simplest, applied archaeology can be the study of an uncomplicated technique, lost to the passage of time, which is rediscovered by investigative research. The idea of a simple technology or concept that can be immediately dusted off and applied is naturally attractive in its directness and relative ease of application; ancient raised field and terracing technologies appeared to offer just that. The experiences within these applied archaeology projects highlight some of the important considerations that are required to successfully transform ancient ideas into modern-​day appropriate solutions. The raised field research projects combined archaeological excavation and experimental archaeology with the aims of both increasing understanding and encouraging implementation by modern farmers as a subsistence strategy (Garaycochea, 1987; Erickson, 1985, 1988, 1995). Ancient field technologies were attractive due to their potential to resist drought, increase frost resistance, protect from flooding, enrich organically, extend growing seasons, and increase productivity (Altieri, 1999: 206; Erickson, 1985, 1988, 1995; Erickson and Chandler, 1989: 234; Garaycochea, 1987; Kolata and Ortloff, 1989). Their implementation was also eased by low investment needs, the use of traditional, communal workforces, and the application of widely accessible, traditional tools

Applied Archaeology in the Americas    443 (Erickson, 1985, 1988: 15; Erickson and Chandler, 1989: 235–​236; Garaycochea, 1987: 396; Guillet, 1987). Although the schemes were initially successful, over the longer term they were unsustainable; archaeology teaches us that a long-​term critical review is essential to assess sustainability of practice. A primary implementation challenge was the need for a detailed understanding of the technology and its variables (Herrera, Chapter 24; Renard et al., 2012), but concurrent experimentation and application of a technology can create disharmonies. Social issues were critical such as conflicting labour demands and land tenure issues (see Kendall and Drew, Chapter 22), together with political unrest (Erickson, 2003:  190–​192; Erickson and Chandler, 1989:  243; see also Herrera, Chapter 24). The experiment emphasized the importance of social relationships, such as the role of individual and community dynamics alongside the required detailed ecological knowledge. Labour organization was an important factor; a communal approach was initially used, but, although social cohesion was important (Altieri and Toledo, 2011: 603), individual family-​run fields fared better (Erickson, 2003: 192; Garaycochea, 1987: 393). Ultimately, an idea can be technically and ecologically suitable, but can only be implemented in appropriate social circumstances; it is critical that solutions address the needs of local people providing viable productivity and labour investment payoffs (Garaycochea, 1987; Renard et al., 2012). As with any community project, an engaged dialogue with all stakeholders, and also ownership, are critical for sustainability, with the project’s success being reliant on participant motivations. It is people, their knowledge, and interrelationships that underpin the successful implementation of past solutions in a modern context. Scale is also critical; the vast areas of ancient raised bed agriculture (Fig. 23.1) operated at a scale far in excess of a locally run experimental archaeology project. While agroarchaeological experiments at Huatta in the Lake Titicaca region covered 1.4 hectares (Garaycochea, 1987: 390), the area of ancient raised bed agriculture in western Beni has been estimated to range from 6,000 hectares (Denevan, 2001: 246) to c.51,500 hectares (Lombardo, 2010:  13). This was a vast agricultural system that co-​evolved with social dynamics over centuries. The ancient political and organizational frameworks and social dynamics, represented by complex community relationships, labour organization, trade networks, and community cohesion, would have been essential for the effective development of past systems; dynamics that were not adequately transposed for application in the modern context (Herrera, Chapter 24; Kendall and Drew, Chapter 22; Renard et al., 2012; for an analogous situation in the Pacific see also Spriggs, Chapter 20). Social relationships and the embedded ecological knowledge behind technologies are necessary to improve resilience to the impacts of climate variability and environmental change in potentially vulnerable landscapes. A  framework for human ecology that understands the temporal and spatial scales at which human–​climate–​environment relationships occur has been embraced in recent years and has changed the study and interpretation of Latin American landscapes. This transformation of understanding at the landscape scale provides a template within which any study of a modern resource and

444    Jago Cooper and Lindsay Duncan

Figure  23.1  Pampa Koani raised bed agricultural fields in highland Bolivia visited by Jago Cooper in July 2013. Photos by author.

subsistence system must sit (Crumley, 2007; Erickson, 2006, 2008; Kirch, 2007), from hunter-​forager communities living in relic agricultural landscapes in the Amazonian lowlands to farmers living in the marginal environments of the high Andes. Applying appropriate scales of analysis is crucial if new frameworks of living are to be adopted and applied in modern contexts. The social relationships related to technological innovations need to be understood within the spatial and temporal parameters of the landscape; this is the context which can be accessed by archaeology. It is unsurprising that many people interested in applying the lessons from long-​term perspectives have been leading protagonists for altering approaches to understanding human–​climate–​environment relationships (Balée, 1998, 2006; Balée and Erickson, 2006; Butzer, 2012; Crumley, 1987, 2007; Kirch, 2007), and entire research communities have emerged to attempt implementation of these approaches, exemplified by the Global Human Ecodynamics Alliance (GHEA; ) and the Integrated History and Future of People on Earth (IHOPE; ). Thus, applied archaeology is not just about accessing a lost idea or technology but rather about its ability to fundamentally redefine the perspective from which a problem is addressed. This fundamental shift saw a move from an experimental archaeology approach that applied interesting archaeological discoveries to modern-​day situations, to problem-​orientated interdisciplinary approaches that address modern world concerns, within which archaeological insights have an important role (Butzer, 2012; Cooper and Isendahl, 2014). More recently, applied archaeology in the Americas has focused on problems such as urbanism (e.g. changing urban form and spatial analyses [Smith, 2010, 2012]); urban agriculture and food security (Barthel and Isendahl, 2013; Isendahl and Smith, 2013), soil management (Dunning et al., 2009; Schmidt, 2013; Schmidt and Heckenberger, 2009:  188), and carbon sequestration (Kawa and

Applied Archaeology in the Americas    445 Oyuela-​Caycedo, 2008). This new orientation is one based on ecological knowledge, in which the complexity of human–​environmental relationships is embedded within the layered temporal and spatial scales of landscape. It is thus possible to study the role of interactive and nonlinear human influence on the pedological, biological, geological, and climatological environment. This approach requires archaeology to reveal and study the long-​term development and material representation of ecological knowledge. If such studies begin with a problem-​orientated research focus, then long-​term perspectives that extend the time ​depth of ecological knowledge from annual to millennial time frames can play an important role in changing perspectives of modern-​day communities to environmental change and climatic variability. Such studies can also offer alternative ways of living that are more sustainable within their environmental context. This is an approach attempted in recent applied archaeology in the Caribbean.

Caribbean Ecological Knowledge Knowledge If we are aiming to build a detailed place-​based knowledge of human–​environment experience over long time periods in order to inform future mitigation and adaptation, then the Caribbean represents a distinct challenge. The islands of the Caribbean witnessed dramatic demographic and cultural upheavals in the years and decades that followed Ad 1492. This period of genocide, large-​scale plant and animal translocation, and island-​wide cultural extinctions clearly led to a corresponding loss of a reservoir of ecological knowledge that had developed over thousands of years. This contrasts the Caribbean to elsewhere in the Americas, where TEK is often an accessible knowledge-​ base, such as for the Maya (Diemont et al., 2011; Ford and Clarke, Chapter 9; La Torre-​ Cuadros and Islebe, 2003) and indigenous communities of the Amazon basin (Balée and Nolan, Chapter 19; Celentano et al., 2014; Santos and Antonini, 2008). This is not to negate the high value of historic Caribbean local knowledge, amassed over generations (Mercer et al., 2012) from first-​hand experience and observation. However, the Caribbean highlights the loss of millennial scale TEK, coupled with problems created by maladapted ways of life inspired by predominantly European cultural trajectories translocated across the Atlantic. This postcolonial legacy of landscapes in the Caribbean, as in Peru and Bolivia, is an example where archaeological and historical evidence can inform how pre-​Columbian lifeways may offer alternative ways of living, and historical accounts can provide examples of experience. By focusing on two specific current concerns in the Caribbean, increased rainfall variability and intensity of hurricane landfalls, it is possible to consider how pre-​Columbian lifeways in the forms of household

446    Jago Cooper and Lindsay Duncan architecture, settlement locations, and food procurement systems can be practically applied within a modern context.

Need for Action The first step required to inspire the adoption of creative, adaptive solutions to the impacts of global environmental change is to convince all relevant parties of the need to act (Oreskes and Conway, 2010). One of the most pressing problems with changing public opinion of the reality of anthropogenically forced climate change is the difficulty of identifying unprecedented or ‘unnatural’ extreme weather events. Such critiques of the highly subjective qualitative nature of human perceptions of weather as opposed to allegedly more objective quantitative measures of long term climate data are well established (Cooper, 2012). However, the reputedly more objective climate data are also subject to the temporal parameters of climate variability that define the relative size and frequency of outliers or abnormal weather events. The perceived increase in frequency and intensity of hurricanes to hit the Caribbean between 2003 and 2013 pushed the issue of global climate change and its likely impacts on the islands of the Caribbean to the top of the political and social agenda in the Caribbean (IPCC, 2012; UNEP, 2008). It is clear now that the intensity of hurricanes will increase in relation to warmer global temperatures over the next century (IPCC, 2013). This has led to a pressing call for both political and community-led solutions that can help Caribbean islanders better prepare for what is to come in the twenty-​ first century (Government of Jamaica, 2011). Most of the current proposed solutions are adaptations of modern ways of living, and robustness in the face of event impact, for example replacing traditional ‘vulnerable’ building materials such as wood and thatch with more ‘robust’ materials such as concrete and steel. Palaeotempestological data demonstrate beyond doubt that hurricanes have always been a threat to human communities living in the Caribbean from the moment of first human occupation in the islands c.6,000 years ago. Humans have been living with the impacts of hurricane wind shear above 74 mph, coastal storm surges, heavy rainfalls, and associated post-​cyclonic flooding for millennia (Cooper and Peros, 2010; Schwartz, 2015). Mid-​to late Holocene data (7000 Bp to present) for palaeoprecipitation also reveal that there has been great variability in past rainfall patterns with prolonged droughts and unpredictable seasonality for different islands in the past (Mangini et al., 2007). Studying how pre-​Columbian ways of living might have mitigated the relative vulnerability of past human communities can provide invaluable lessons for modern communities—​lessons that in the case of the Caribbean, archaeologists are best placed to explore. These narratives from the past can provide new ideas for technological innovations, fresh perspectives on social policy, and different conceptualizations of what successful lifeways in the face of global climate change may look like.

Applied Archaeology in the Americas    447

Reconceptualizing Threats and Solutions Houses Excavations at Los Buchillones, a pre-​Columbian settlement site in north-​central Cuba, have uncovered waterlogged, well-​preserved remains of pole and palm thatch structures, one type circular with a conical roof and the other rectangular with a two-​slope roof (Cooper et al., 2010; Pendergast et al., 2001, 2002; Valcárcel Rojas et al., 2006). This is an indigenous late ceramic age site with a population living here from about Ad 900 to about Ad 1600. Analysis showed choices for the structural qualities of the materials employed: dense, hard, durable Guaiacum officinale for the upright supporting poles, a softer wood for the rafters, and a wood selected for its flexibility, not durability, for the stringers. Radiocarbon dates showed that some of the large house posts were in use for more than 300 years and were erected much earlier than the lighter structural elements. This indicates that house structures were in use for long periods with ongoing maintenance and replacement of more short-​lived roof and wall structures (Cooper and Thomas, 2012; Pendergast et al., 2001, 2002). Similar circular pole and thatch constructions have been found at El Cabo (about Ad 1000–​1500) in the Dominican Republic, with postholes (for hardwood Sapotaceae Sideroxylon spp. posts) sunk into the bedrock. Here, poles were either slanted to create roof and walls together, or vertical with a cone roof that was lower at the back to channel sea wind up and over and create a sheltered area at the entrance (Samson, 2010: 239–​243). Houses also likely had a long lifespan, around 100 years, the permanence of the bedrock postholes meaning that posts could easily be replaced (Samson, 2010: 260–​262). Pre-​Columbian house structures with wooden post frames and thatched roofs are almost the antithesis of modern hurricane-proof architectural designs which use robust reinforced concrete and bolted down steel roofs (Lane et al., 2013; Puig Gonzales et al., 2010). This contrasts with the Los Buchillones site noted previously (Cooper and Thomas, 2012) where radiocarbon dates demonstrate that the main structural posts remained deeply embedded in the ground for centuries, whilst thatch, stringers, and rafters were regularly replaced; a design where the loss of low value elements via events such as tropical storms is inevitable but does not lead to the loss of higher value structural timbers. Furthermore, the houses at Los Buchillones could be rebuilt swiftly from locally available materials in contrast to modern construction materials that often need to be imported from abroad in the Caribbean (Fig. 23.2). Such an architectural conceptualization of risk management reflects in some ways the crumple zone of a car in that certain elements are designed to break and disengage in order to protect the high-value elements, in this case the passengers (Cooper, 2013). The key difference is that the occupants of the houses would have retreated to safety in nearby caves as the tropical storm approached, as documented in ethno-​historical records (Cooper, 2010b; Valcárcel Rojas, 2002).

448    Jago Cooper and Lindsay Duncan (a)

(c)

(b)

(d)

Figure 23.2  People rebuilding a pre-​Columbian house in the visitor attraction of a replica indigenous village at El Chorro de Maita (a and b) just five days after the impact of Hurricane Mitch in 2009. By comparison, imported building materials used to build a local house in the neighbouring village are piled up for disposal whilst the owners wait for new imported materials required to rebuild their house (c and d). Photos by author.

This archaeological perspective provides an interesting contrast between the temporalities of environmental hazards and human experience. Palaeotempestological data from the region show that identifying the return rates of hurricanes depends on the size of territory accounted for, from the island of Cuba experiencing decadal periodicities to individual towns in Cuba perhaps centennial periodicities (Donnelly and Woodruff, 2007; Puig Gonzales et al., 2010). If past communities are identified in isolation the centennial return rates of hurricanes to settlements might be outside that of living memory. Therefore inter-​generational social memory and knowledge transmission would be required if local place-​based hazard management strategies are to be developed. If past communities were part of wider social networks with direct or indirect island-​wide communication then this provides access to the human experience of the decadal return rates of hurricanes to the island. This highlights the importance of diverse networks of communication across and between islands to help communities evaluate and understand the hazards posed by increased climatic variability and environmental change.

Applied Archaeology in the Americas    449 We do not have the necessary archaeological information to ascertain the intentionality of indigenous house designs, and hence it is not known if houses were intentionally designed to be easily rebuilt from local materials after hurricane impacts. However, what this case study does is to provide a counterpoint of contrast to contemporary disaster management strategies and an alternative perspective for conceptualizing threat, based upon tangible data, which can in turn change current perceptions of communities living in the Caribbean today. Communities in a position to weigh up the relative benefits of speed of recovery vs. robustness to wind shear, can consider the merits of sharing experiences via large communication networks and begin to develop local solutions (Fig. 23.2). This is a pathway to improved understanding of hazards and stakeholder ownership of potential mitigation inspired by archaeological narratives to improve community resilience. Just as in the case of the raised agricultural fields in Bolivia and Peru it is human relationships, social networks, and community dynamics that underpin interesting technological innovations and resilience to extreme weather events. Cohesive communities and strong social relationships are even more important in the potential issues surrounding food security discussed next.

Food Networks Modern-​day communities in the Caribbean are commonly located at large distances from their food sources, which are often flown or shipped onto islands and funnelled through centralized food distribution systems organized by government distributors or supermarket chains (Beckford, 2011). Food security is considered to require urgent attention in the Caribbean. Vulnerabilities arise from a lack of self-​sufficiency caused by factors including a decline in food productivity, reduced agricultural labour due to an inability to compete economically with imports, and dietary preferences for non-​local foods, so that the region relies heavily on imports (Beckford and Campbell, 2013: 40). Long-​distance importation creates vulnerability via interruption events that can happen anywhere along that chain and stop supply. Not only is it the case that the longer the chain the greater the chance of interruption, but also that long-​distance importation frequently leads to a number of narrow distribution bottlenecks that can be eliminated; a hurricane can quickly destroy a key bridge, road connection, or supermarket that provides the commercial mechanism of delivery. In this way, the main food supply to an often-​sizeable population can quickly be removed. When an intense hurricane hit western Cuba in Ad 1692, Havana was left without food, as the crop resources were destroyed (Schwartz, 2015). However, the networks to supply food from other areas were also blocked. Property owners, by order of the governor, were forced to clear roads at their own expense to allow the entry of supplies from other areas (Schwartz, 2015: 40); the network was maladapted to coping with disruptions to the network. The archaeological evidence for food distribution mechanisms within pre-​ Columbian communities stands in stark contrast to this highly centralized model. It is clear from the zooarchaeological assemblages from sites in north-​central Cuba around

450    Jago Cooper and Lindsay Duncan the site of Los Buchillones that food distribution networks are reticulate and extend over 50 km in each direction from different settlements (Cooper, 2008). Food resources from the reef environments in the Bahama Channel are being distributed not just back to coastal sites some 35 km away on the Cuban mainland but then deep into the interior of the island a further 45 km away (Cooper, 2010a). The material evidence for these trade and exchange networks demonstrates a reticulate and interactive network of exchange that inevitably includes the communication of ideas, knowledge, and people (Cooper et al., 2010). The broader evidence for these high rates of inter-​community migration and interaction are increasingly supported by scientific analyses and ethno-​historical research (Laffoon, 2013; Mol, 2013). Isotopic data indicate the high marine content of the diet of late ceramic age indigenous populations living away from the coast in the interior of the large islands such as Cuba and Hispaniola (Laffoon, 2013). These lines of evidence suggest that networks of material exchange are matched by networks of social relationships, which are reinforced by intermarriage and familial connections. When the local area around a community such as Los Buchillones is impacted upon by a hurricane, drought, or flooding it is arguable that there was a pre-​existing infrastructure and social motivation for the redistribution of resources and subsistence to sustain the community and help get them back up and running. Having this ability to access a diverse range of resources beyond any immediate ‘impact’ areas, underpinned by long-​term inter-​ community dynamics and mechanisms of social storage, is essential (Lane et al., 2013; O’Shea, 1981). This highlights the ability to maintain access to essential resources when one source or transport link is severed (Newsom and Wing, 2004; UNEP, 2008). Archaeological examples from elsewhere in the Americas, such as the Maya area, show other examples of attempts to diversify food sources and supply routes. The use of the ‘mosaic’ of habitats, urban agriculture, the positioning of farmsteads across ecotones (Dunning, 2004: 108) to diversify the resources available and minimize risk has been well established. This same argument has been used for the benefits of the raised fields of Bolivia and Peru, which permitted diversification through the expansion of the range of crops grown, which in turn increased food security for communities in the regions.

Settlement Patterns Examining these relationships between communities in the landscape, forming an integrated social network across a diverse environmental setting, also highlights the importance of the location of these settlements within that landscape. Pre-​Columbian settlements are most frequently found positioned in slightly elevated positions, often on the leeward slopes of hills (Cooper, 2010b), and the clustering effect this topographical pattern can have on settlement distribution maps has led to interesting interpretations of past cultural boundaries. Indeed the indigenous settlement of Los Buchillones has previously been considered isolated as there is a distance of over 10 km to the nearest other settlement. However, if travel times between settlements are analysed using the speed of canoe travel to offshore islands, along the coast, and up navigable waterways

Applied Archaeology in the Americas    451 inland then the network of inter-​settlement travel that can be completed within one day becomes apparent (Cooper, 2010a). This different perspective on settlement location in regard to human movement through the landscape and multiple pathway access to different ecological zones provides a contrasting picture with more modern settlement locations and road networks established after Ad 1492. European arrival brought with it a distinct shift in Caribbean settlement locations; many of the ‘new’ towns built since the late fifteenth century are located in estuarine and river valley settings that were common within Europe at the time, but were rare for the pre-​Columbian Caribbean. In addition, in the colonial period, land was cleared for plantation crops such as sugar, tobacco, and coffee. These plantations were one of the drivers for settlement locations; as an export-​orientated activity that also often required waterpower, settlements were placed in locations that facilitated ease of transport. These new settlement locations, in addition to the increased patterns of landscape clearance, increased exposure to the impacts of hurricanes and intense rainfall events (Schwartz, 2015: 47). In fact, the devastating impact of hurricanes was experienced by the earliest European residents of La Isabela in northern Hispaniola, in both Ad 1494 and 1495. Meanwhile the indigenous populations looked down from their settlements in the hills behind the coast and witnessed Europeans struggling on the coast (Deagan and Cruxent, 2002). Such a contrast in settlement locations at least poses some questions and alternative perspectives on urban planning that should be considered when discussing planning guidance parameters in the Caribbean in the future.

Implementation These examples of pre-​Columbian house designs, food distribution networks, and settlement locations provide some interesting ideas for reconceptualizing some threats to modern-​day communities in the Caribbean. But how do we then apply these ideas? And how can it be ensured that programmes of implementation are maintained and successful over the long term? Certainly these archaeological examples emphasize the importance of community involvement, established networks of social relationships, and locally contingent planning. However, the step between reconceptualizing the problem and implementing an idea or perceived solution creates some interesting ethical questions: Should archaeologists really be involved in dealing with attempts to increase community resilience to hurricanes? Should we use our evidence to argue that people should live in stilted wood and thatch houses rather than concrete structures? The simple fact is that there are a large number of variables and the relative resilience of particular lifeways to future hazards can never be fully predicted, and the idea that the application of an archaeological solution may in fact risk increasing the vulnerability of humans is not one that should be taken lightly. Furthermore, if there is one lesson that can always be applied from archaeology it is that a long-​term perspective is always required. There are no quick-​fix

452    Jago Cooper and Lindsay Duncan technological ‘blanket’ solutions, removed from social context, that can help avoid the impacts of environmental change and climate variability. However, the interdisciplinary drive that has radically changed the approach of applied archaeology is perhaps just as important a development as the implementation of new ideas and solutions. The reality is that disaster management practitioners are actively searching for new ideas and approaches that can arise from academic research (IPCC, 2012). An advantage of archaeological perspectives is that there are robust and tangible data, which can be independently reviewed and critiqued. This contrasts the predictive modelling data upon which many disaster practitioners currently rely when evaluating the human experience of environmental hazards. Furthermore, as the number of geographically and temporally discrete archaeological case studies is increased, the potential for more thematic interregional comparisons can be explored. In fact it is common that disaster management practitioners are already working on solutions to problems in which archaeological perspectives can have a direct and instant influence. For example, one of the most dangerous impacts of the flooding of modern towns and cities in the Caribbean following hurricanes and tropical storms is disease outbreaks among populations as sewage systems and public hygiene are put at risk. More specifically, the charity Save the Children identified outbreaks of cholera in post-​hurricane flooded urban areas such as Holguín in Cuba to be of particular concern leading to a dangerous loss of life. In a project set up to combat this problem, the evidence of pre-​Columbian settlement patterns located in more flood-​resistant areas in the region was used (Valcárcel Rojas, 2002). The project attempted to pick up on these lessons for urban planning, and even adopted the pre-​Columbian deity representing the hurricane as the logo for the project, as they attempted to encourage the municipality to plan future urban expansion out of the river valley and up the leeward slopes of upland areas (Valcárcel Rojas, 2002). Considering that hurricanes can often cause more financial damage to a Caribbean country than their annual gross domestic product (Puig Gonzales et al., 2010) it is not surprising that there are a number of government employees focused on hurricane preparation and preparedness. This is certainly the case in Cuba that has a well-​ respected and effective national hurricane management strategy (Puig Gonzales et al., 2010). Government publications draw on the latest data from a range of sources and therefore would be open to accepting archaeological perspectives if they were effectively provided. However, there is a notable absence of the inclusion of archaeological data in any of the more recent documents regarding sustainable development in the Caribbean (CCCCC, 2009; UNEP, 2008), which suggests that we are not currently being successful in our goals of applied archaeology in this region of the Americas. This failure highlights that it is not just the ideas and content that applied archaeology can produce that are important but just as crucially it is also the next steps of creating a clear line of communication and delivery to an interdisciplinary and global audience that are required. Recent work by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on ‘managing the risks of extreme events and disasters to advance climate change

Applied Archaeology in the Americas    453 adaptation’ contained significant contributions by the likes of cultural anthropologist Anthony Oliver Smith (IPCC, 2012: 65–​109) that demonstrate the action required to produce useful content from long-​term human experience for a global audience. Other scholars, exemplified by case studies being produced by the IHOPE and GHEA research communities (Cooper and Sheets, 2012) that emerge from a diverse range of geographical regions and tackle a broad spectrum of environmental hazards (see e.g. Crumley, Chapter 1; Hicks et al., Chapter 12), are clearly making similar strides in this direction.

Conclusion This chapter has outlined an approach to applied archaeological research that is not limited to rediscovering forgotten technologies and implementing them but rather to creating a wider research framework to study past human ecodynamics, evaluate risk, contextualize vulnerability, and provide new perspectives on alternative ways of living. Archaeology can provide the long-​term inter-​generational perspective necessary to assess the relative sustainability of different lifeways and evaluate them with different scales of temporal and spatial resolution. This is a perspective that is currently being taken on in a number of case study regions around the world and provides a strong argument for further integration of social science solutions into the traditional hard science attempts to deal with the impacts of global change. Education, and an appreciation of ecological knowledge accrued over long time periods, should be a key lesson. One of the most powerful applied examples of archaeology is providing clear case studies supported with robust tangible data that can inform people of the real threats of the impacts of climate variability and environmental change and offer examples of different ways to cope. This stimulates informed discussion and contributes to ongoing attempts to deal with these issues throughout the Americas. Using place-​based case studies with locally contingent and motivated solutions is important, but it is accessing knowledge from the past that has been lost to the passage of time, presenting it in interesting ways, encouraging people to engage with it, and creating the necessary knowledge and social dynamics to focus on education that are vital. Because in the end it is education and human capacity built on informed positions that provide the best hope of solutions to the impacts of global environmental change.

Acknowledgements Research presented in this chapter was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (RCN-​SEES 4900/​1140106), the Leverhulme Trust (6/​SRF/​2008/​0267), the British Museum Research Committee, and the UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources.

454    Jago Cooper and Lindsay Duncan

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456    Jago Cooper and Lindsay Duncan Erickson, C. L. (1995). Archaeological methods for the study of ancient landscapes of the Llanos de Mojos in the Bolivian Amazon. In P. W. Stahl (ed.), Archaeology in the Lowland American Tropics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 66–​95. Erickson, C. L. (2003). Agricultural landscapes as world heritage: raised field agriculture in Bolivia and Peru. In J.-​M. Teutonico and F. Matero (eds), Managing Change: Sustainable Approaches to the Conservation of the Built Environment. Los Angeles, CA:  Getty Conservation Institute, 181–​204. Erickson, C. L. (2006). The domesticated landscapes of the Bolivian Amazon. In W. Balée and C. L. Erickson (eds), Time and Complexity in Historical Ecology: Studies in the Neotropical Lowlands. New York: Columbia University Press, 235–​278. Erickson, C. L. (2008). The historical ecology of a domesticated landscape. In H. Silverman and W. Isbell (eds), The Handbook of South American Archaeology. New York: Springer, 157–​183. Erickson, C. L., and Chandler, K. L. (1989). Raised fields and sustainable agriculture in the Lake Titicaca Basin of Peru. In J. O. Browder (ed.), Fragile Lands of Latin America: Strategies for Sustainable Development. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 230–​248. Garaycochea, Z. (1987). Agricultural experiments in raised fields in the Lake Titicaca Basin, Peru. In W. M. Denevan, K. Mathewson, and G. Knapp (eds), Pre-​Hispanic Agricultural Fields in the Andean Region, Part II. BAR International Series 359 (II). Oxford: Archaeopress, 385–​398. Government of Jamaica (2011). The Second National Communication of Jamaica to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. . Guillet, D. (1987). Contemporary agricultural terracing in Lari, Colca Valley, Peru. In W. M. Denevan, K. Mathewson, and G. Knapp (eds), Pre-​Hispanic Agricultural Fields in the Andean Region, Part I. BAR International Series 359 (I). Oxford: Archaeopress, 193–​206. Huntington, H., Callaghan, T., Fox, S., and Krupnik, I. (2004). Matching traditional and scientific observations to detect environmental change: a discussion on Arctic terrestrial ecosystems. Ambio 13: 18–​23. IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) (2012). Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation. A Special Report of Working Groups I and II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (C. B. Field, V. Barros, T. F. Stocker, Q. Dahe, D. J. Dokken, K. L. Ebi, M. D. Mastrandrea, K. J. Mach, G.-​K. Plattner, S. K. Allen, M. Tignor, and P. M. Midgley). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) (2013). Summary for policymakers. In C. B. Field, V. Barros, T. F. Stocker, Q. Dahe, D. J. Dokken, K. L. Ebi, M. D. Mastrandrea, K. J. Mach, G.-​K. Plattner, M. Tignor, S. K. Allen, J. Boschung, A. Nauels, Y. Xia, V. Bex, and P. M. Midgley (eds), Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Isendahl, C., and Smith, M. E. (2013). Sustainable agrarian urbanism: the low-​density cities of the Mayas and Aztecs. Cities 31: 132–​143. Isendahl, C., Sánchez, W., Calla, S., Irahola, M., Salvatierra, D., and Ticona, M. (2013). Archaeology’s potential to contribute to pools of agronomic knowledge: a case of applied agro-​archaeology in the Bolivian Yungas. In M. I. J. Davies and F. Nkirote M’Mbogori (eds), Humans and the Environment: New Archaeological Perspectives for the Twenty-​First Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 135–​152.

Applied Archaeology in the Americas    457 Kawa, N. C., and Oyuela-​Caycedo, A. (2008). Amazonian Dark Earth: a model of sustainable agriculture of the past and future? International Journal of Environmental, Cultural, Economic and Social Sustainability 4(3): 9–​16. Kirch, P. (2007). Hawaii as a model system for human ecodynamics. American Anthropologist 109(1): 8–​26. Kolata, A. L., and Ortloff, C. (1989). Thermal analysis of Tiwanaku raised field systems in the Lake Titicaca Basin of Bolivia. Journal of Archaeological Science 16(3): 233–​263. Kronik, J., and Verner, D. (2010). Indigenous Peoples and Climate Change in Latin America and the Caribbean. Washington, DC: World Bank. Laffoon, J. E. (2013). Paleomobility research in Caribbean contexts: new perspectives from isotope analysis. In W. F. Keegan, C. L. Hofman, and R. Rodríguez Ramos (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Caribbean Archaeology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 418–​435. Lane, D., and Watson, P. (2010). Managing adaptation to environmental change in coastal communities: Canada and the Caribbean. 11th Annual Conference of the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies (SALISES), St. Augustine Campus, University of the West Indies, 24–​26 March, St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago. Lane, D., Mercer Clarke, C., Forbes, D. L., and Watson, P. (2013). The gathering storm: managing adaptation to environmental change in coastal communities and small islands. Sustainability Science 8(3): 469–​489. La Torre-​Cuadros, M. A., and Islebe, G. A. (2003). Traditional ecological knowledge and use of vegetation in southeastern Mexico: a case study from Solferino, Quintana Roo. Biodiversity and Conservation 12(12): 2455–​2476. Lefale, P. F. (2010). Ua ‘afa le Aso Stormy weather today: traditional ecological knowledge of weather and climate—​the Samoa experience. Climatic Change 100: 317–​335. Lombardo, U. (2010). Raised fields of northwestern Bolivia: a GIS based analysis. Zeitschrift für Archäologie Auβereuropäischer Kulturen 3: 127–​149. Magrin, G., Marengo, J., Boulanger, J.-​P., Buckeridge, S., Castellanos, E., Poveda, G., Scarano, F., and Vicuña, S. (2014). Central and South America. In V. R. Barros, C. B. Field, D. J. Dokken, M. D. Mastrandrea, K. J. Mach, T. E. Bilir, M. Chatterjee, K. L. Ebi, Y. O. Estrada, R. C. Genova, B. Girma, E. S. Kissel, A. N. Levy, S. MacCracken, P. R. Mastrandrea, and L. L. White (eds), Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Part B: Regional Aspects. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1499–​1566. Mangini, A., Blumbach, P., Verdes, P., Spotl, C., Scholz, D., Machel, H., and Mahon, S. (2007). Combined records from a stalagmite from Barbados and from lake sediments in Haiti reveal variable seasonality in the Caribbean between 6.7 and 3 Ka BP. Quaternary Science Reviews 26(9–​10): 1332–​1343. Mercer, J., Kelman, I., Alfthan, B., and Kurvits, T. (2012). Ecosystem-​based adaptation to climate change in Caribbean small island developing states:  integrating local and external knowledge. Sustainability 4: 1908–​1932. Mol, A. A. A. (2013). Studying pre-​Columbian interaction networks: mobility and exchange. In W. F. Keegan, C. L. Hofman, and R. Rodríguez Ramos (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Caribbean Archaeology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 329–​346. Newsom, L. A., and Wing, E. S. (2004). On Land and Sea: Native American Uses of Biological Resources in the West Indies. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press. Oreskes, N., and Conway, E. M. (2010). Merchants of Doubt. New York: Bloomsbury Press.

458    Jago Cooper and Lindsay Duncan O’Shea, J. (1981). Coping with scarcity: exchange and social storage. In A. Sheridan and G. N. Bailey (eds), Economic Archaeology:  Towards an Integration of Ecological and Social Approaches. BAR International Series 96. Oxford: Archaeopress, 167–​183. Pendergast, D., Graham, E., Calvera J., and Jardines, M. J. (2001). Houses in the sea: excavation and preservation at Los Buchillones, Cuba. In B. A. Purdy (ed.), Enduring Records:  The Environmental and Cultural Heritage of Wetlands. Oxford:  Oxbow Books,  71–​82. Pendergast, D., Graham, E., Calvera, J., and Jardines, M. J. (2002). The houses in which they dwelt:  the excavation and dating of Taino wooden structures at Los Buchillones, Cuba. Journal of Wetland Archaeology 2: 61–​75. Puig Gonzales, M. A., Betancourt Lavastida, J. E., and Cedeño, R. A. (2010). Fortalezas frente a Huracanes. La Habana: Editorial Cienifico-​Técnica. Renard, D., Iriarte, J. Birk, J. J., Rostain, S., Glaser, B., and McKey, D. (2012). Ecological engineers ahead of their time: the functioning of pre-​Columbian raised-​field agriculture and its potential contributions to sustainability today. Ecological Engineering 45: 30–​44. SAA (Society for American Archaeology) (2008). Recommended Model Curriculum: Masters in Applied Archaeology. Committee on Curriculum Society for American Archaeology, May. . Samson, A. V.  M. (2010). Renewing the House:  Trajectories of Social Life in the Yucayeque (Community) of El Cabo, Higüey, Dominican Republic, AD 800–​1504. Leiden: Sidestone Press. Santos, G. M., and Antonini, Y. (2008). The traditional knowledge on stingless bees (Apidae:  Meliponina) used by the Enawene-​Nawe tribe in western Brazil. Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine 4: 19. Schmidt, M. J. (2013). Amazonian Dark Earths: pathways to sustainable development in tropical rainforest? Boletim do Museu Paraense Emilio Goeldi. Ciências Humanas 8(1): 11–​38. Schmidt, M. J., and Heckenberger, M. J. (2009). Amerindian anthrosols:  Amazonian Dark Earth formation in the Upper Xingu. In W. I. Woods, W. G. Teixeira, J. Lehmann, C. Steiner, A. Winkler Prins, and L. Rebellato (eds), Amazonian Dark Earths: Wim Sombroek’s Vision. London: Springer, 163–​191. Schwartz, S. B. (2015). Sea of Storms: A History of Hurricanes in the Greater Caribbean from Columbus to Katrina. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Smith, M. E. (2010). Sprawl, squatters and sustainable cities: can archaeological data shed light on modern urban issues? Cambridge Archaeological Journal 20(2): 229–​253. Smith, M. E. (2012). The role of ancient cities in research on contemporary urbanization. UGEC Viewpoints 8: 15–​19. UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme) (2008). Climate Change in the Caribbean and the Challenge of Adaptation. Panama City: UNEP Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean. Valcárcel Rojas, R. (2002). Inundaciones y Sociedad Aborigen en el Territorio de los Municipios Mayari y Sagua de Tanamo. Holguin: Departamento Centro, Oriental de Arqueologia, 1–​17. Valcárcel Rojas, R., Cooper, J., Calvera Rosés, J., Brito, O., and Labrada, M. (2006). Postes en el mar: excavación de una estructura constructiva aborigen en Los Buchillones. El Caribe Arqueólogico 9: 76–​88. Watson, A., Alessa, L., and Glaspell, B. (2003). The relationship between traditional ecological knowledge, evolving cultures, and wilderness protection in the circumpolar north. Conservation Ecology 8(1): 1–​13.

Chapter 24

Indigenou s Technol o g i e s , Archaeol o g y, a nd Rural Devel opme nt i n the An de s Three Decades of Trials in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru Alexander Herrera

Introduction Tapping the wealth of the Andean past with the intention to effect national development is a desire that is nearly as old as the Andean republics themselves. While it can be traced back to the publication of Antigüedades Peruanas by Mariano Eduardo de Rivero in 1827, the idea only gained momentum a century later through the work of engineer and indigenist historian Alberto Regal Matienzo (e.g. 2005 [1970], 2009 [1936]). During the last two decades of the twentieth century, and inspired by the tenets of Latin American Social Archaeology, knowledge derived from archaeological research and agro-​archaeological experiments in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru, was forcefully deployed in projects aimed at benefiting rural communities. By the turn of the millennium, hundreds, possibly thousands of hectares of terraced, raised, and other types of fields had been ‘recuperated’ across the Andes (see Kendall and Drew, Chapter 22), and domesticated camelids reintroduced to areas marked by local extinctions centuries ago. Most of these herds have withered and the vast majority of field systems lie fallow indefinitely (Fig. 24.1). Yet indigenous technologies continue to inspire rural development projects, now intended to help people living in poverty in mountains adapt to glacial retreat and global climate change (see Kendall and Drew, Chapter 22).

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Figure 24.1  The experimental raised fields at Chuqñaquta (Huata, Puno, Perú) have lain fallow since 2003. Photo: Alexander Herrera 2007.

This chapter critically reviews this development trend: the recovery of indigenous technologies through the rehabilitation or reconstruction of their material aspects as inspired by archaeological understandings. State and non-​governmental organization (NGO) interventions aimed at combating extreme poverty through strengthening sustainable food production and local identities—​in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru—​are drawn upon as case studies. In a way, it is a critical synthesis of past efforts to effect development—​often vaguely defined—​through applied archaeology; a genealogy of the intentions to effect development by recourse to indigenous technologies, the practices deployed to this effect, and the consequences of each development cycle. The focus of each of these interwoven discussions is on the role of archaeology and archaeologists within the development process. Encounters, appropriations, and resignifications that underlie indigenous forms of ‘research and development’ as well as experiences of community-​based rehabilitation are drawn upon for contrast, to show the breadth of practices and beliefs structuring technological practices, and choices in the Andes today. The top-​down, assistentialist interventions of the 1980s and 1990s based on social handouts are of course very different from traditional agricultural practices and experiments, such as currently deployed by campesino (smallholder) peasant communities to address the shift in ecological zoning forced by global warming. In the context of recolonization of the high altitude areas from which native populations were forcibly resettled in the 1570s, disused canals, terraces, dams, corrals, and other elements of broader production systems are increasingly coming to the attention of campesino families and communities, as well as

Indigenous Technologies, Archaeology, and Rural Development    461 field archaeologists. Sometimes this material heritage is used by individuals, communities, NGOs, or state bodies intent on expanding, intensifying, or diversifying agricultural practices. Concrete canals, sprinklers, pipes, and valves may be adapted to suit traditional techniques and counter the migration-​driven scarcity of collective labour, giving rise to hybrid ‘green and grey’ technologies (i.e. solutions that combine conventional technology with those designed to be environmentally sustainable). Occasionally through their field research or experiments, archaeologists become directly or indirectly involved in these processes (see Kendall and Drew, Chapter 22; cf. Spriggs, Chapter 20). Archaeologists and anthropologists, as well as agronomists and economists engaged in rural development projects, tend to share the roots in modernism that shape the visions of progress that crystallize when intentions to develop become development practice. Their roles within the development process have seldom been critically addressed, however (see Mosse, 2006). Shedding the innocence of technological determinism and the uncritical application of technology, described as somnambulism by Pfaffenberger (1988), may also increase awareness of the issues at stake, help us learn from past mistakes, and open more promising horizons for archaeological practice in rural development. In the following, therefore, the place and possibilities for an archaeological practice grounded in the indeterminacy of technological possibilism are explored for each of the three phases or moments shaping development processes: intentions, practice, and consequence. It is argued that the limited success of applied archaeology in the twentieth-​ century Andes was not due to the reinvention of indigenous knowledge (Swartley, 2002) but to a fetishized conception of indigenous technology (Herrera, 2011: 18–​29). Technology is defined here in an anthropological sense (Dobres and Hoffmann, 1999; Ingold, 1997; Lemmonnier, 1993; Pfaffenberger, 1992) as bodies of practices embedded in networks of historically sedimented sociality woven around things and places, associated with specific cultural knowledges, and tied to local geological, climatic, and/​or ecological conditions. The fetishization of technology (Hornborg, 2014), in turn, refers to the processes whereby particular material or immaterial technical elements are extracted, distilled, or otherwise taken from sociotechnical networks with the intention of transforming them into commodities. As used here, the concept of indigenous technology seeks to recapture a totality: the simultaneous production of things and meanings through technological choices (Lechtman, 1978, 1999, 2007; Pfaffenberger, 1992) anchored in situated and historically contingent cultural values. The shift between regimes of value inherent to the processes sketched here brings to the fore the political dimensions of isolating particular technical elements or ‘packets’ amenable to mercantile appropriation.

Unravelling Development In most archaeological descriptions and analyses of change, development is a structuring element that articulates narratives about the transformation of societies, political economies, and the relationship between peoples and landscapes. These narratives or

462   Alexander Herrera reconstructions are built around diverging views on materiality and the past. Development has manifold meanings which have evolved through time, and it seems pertinent to review the historical roots of the concept of development in eighteenth-​century Europe to better understand its genealogy in archaeology, and reflect upon its role in the formulation of intentions as well as within current Development practice (the use of a capital letter for ‘Development’ being used here to distinguish the process of historical change through time—​referred to here without a capital letter—​from the policies and practices intended to improve the social and economic standing of others). This discussion is necessary to then address the question: Can an applied archaeology mitigate the negative impacts of the advance of capitalism? Since the seventeenth century, modern formulations of development are closely related to broader preoccupations about the search for a better order for the state (Cowen and Shenton, 1996: 12–​18). The liberal doctrine of progress, a set of beliefs structured around the possibility of unending advance or ascent that emerged from the later Industrial Revolution, liberated progress from the classical analogy between organic processes of growth, death, and reproduction, and the ‘natural’ progress inherent to the vital cycle of a society, which moulded older meanings of development. The doctrines of progress and development differ in that the modern meanings of Development—​since Adam Smith—​delegate intentionality to agents, specialists, or technocrats entrusted with ‘Developing’ the (economic) capacities of others. For archaeology, as well as the modern doctrines of development within which it operates, the act of delegating in trust holds a fundamental position (Wylie, 2005). It relates an intention to effect Development mediated by the state (Cowen and Shenton, 1996: ix–​x, 12–​16) to a process of change, i.e. modernizing interventions designed to improve the lives of people perceived as being disadvantaged. The teleology inherent to the idea of unravelling that which is already pre-​formed (albeit enveloped) articulates this relationship. It also remains an integral part of archaeology’s evolutionist baggage inherited from the Enlightenment and moulded by the modern idea of progress (Childe, 1944; Ingold, 1986; for the Andes see Herrera, 2011: 25–​32). After the end of the Cold War and especially after the neoliberal turn of the 1990s, archaeologists across the globe began to challenge the traditional disciplinary boundaries that limited it to the study of the past, to include critical reflection on the role of the discipline in current discourses of power (e.g. Gnecco, 2004; Haber, 2004; Hamilakis, 2007; Kehoe, 1998; Shanks and Tilley, 1987). Core issues of these and other self-​critical, reflexive studies have included the production of the past in the present and how different veins of interpretation and the practice of archaeology itself have often been closely related to colonial and imperialist or nationalist discourses (Díaz-​Andreu, 1999; Lumbreras, 1974; Trigger, 1984; see also McGuire and Navarrete, 1999; Patterson, 1984). In Latin America (Navarrete, 2006; Politis, 1992, 2003; Verdesio, 2006) the discussion has arguably gone furthest. As part of a broader intellectual project aimed at rehabilitating subjugated knowledge (Castro-​Gómez, 1996; Dussel, 1999; Mignolo, 1995) different authors have more

Indigenous Technologies, Archaeology, and Rural Development    463 recently questioned the hegemonic temporality that constitutes the arkhaios, as much as the modes of rationality that uphold the logos that mobilize archaeological practice (e.g. Gnecco, 1999, 2004; Haber, 2004, 2013). The incremental, naturalized notion of development as evolution that prefigures the disciplinary practice of archaeology tends to reproduce a complex set of contradictions about the concept. In essence, it tends to conflate intentions to effect change, with the process of transformation itself. This includes the policies and laws that aim to (re)produce such processes, as well as the effects of Development policies, in other words, the results of the interplay of three different stages within singular development processes. Through its naturalization as neutral change or positive progress, the concept of development helps obscure the criss-crossing desires and strategies of conflicting power and interest groups shaping the hegemonic discourse of Development as well-​meaning capitalist economic practice (Escobar, 1995, 1997, 1999; Sachs, 1991). Archaeologists tend to now assume many of the critiques laid out here, but their positions vis-​ à-​ vis the concept of development in Andeanist archaeological discourse do not tend to be particularly critical of narrow legalistic definitions of archaeological heritage in particular, nor of Development discourse in general (e.g. Valle Álvarez, 2010). Immersed in disciplinary tasks sustained by the testimonial or scientific valuation of national pasts (Herrera, 2013), many across Latin America openly call for policies that value the archaeological heritage (puesta en valor) without finding it necessary to ask how heritage (whose heritage?) should be valued, what for, and specially by and for whom (Valle Álvarez, 2010: 11; cf. Gonzales Panta, 2010). Rather, there is a tendency to promote the institutionalization of custodial practices about specific classes of objects and monuments (‘archaeological’) that may allow the securing of institutional work opportunities for trained professionals, without questioning the violence—​physical, structural, and epistemic—​inherent in the selective appropriation of elements of ‘the past’ to buttress and maintain the dichotomies (developed/​ undeveloped, scientific/​ irrational, rich/​ poor, urban/​ rural, and indigenous/​mestizo) that underlie diverging doctrines of Development (sensu Cowen and Shenton, 1996). The political promises to effect social change through ‘applied archaeology’ policies are bets on power based on the credo of stewardship (Wylie, 2005); a concept whose varying definitions are based on ‘a relationship that denotes responsibility for taking care of something for someone else’ (Hollowell and McGill, 2014: 366). Archaeology has thus relied heavily upon the value ascribed to the materiality of the past as historical testimony that has fed national mythologies since decolonization began in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The concept of heritage has played a key role in institutionalizing, stabilizing, and normalizing discourse about the past (Gnecco, 2004). Yet the legal process of transforming things and places (and landscapes) into heritage (patrimonialización) hinges upon the idea that the distance between people in the present and the material and immaterial aspects of reality ‘from the past’, requires a bridging mediation. Human landscape modifications (Lumbreras, 2000),

464   Alexander Herrera agrobiodiversity and the traditional practices and social organization of indigenous and descendant populations that maintain them, uncomfortably fit the heritage moulds described earlier. In practice the relationship between Development and archaeological processes hinges upon a shifting set of interrelated historical and ecological factors that involves objects, places, landscapes, and ecologies as well as histories, traditions, and ways of knowing. Through their constitutive images, models, and materials, cultural histories articulate with development politics at local, national, and global scales. Though still dominant, nationalist cultural histories have begun to compete more strongly with valuations—​and discourses about valuation—​that emphasize the mercantile potential of specific aspects of the past in a globalized world. The impact of the surge in extractive industries and the exogenous/​endogenous dialectics shaping the dynamics of globalization as well as the spread of neoliberal economic thinking across the twenty-​first-​century Andes can hardly be over-​emphasized (Arocena and Senker, 2003; De Souza Santos, 2010; Escobar, 1999). This serves to drive the changing emphases in the hegemonic discourse of Development, from national to global scales, because these extractive industries or commercial undertakings are themselves also often referred to as ‘development projects’ (e.g. ‘housing developments’), no doubt itself a deliberate invocation of the notion of development as progress and improvement. Moreover, these ‘developments’ have created a steeply growing number of employment opportunities for hundreds of professional archaeologists. In the mining and tourism industries and the construction sector, archaeologists often assume the role of facilitators of these ‘developments’ (Haber, 2013). The discipline is increasingly challenged, on the one hand, by the mounting contradictions forced by the destruction of material heritage resulting from construction or extractive processes and the mandatory preservation of material culture. The political pressure exerted by indigenous movements and anti-​mining mobilizations, on the other hand, shows how the practice of archaeology often acts in favour of state and transnational interests. I argue that the most recent pulse of globalization in the Andes, heralded by the signing of transnational Trade Promotion Agreements, has helped the mercantile valuation of heritage—​the oldest of all forms of relating to the past of the colonized other (Gnecco, 2004; Gosden, 2004)—​reach a new zenith. This context has helped hone the mercantile strategies deployed by national and transnational agents wishing to generate economic development through the sale of services around archaeological heritage, including agricultural production. In order to address some of the issues raised here I will next assess three decades of achievements and failures in the application of archaeology to ‘recover’ ‘ancient’, ‘lost’, or ‘forgotten’ technologies. Though not quite an ethnography of archaeological development practice, field research did include visits to archaeological sites produced by applied archaeology projects in Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru as well as on-​site interviews with stakeholders, including archaeologists, agronomists, and campesinos. These were undertaken in 2007 as part of a research project funded by CLACSO under its Open Depts of Latin America call.

Indigenous Technologies, Archaeology, and Rural Development    465

Archaeology and Rural Development: The First Wave The deep history of cultural and environmental transformations shaping Andean landscapes stands testimony to the autochthonous creation of complex forms of landscape management, across ecological gradients and integrating multiple watersheds in highly dynamic settings. Traditional farming, herding, and agroforestry include a broad array of water harvesting, slope modification, and fertility enhancing practices which integrate European and indigenous elements and practices (e.g. Gade, 1992). Adaptation and reuse of relic canals, fields, and reservoirs for agricultural production continues to be one of the many strategies deployed by Andean communities and families to produce and subsist under challenging social and environmental conditions. As mentioned at the outset, the intention to effect development by recourse to the past in Latin America is nearly two hundred years old. In the throes of the mestizo struggle to break from colonial power in the early nineteenth century, a new, ‘enlightened’ relationship with the past was envisioned, a desire that remains symbolized by the shining suns embroidered on the flags of Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Uruguay (Molinié, 2004). This hybrid allusion to enlightened reason and to Inti, the tutelary solar deity of the Inca, appears on many other American flags and blazons, and serves to illustrate that Enlightenment thinking still drives attitudes towards the past. Traditionally, the place of archaeology in Latin American modernity has been by the production of the cultural histories that feed national pasts. The intention to effect development on the basis of scientifically validated interpretations of technical elements distilled from indigenous knowledge (Agrawal, 2002; Sillitoe, 1998) is, in contrast, only decades old. Despite its novelty, and even though local archaeologists are still divided on whether such endeavours have a place in disciplinary practice at all, Andeanist archaeologists have amassed considerable experience in rural development applications (Morlon et al., 1982; Restrepo Archila, 2004; Valdez, 2006). In the foreword of one of the first volumes to put the reconstruction of indigenous infrastructure and the study of traditional agriculture forward as a strategy for policy building, the Development Financing Corporation, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and UNESCO coincide in challenging archaeology: the progress of agriculture is still closely linked to the values developed by pre-​ Hispanic Andean man [sic]. From this perspective, the rescue of this cultural heritage and the recuperation of the autochthonous technologies that are a part of this inheritance is clearly a form of development in the broadest sense. (UNDP et al., 1982: 7, author’s translation)

Archaeological research into ancient reservoirs, terraces, and raised field systems since the 1970s (see de la Torre and Burga, 1986; Morlon et  al., 1982; Ravines, 1978;

466   Alexander Herrera Regal Matienzo, 2005 [1970]) was largely driven by questions about modes and relations of production, and preceded the experimental deployment of archaeological knowledge about traditional and indigenous farming technologies. In the Guayas region of Ecuador (Marcos, 2004), the Titicaca basin and, more recently, in the highlands of Cusco and Abancay (Kendall and Drew, Chapter 22; Kendall and Rodríguez, 2010), these have given way to projects centred on improving farming, but there has also been a drive, since the 1990s, to repopulate the highland puna grasslands of northern Peru with camelids (e.g. CEDEP, 1996, 1997a, 1997b). The first wave of rehabilitation projects—​ focussed on the raised fields of the Lake Titicaca Plateau in the mid-​1980s—​marked a shift from archaeological study and discursive appropriation of past achievements to the drafting of rural development policy, by way of experimental archaeology.

Towards an Archaeology of Rehabilitation In 1981 experimental archaeology was initially deployed in Peru to address assumptions about the sociopolitical context and productivity of raised fields (Erickson, 1992, 1996). This type of anthropogenic landscape modification, which makes seasonal floodplains farmable, is found in different patterns across lowland and highland floodplains, from the Guyanas to eastern Bolivia. Larger patches tend to be visible from the air, as James Parsons noted in the 1960s (Parsons, 1969; Parsons and Bowen, 1966; see also Denevan, 2001: 230), though there are difficulties in distinguishing causeways, ponds, and raised fields without ground-​truthing. A conservative estimate of their total extent is one million hectares, a figure comparable to that of terraces on Andean slopes (for a preliminary map see Herrera, 2011: figure 1). These estimates are likely to rise, however, as new areas are identified and ground surveys conducted to define the extent of these and other indigenous and traditional systems, such as farming in receding seasonal qocha (lagoons) (Flores Ochoa and Paz, 1983, 1984; Flores Ochoa et al., 1996), sojja and kancha (walled field systems), amuna (run-​off harvesting) (Apaza et al., 2006), and sunken gardens (for an overview see Morlon, 1996). While some raised fields on the high plateau of Lake Titicaca (c.3,800 m.a.s.l.) date back to the first millennium Bc (Erickson, 1996), most appear to have been in use during the first millennium Ad. Crucially, there seems to be no evidence of use at the time of the European conquest, except in the Caribbean (Rostain, 1991, 2008, 2012). Lacking ethnohistoric and ethnographic reports, archaeologists have assumed that raised field technology was ‘lost’ or ‘forgotten’ and got on with dating particular systems, often seeking correlations with political and ecological factors that may have led to their establishment and abandonment (e.g. Bandy, 2005; Delgado, 2002; Denevan and Mathewson, 1983; Erickson, 1996, 1992; Erickson and Chandler, 1989; Kolata, 1996; Stemper, 1993; cf. Denevan 2001: 256: fig. 13.1; Valdez, 2006).

Indigenous Technologies, Archaeology, and Rural Development    467 The harvests from the first experimental fields—​camellones in Spanish, waru waru in Quechua, and suko kollu in Aymara—​were plentiful. After first trials near Huatta, a larger, systematically monitored 5 ha set of fields was established at the Illpa research station of the National Institute for Agriculture Research (INIA), under the auspices of archaeologist Elías Mujica and agronomist Mario Tapia (Erickson, 1992). Potato yields up to 40 per cent above the average on the surrounding plains and slopes were achieved, precisely at a time when a series of extreme climatic cycles impacted local food production: the El Niño–​Southern Oscillation (ENSO) event of 1982 followed by the ensuing drought of 1983, and the floods of 1985–​1986 (UNEP, 1997). Agronomic validation of the high productivity of a ‘forgotten’ agricultural technology spurred agronomists, archaeologists, and geographers to take the step from research to development policy. During the final two decades of the twentieth century, over a dozen NGOs and Development agencies advanced raised field reconstruction projects at the north-​west and south-​east ends of the Lake Titicaca Plateau on ever more ambitious scales. Their common aim was to address rural poverty through an extensionist model of rural development: raising campesino incomes by increasing surplus production for sale on the market using raised field technology. The vast majority of reconstructed fields on the Altiplano took on Clark Erickson’s interpretation of excavation results. His reconstructions provided the blueprint for the experiments at Chuqñakuta and Illpa, and these, in turn, provided the basis for subsequent extension projects. In the words of the influential agronomist Alipio Canahua: ‘agronomists learned to pray by Clark Erickson’s trapeze’, meaning that they mechanically replicated raised field profiles based on reconstructed cross-​sections derived from stratigraphic interpretation of a handful of excavation trenches, rather than understanding and creatively adapting technical principles. By 1989 the Inter-​ institutional Waru Waru Project (PIWA), an offshoot of the National Development Institute (INADE), had begun centralizing disparate raised field construction projects in Peru and aimed to articulate efforts with similar Bolivian projects as part of the binational Lake Titicaca Special Project (PELT). By 1999 applied archaeology had become fully integrated in official rural development policy in both Bolivia and Peru. Estimations of the total area of raised fields rebuilt across the Peruvian Altiplano vary between 300 ha in total (Erickson, 1996) to 2,006 ha (Enríquez Salas et al., 2000). Canahua (personal communication, 2007)  considers 470 ha a reasonable estimate. PIWA documented its efforts in a dozen titles covering the economics of raised field cultivation, construction principles, field microclimatology, soil and water management, the effect of incentives on the adoption of raised field technology, perspectives on gender, and specific indigenous crops such as maca (Lepidium meyenii), kiwicha (Amaranthus caudatus), and kañiwa (Amaranthus pallidicaule) (e.g. Berastain, 1999; Cari Choquehuanca and Camacho Arce, 1992; Enríquez Salas et al., 2000; García Chire and Fernández Valdivia, 2000; PIWA, 1992, 1994, 1996, 1999, 2000a, 2000b, 2001), and published the influential translation of Erickson’s dissertation (1996). In Bolivia, Eddy Morales, director of the Bolivian Suka Kollu Programme (PROSUKO)—​PIWA’s PELT counterpart—​summarized a similar programme. It began informally with raised field

468   Alexander Herrera (re)construction in 1992 and achieved similar scope, characteristics, and results as the Peruvian sister-​project. As a consequence of structural adjustment measures in the late 1980s and early 1990s, financing for raised field development projects in the Tititcaca region came to be restructured towards increasing the market value of production. By 2002, however, PIWA, PROSUKO, and most remaining NGOs had abandoned the promotion of raised field technology. Throughout the Puno and Cusco regions there was a shift in focus, away from the material remains of the past and towards the validation of traditional forecasting, manuring and plague prevention practices, and the promotion of indigenous specialists (Yapuchiris or Yachachiq) as local providers of technical assistance services. Governmental rural development policies in the Titicaca area have since continued shifting away from investigating and developing indigenous and traditional forms of agriculture, to focus on large-​scale irrigation, mechanization of production, and fodder production. It has been clearly oriented towards the trade of commodities, such as meat and dairy products, white quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa), and fodder, along the new highways linking Peru, Bolivia, and Brazil. At about the same time, during the successive governments led by agronomist president Alberto Fujimori, state-​sponsored terrace reconstruction projects mushroomed across Peru. These poorly documented efforts were often plagued by undue attention to water provision, soil quality, and seed availability. Like the attempts to reintroduce llamas for adventure tourism and alpacas for wool production in the northern highlands, these appear to have been successful mainly as politically-​driven job creation schemes. In 2015, however, Peru succeeded in securing a multi-​million multilateral loan to modernize the ‘technological package’ of terrace farming as part of a set of measures designed to adapt to climate change (see also Kendall and Drew, Chapter 22). The proposal hinged on export of commodities such as flowers and replacement of chakitaqlla with motocultivators but it was turned down shortly after.

Prospective Reflections Accounts of the failure of the first wave of applied archaeology projects (1982–​2002) by archaeologists and agronomists as well as campesino farmers are instructive to reflect upon pitfalls and potentials of applied archaeology in development practice. The views collected from archaeologists and development planners, both of whom attach great importance to the scientific validation of selected aspects of indigenous technologies, are discussed first. Archaeological experiments in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru showed that particular techniques could help increase the volume of production but it was only through the interpretation of these results in terms of an investment/​returns equation of costs/​yields per hectare that agronomists and planners became convinced (or not) of their (economic) viability. Econometric assessments of the costs per rehabilitated hectare of raised fields, terraces, or kilometre of irrigation canal (e.g. Gonzales de Olarte and Trivelli, 1999) do not, however, help explain why some patches of raised fields

Indigenous Technologies, Archaeology, and Rural Development    469 remain in use, nor why some local communities continue to engage in rehabilitation (see also Kendall and Drew, Chapter 22). In summarizing the main sources of error in raised field reconstructions on the Titicaca Altiplano my interviewees discerned five principal factors, two external and three internal. The ability to effectively coordinate water management at watershed level, however, is an essential aspect of agrarian technologies that address widely varying seasonal availability of water. Raised and sunken fields, jagüey detention ponds, and other indigenous techniques are unlikely to be viable over the long term without functioning mechanisms for integrated, cooperative water management (Apaza et al., 2006; cf. Lansing, 2006). The precision with which drainage and irrigation of raised field blocks may be controlled across the year depends on considerations of flow direction and speed that anticipate inter-​annual variability in precipitation and subsurface water-​table dynamics. In the Katari River which flows across Pampa Khoani, increased urban pollution from the Bolivian cities of El Alto, Viacha, Laja, and Pucarani became a direct factor leading to the abandonment of the raised fields rebuilt in the communities of Curila and Chucara (Province of Los Andes, Departament of La Paz). In the Santa Elena Peninsula, wells and water retention or diversion features built by upstream landowners, communities, or local governments, affected the hydraulic balance in downstream areas, adding to the challenges faced by incipient experiments in applied archaeology. While keenly aware of the drying up of external project funding, an external factor that need not be discussed here, many projects appear to have paid insufficient attention to the broader social dimensions of water management. Technical shortcomings within rehabilitation projects, in contrast, constitute internal factors which were explained at length, possibly because the consulted engineers tended to see them as ‘lessons learnt’. The three internal factors identified were the inversion of soil horizons, unfortunate seed selection, and the organization of labour. The high productivity of raised field agriculture is due in part to the manual accumulation, on the ridges of individual fields, of the layers of humus from the surrounding canals, piled up and worked in with organic matter during construction and maintenance. Inattention to soil variability appears to have led to recurrent inversions of deeper soil horizons with low organic and nutrient content, however. When humic layers are buried as a result of digging too deep before turning-​over, or they become mixed with base soils, the ‘double-​humus’ effect may be severely limited. Use of heavy machinery is a practice directly related to the soil horizon inversion problem. It may be partly explained by a focus on scale and political pressure to deliver large extensions of rehabilitated fields quickly. An experiment with mechanical expediency in the rehabilitation of jagüey (detention pond) reservoirs in coastal Ecuador helps draw out some nuances. Jagüeyes consist of long, curving earthworks that guide seasonal run-​off water into anthropogenic depressions (Marcos, 2004). Unlike most raised fields, several hundred jagüeyes on the Santa Elena Peninsula are actively used by local communities (Alvarez, 2004; Marcos, 2004). Mapped onto the regional geology, their location suggests that their builders were well aware of local subsurface hydraulics. Two

470   Alexander Herrera of the jagüeyes visited in 2007 had recently been the subjects of interventions employing heavy machinery by an indigenous organization (PRODEPINE) with the help of engineers from the local university. At Enyamuco mechanical digging and uprooting of trees appears to have ruptured the clayey bottom lining of the reservoir. Like the berm surrounding it, this had been built up over many centuries of periodic maintenance. The consequence was disastrous (Fig. 24.2). At nearby San Javier residents were able to ‘slow down the engineers’ and the intervention was limited to improving the access road and planting trees along it. A third reservoir was found dry, but not quite abandoned. In response to perceived water scarcity—​which is in turn linked to a generalized drop in the water table and associated with industrial shrimp farming—​interventions at La Tarea included the digging of wells. Its name—​literally ‘the task’—​provides a reminder of the laborious maintenance duties which traditionally constitute a more or less festive communal undertaking, or a form of communal punishment for petty crime (Alvarez, 2004). The failure of heavy machinery to solve the collective labour conundrum reveals how an undue emphasis on the material aspects of technology overshadows the multi-​layered social dimensions and rhythms of indigenous technologies. A second set of acknowledged internal problems was the selection of seeds. These were usually provided by the Development organization. Although a broad palette of cultivars was ‘tested’, crop selection became increasingly skewed towards crops with high market value, rather than informed by archaeobotanical evidence. During the 1990s, seed sometimes came to be provided as a loan, and campesinos were expected

Figure  24.2 Failed remodelling of Jagüey reservoir at Enyamuco (Santa Elena, Guayas, Ecuador). Photo: Alexander Herrera 2007.

Indigenous Technologies, Archaeology, and Rural Development    471 to return equivalent amounts after successful harvests. Native crops likely to have been farmed on raised fields in the past, such as bitter potatoes (Solanum jozepzukii), kañiwa, and red and mottled varieties of quinoa (Chenopodium sp.), are generally hardier but have low market values, and were therefore relegated in favour of more broadly marketable cultivars, prominently including fodder crops. Agronomists agreed that regardless of the specific crop palette, these must be flexibly integrated in long-​term strategies for crop rotation that take account of inter-​annual variation in water availability, as well as the shifting seasonal incidence of frost and strong winds. Additionally long fallowing periods may be necessary under agriculturally challenging soil conditions. Monitoring time horizons in the range of decades was thus seen as appropriate, but regarded as impossible given the usual time frameworks of development projects, and the comparatively brief periods of political tenure. The most important source of challenges for the studied rehabilitation projects was broadly acknowledged to be the organization of labour. On the Altiplano, work in the field was typically separated from design and planning, both physically and conceptually. Conception and design of development projects occurred in Spanish or English, with no involvement of local communities. Implementation was guided by two different kinds of field guides: one for local farmers, another for extension agents (individuals employed to promote and manage the construction and operation of the project). The most complete of these guides (PIWA, 2001) provides a telling picture of ‘ideal’ field reconstruction in action. In Figure 24.3 crews of male labourers are seen digging, hacking, and moving soil on isolated blocks of symmetrical, signposted fields built following

Figure  24.3  Labour organization in raised field (re)construction as depicted in decision-​ maker handbook. (taken from PIWA, 2001: 86, with kind permission of J. Villena Soria).

472   Alexander Herrera ‘Erickson’s trapeze’. Though the use of farmhands is widely practised across the Andes, such practices are far removed from traditional, communal farming routines. In contrast to these external interventions, the community-​driven system built in Titijo by the community of Caritamaya (Acora, Puno, Peru) deploys traditional aynuqa crop rotation and sharing practices to articulate high levels of agrobiodiversity in a communal field that can be likened to a living seed bank (Canahua et al., 2002). It is referred to as a reloj solar (sundial) probably because the raised earthworks adapted to the circumference of a seasonally flooded circular qutaña lagoon radiate outward and look in plan like a sun. Somewhere between a qocha and a ridged field system, hydraulic management pivots on the inclination and shifting flow of the main canal. The start of this raised field rehabilitation project, witnessed by the author in 2007, was marked by festively competing teams of men and women using foot-​ploughs, sod-​ breakers, and their hands to work the soil (Fig. 24.4). Before work started, appropriate offerings, divinations, and rituals of respect—​towards pachamama (mother earth) and the ancestors—​were conducted by yatiri religious specialists. In the process, social and climatic conditions were discretely monitored and aspects of local soil structure and ecology assessed. In Caritamaya knowledge about the technical and economic aspects of raised field systems derived from the experiences of the 1980s and 1990s appears to have been more

Figure  24.4  Festive competitive digging in raised field construction at Caritamaya (Acora, Puno, Peru). Photo: Alexander Herrera 2007.

Indigenous Technologies, Archaeology, and Rural Development    473 successfully integrated in the suite of locally available communal production strategies than elsewhere. The ‘lost’ technique became resignified in terms of significant relations with place, as ritualized by yatiris. While the inspiration for the sundial label is ultimately unknown, its manifest intention is also to attract tourists. The community clearly seeks to market this heritage, though its aim seems to be to keep market relations at the margins of the communal aynuqa farming system itself. Cultural practices embedded in the reproduction of seeds and the sharing of food become expressed in particular forms of labour organization, reciprocity, and ritual that reproduce community within the economic framework of interdependent household economies. These contrast markedly with the patron–​client relations underlying labour organization in the raised field projects of the 1980s and 1990s (Fig. 24.3). The internal and external errors highlighted for raised field reconstruction may have become entangled or reinforced each other, but they only represent part of a larger whole. Errors incurred in the process of implementation were compounded by socio-​ theoretical flaws that sit at the transition between the intentions to effect development and development practice itself. In essence, the imposition of agricultural techniques to effect economic development was a consequence of an expanding capitalist market economy. As the last director of PIWA concluded, however, applied archaeology agricultural extension projects were simply not sustainable under present market conditions without exterior inputs (personal communication, 2007). If projects hope to have sufficient impact to draw in experimental replication as a first step towards local appropriation they must first demonstrate their productivity over the course of a full cycle of farming and fallow rotation at the very minimum.

Prospective Practices When asked about raised field reconstructions, the answers of campesinos tended to dovetail with those discussed in the previous section, although funding issues were sometimes coupled to a lack of effective community leadership. The threats to collective management of the lands on which raised fields were built figured far more prominently, however, especially the micro-​parcelling of individual plots and the concurrent difficulties in setting apart areas of the extent required (> 1 ha). A surprisingly bitter local account of the consequences of applied archaeology was encountered at the seminal site of the first experimental raised fields near Huata. A local authority at the district municipality, who accompanied the author on a visit to the long-​ abandoned site of early experimentation, recalled: When [the archaeologist] came he had waru waru made. He has taken two golden calves from Coata. He took them from a pit. The water has entered [the raised fields]. How many people have died [as a result]? (Interview on site, 26 September 2007)

474   Alexander Herrera Clearly this shocking statement must be understood metaphorically and in context since the allegation is factually wrong: ‘golden calves’ are most unlikely to have ever been present at Coata and were surely not found during raised field excavations. The portrayal of raised field construction as an external imposition, however, does correlate with the top-​down coordination that pervaded most rehabilitation projects. That the extraction of ‘godly’ wealth from the earth leads to death is a trope reminiscent of the violent extraction of the human life-​force by pishtaku/​kharisiri demons, an indigenous conceptualization of exploitation widely spread across the Andes (Lane and Herrera, 2006; Morote, 1951; cf. Salazar-​Soler, 1991). In this light, archaeologists are often portrayed as selfish, reckless, and damaging, possibly because their interventions are not perceived as ritually sanctioned. Excavations and experiments in raised field reconstruction may thus be seen as (unintended and well-​meaning) desecration causing a loss of the life-​force of place. The intended meaning may have been largely metaphoric but the sentiment is nevertheless clear. It also contrasts markedly with the lingering memory of successes in experimental archaeology that have had a lasting impact on international development, mainly through the adoption of ‘indigenous knowledge’ and ‘indigenous technology’ in the discourse of multilateral organizations. The principal conclusion from this sketch of the entanglements of archaeology and rural development in the Andes is that the attempted application of indigenous knowledge as a ‘technological package’, through which the monetary yield of campesino families could be raised, did not succeed. A number of internal and external mistakes have been identified as well as conceptual problems, prominently including how heritage is defined and valued. The relationship between archaeology and Development is structured by diverging ideas about the past that constitute distinct historical narratives, as well as by the values ascribed to the material and immaterial aspects of indigenous technologies. Walls, soils, and seeds as well as knowledge surrounding bio-​ indicators, weather forecasting and embodied tool-​use knowledge, and communal property rights, as well as the traditions that uphold communal forms of campesino organization, are usually valued very differently by each group of stakeholders. Both the mercantile and testimonial value of heritage are typically enunciated from the coloniality of power (Lumbreras, 2000; Quijano, 2000) that has characterized the political relations between the state and indigenous communities during the latest phases of Andean modernity (cf. Hernández Asensio, 2013). Modernist mind-​sets and practices that relegate or counter indigeneity (Díaz-Polanco, 2006: 27–31; Solo de Zaldívar, 2000–​2001: 113) permeate the policies of state institutions and transnational organizations, including applied archaeology. As climate change drives a new, second wave of projects inspired in indigenous technologies, policies based on applying knowledge derived from archaeological scrutiny can again hope to mitigate the negative impacts of export dependency, agrochemical abuse, and the erosion of agrobiodiversity. If these can demonstrate learning from past mistakes they may even contribute to indigenous and campesino dignity.

Indigenous Technologies, Archaeology, and Rural Development    475

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PA RT   I V BRID GING THE PAST AND PRESENT

I n t rodu ction Christian Isendahl and Daryl Stump

The scope of applied archaeology—​defined as a branch of the discipline that is explicitly concerned with the application of knowledge about the past generated from archaeological research to address practical problems perceived in the present—​remains controversial and contested both within and beyond the broader field. Arguably, these debates often reflect the wide gamut of diverging views on the link between the pre-​ modern past and the modern present, ranging from one of fundamental otherness to essential sameness, a key issue in anthropological archaeology perhaps best exemplified by the formalist/​substantivist debate on human economic behaviour in economic anthropology (Isaac, 1993). While the intensity of the formalist/​substantivist controversy may have faded to remain a matter of diverging positions, the assumption that knowledge about the past can indeed be practically useful in the present permeates this volume. The global community is currently facing daunting challenges. One important argument for an applied archaeology is that in order to address these challenges scholars, planners, decision-​makers, practitioners, and stakeholders must draw from as complete a knowledge base as possible (Isendahl and Smith, 2013: 132). Archaeological knowledge production is concerned with the critical examination and explanation of the contexts and consequences of human actions, ultimately since at least the emergence of behaviourally modern humans some 75,000 years ago, but particularly since the end of the Pleistocene about 12,000 years ago. In that perspective, without archaeology and cognate sciences, we simply would have no knowledge about the majority of the human experience. While applied archaeologists are fully aware of the range of critical issues involved in archaeological method, theory, and interpretation, they argue that the archaeological knowledge base provides an under-​ utilized resource in informed decision-​making and practice. Outlining a critical applied history, John Tosh (2008) distinguishes three main approaches to apply historical knowledge that are as relevant for a critical applied archaeology: (1) history as difference, e.g. elucidating phenomena in the past that may suggest alternative possibilities to those observed in the present; (2)  history as providing parallels in the past, i.e. analogies that may inform present

484    Christian Isendahl and Daryl Stump phenomena; and (3) history as process, e.g. to build models of long-​term change, or track the complex interactions of sometimes slowly changing variables, or understand the present as contingent on the past. The last point is a staple argument of historical ecology that has been criticized for being a cliché. However, even though references to the past are often made both in political discourse and in the planning sector, these generally focus on the very recent past. It seems that if it is indeed a truism, it is one the significance of which is rarely duly recognized. Applied archaeology contests the marginalization of historical knowledge to address issues in the present. For instance, while context, scale, and detail may vary vastly, several current challenges—​such as food and water security—​are essentially permanent in the sense that all people irrespective of time and place need to address them, or suffer the consequences of failing to do so. Studying the sustainability, resilience, and vulnerability of past solutions to such challenges, whether deliberate or unintentional, will not necessarily offer lessons that can be copied (in fact, they very rarely do), but they will potentially provide new insights and, significantly, added depth of reflection on current affairs. The chapters in this section present a series of complementary approaches to bridge the present and the past. Smith, addressing the timeless challenge of social inequality, suggests a conceptual framework and methodological approach to examine quality of life and prosperity in the past that is partly based on Amartya Sen’s (1993) influential ‘capabilities approach’ in development economics. For applied archaeology, the salient ideas driving Smith’s argument are twofold. First, studying the socioeconomic dimensions of past livelihoods—​inequality, quality of life, prosperity, capabilities, standard of living, and so forth—​can provide useful comparative data that inform our understanding of these issues in the present. Second, to do so effectively (i.e. to bridge the gap between the past and the present), involves the use of concepts and methods that are both applicable in the archaeological analysis of the past and germane for investigating present conditions. As Smith’s chapter lucidly demonstrates, finding common ground requires archaeologists to appropriate and integrate the concepts and methods of other disciplines (regrettably, perhaps, to a much higher degree than vice versa). Internalizing the exogenous, however, continuously enriches the discipline and enables new opportunities to publish with thematic academic journals and other scientific outlets devoted to the dissemination of research results beyond the narrow archaeological field. Such publication strategies are crucial to increase the impact and relevance of archaeology. The two chapters that follow each consider a specific contemporary challenge from an archaeological vantage point, and present examples of different kinds of insights that archaeological knowledge production can generate. These approaches potentially add depth not only of reflection but also of inference on these issues in the present, thus ultimately aiming to broaden the frames of reference in the current sustainability discourse. Addressing the global challenge of freshwater security on the basis of a case study discussing pre-​Columbian Maya water management systems, Isendahl et al. provide some initial observations that resonate in the present, including that diversity of procurement systems provides greater freshwater security,

Bridging the Past and Present     485 that high investments in technology and management increase vulnerability over time, and that local resource abundance increases the risk of mismanagement. Turning to the generic challenge of increasing global urbanization, Sinclair et al. set out an applied historical ecology of urban planning using a cross-​cultural comparative approach drawing on data from pre-​modern cities in the eastern Mediterranean, Mesoamerica, and southern Africa. The chapter shows how such an approach can mine the rich archaeological and historical records of past urban experiences for insightful analogies—​for positive as well as negative cases of difference to present solutions—​and to understand long-​term urban processes. Focusing on applied archaeology’s potential to engage in global change research, Wells emphasizes that the bridge between the present and the past forms a two-​way street: it is not just that scholars of complex adaptive socioecological systems need to extend the temporal frame of analysis further back in time in order to capture a longer trajectory of relevant system dynamics, but archaeologists must also extend their analyses forward in time to link their socioecological reconstructions to contemporary data sets. In a critical applied archaeology, such arguments clearly follow the idea of history as process. Wells emphasizes the need for multi-​and interdisciplinary research and argues that archaeologists can contribute a crucial understanding of culture, power, and history to global change research by drawing on historical ecology and the related fields of political and cultural ecology. Similarly, Tainter and Allen employ a long-​term approach to critical applied archaeology. Illustrated by unrelated case studies they outline a framework that links the evolution of complexity to energy gain, and put forward a series of propositions that encourage further interrogative questions on the challenges and opportunities of long-​ term sustainability. It offers a lucid example of the considerable potential of the historical sciences to inform sustainability concerns in the present. Furthermore, Tainter and Allen’s work serves as a model for formulating and empirically testing generic macro-​ scale heuristic frameworks for explaining the complex social-​ecological dynamics that enables and constrains human action. In that capacity, it is a fitting final chapter of a volume dedicated to critically exploring the potentials of historical ecology and applied archaeology.

References Isaac, B. L. (1993). Retrospective on the formalist-​substantivist debate. In B. L. Isaac (ed.), Research in Economic Anthropology, Vol. 14. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 213–​233. Isendahl, C., and Smith, M. E. (2013). Sustainable agrarian urbanism: the low-​density cities of the Mayas and Aztecs. Cities 31: 132–​143. Sen, A. K. (1993). Capability and well-​being. In M. C. Nussbaum and A. K. Sen (eds), The Quality of Life. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 30–​53. Tosh, J. (2008). Why History Matters. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Chapter 25

Qualit y of L i fe a nd Prosperit y i n A nc i e nt Hou sehol d s a nd C om muni t i e s Michael E. Smith

Successful societies, incidentally, are those societies, that produce the greatest amount of prosperity and well-​being for their citizens, within the limitations imposed by the available resources and technology. (Prak, 2011: 3)

Were peasants in the past better off than their counterparts today? Can we even answer questions like this objectively? Did ancient smallholder farmers have it better or worse than their cousins who laboured on large, centrally administered irrigation systems? Were villages in city-​states more prosperous than those in empires? Why did some past communities last for centuries while others survived only a few years? To address these and other questions about life in the past—​and its potential relevance for life in the present—​archaeologists need to develop methods to measure conditions like poverty and wealth, quality of life (QOL), and prosperity. In this chapter I contribute to this effort by describing a conceptual framework and methodological approach for analysing prosperity and QOL in past agrarian state societies. My focus is not on specific techniques and scales for measuring QOL and prosperity in the past. Instead, I concentrate on theory and concepts to develop a methodological approach for analysing these processes in ancient societies. This line of research is only incipient at present, and given the current state of knowledge it is crucial to devise appropriate concepts that can guide the development of specific techniques of analysis. I view QOL as a concept most applicable at the household level, and prosperity as most relevant at the community level. Although each concept requires its own measures, they

Quality of Life and Prosperity in Ancient Households    487 are linked by a common derivation from Amartya Sen’s capabilities approach to human well-​being.

Quality of Life, Prosperity, and Social Inequality in the Past and Present Prosperity and QOL are part of the wider field of research on social inequality. Inequality is emerging as one of the most pressing topics in the study of both modern and ancient state societies. Archaeologists have neglected inequality for decades, and our conceptual and methodological toolkits—​not to mention our empirical findings in this context—​are almost empty. There is an urgent need for work in this area to document past patterns of wealth and power, poverty and deprivation, social class and mobility. Without this knowledge we will not be able to understand life and social dynamics in past societies, and we will not be able to relate our work to the burgeoning field of contemporary inequality studies. Consider the following debates emerging from research on contemporary inequality. Do high levels of inequality have serious negative impacts on society, as claimed by Wilkinson and Pickett (2009a, 2009b), or do those authors overstate their case (O’Connell, 2010)? Should the poverty and overcrowding in shanty towns be cause for alarm (UN-​Habitat, 2003), or are shanty towns instead positive signs of urban economic growth that drives migration from the countryside (Glaeser, 2011)? Does social inequality persist because of structures of beliefs (Dorling, 2010) or because elites have created the material conditions and social practices that ensure their own prosperity and persistence (Tilly, 1998)? Each of these questions has double significance for the archaeology of ancient state societies. First, archaeologists can use concepts and models from research on these issues to improve our understanding of inequality in the past. This is my task in the present chapter. The second—​and perhaps more important—​kind of significance is that archaeologists can provide comparative data that will improve scholarly understanding of these questions and debates. But if we are to do this, we need to attack the topic of past inequality with concepts and methods that are both appropriate for archaeological data, and also relevant to research on contemporary inequality. If we use idiosyncratic concepts and terms, we hinder the process of linking past and present social dynamics. The following discussions of household-​level quality of life and community-​level prosperity are part of this effort. More work is needed on topics such as the origins of inequality in the distant past (Flannery and Marcus, 2012), objective measurement of past standards of living (Kohler and Smith, 2018; Scheidel, 2010), social class and mobility (van Leeuwen and Maas, 2010), the political dimensions of inequality, and other related issues.

488   Michael E. Smith

The QOL of Ancient Households Recent work in the social sciences and international policy circles has converged around a concept of QOL that includes two components, one economic and the other social or cultural (Phillips, 2006). In the words of economists Joseph Stiglitz, Amartya Sen, and Jean-​Paul Fitoussi (2010: 61), ‘Quality of life is a broader concept than economic production and living standards. It includes the full range of factors that influences what we value in living, reaching beyond its material side.’ This contemporary concept of QOL was pioneered between 1920 and 1960 by rural sociologists working in the United States. These scholars were charged with researching the economic and social well-​being of farm families by various state and federal agencies. By 1940 they had come up with methods of measuring what we call QOL today by focusing on its two constituent parts. They measured the economic component using income and possessions (I discuss their work on possessions in Smith, 1987), and they measured the social component by examining participation in community activities. In the language of social capital theory, participation in community activities falls under the category of bonding social capital. These sociologists used various terms for QOL, including ‘socioeconomic status’ (Sewell, 1940) and ‘standard of living’ (Cottam and Mangus, 1942). In the words of Cottam and Mangus (1942: 178), ‘If cannibalism, nudism, or atheism are common to a particular group they are aspects of the standard of living.’ This sensitivity to cultural variation brings up an important methodological point: while the wealth aspect of QOL may be easy to compare between social units, the potential variability of the social component makes it more difficult to measure. In this chapter I will use the term ‘standard of living’ to refer to the economic component of QOL. Standard of living is measured by wealth or income. In recent decades, the dominant conceptual approach to QOL has been the ‘capabilities approach’ of Amartya Sen (1993, 1999). This approach is part of ‘entitlement theory’ (Sen, 1981), which deals with the consumption choices available to a household given its assets as measured by various forms of capital (Chambers and Conway, 1992). The capabilities approach: conceives a person’s life as a combination of various ‘doings and beings’ (functionings) and of his or her freedom to choose among these functionings (capabilities). Some of these capabilities may be quite elementary, such as being adequately nourished and escaping premature mortality, while others may be more complex, such has having the literacy required to participate actively in political life. The foundations of the capability approach, which has strong roots in philosophical notions of social justice, reflect a focus on human ends and on respecting the individual’s ability to pursue and realize the goals that he or she values; a rejection of the economic model of individuals acting to maximize their self-​interest heedless of relationships and emotions; an emphasis on the complementarities between various capabilities; and a recognition

Quality of Life and Prosperity in Ancient Households    489 of human diversity, which draws attention to the role played by ethical principles in the design of the ‘good’ society. (Stiglitz et al., 2010: 62–​63)

Although Sen basically reinvented the concepts of the rural sociologists (without citing them), his capabilities approach was widely hailed as a conceptual breakthrough in development economics because of its move beyond simple measures of income. It has been implemented as the United Nations Human Development Index (UNDP, 1998), and it forms the conceptual basis for my QOL measures. Table 25.1 shows a set of archaeological indices for the wealth and capabilities components of the QOL at the household level. Two classes of measures—​diversity of possessions and external social networks—​are designed to capture the social or capabilities component of QOL. The latter measure is an example of bridging social capital (networks and connections to outside individuals and institutions). Although many scholars of the role of communities in economic development include bonding social capital (networks within communities, including trust and shared norms) as part of the QOL (Woolcock and Narayan, 2000), I omit this factor because of the difficulty of measuring it archaeologically. I apply these measures to archaeological data in Smith (2016).

Standard of Living Amartya Sen’s concept of QOL has been used most commonly to compare countries (UNDP, 1998), with income as the measure of the wealth component. The concept of ‘household wealth’ is a relatively straightforward and archaeologically feasible proxy for income at the household level (Smith, 1987). Wealth can be defined as, ‘the total of desirable goods, both social and material, possessed by someone or existing in a community’ (Schneider, 1974: 256). Domestic architecture is typically the strongest measure of household wealth in agrarian states (Castro et al., 1981; Sewell, 1940). Several authors have quantified house size data to analyse wealth or standard of living (Morris, 2005; Smith, 1994), but this line of analysis remains rudimentary in archaeology today.

Table 25.1 Household quality of life Component

Indices

Wealth

Standard of living

Capabilities

Diversity of possessions External social networks:     Exchange systems     Style networks

490   Michael E. Smith Research described in Smith (1987) indicates that wealth in durable, portable goods (i.e. the kinds of things excavated by archaeologists in domestic contexts) is highly correlated with total wealth for households in a variety of cultural settings. Recent work by evolutionary anthropologists on the transmission of diverse types of capital or wealth (Smith et  al., 2010) may stimulate archaeological applications. These authors quantify and analyse three types of wealth—​embodied, material, and relational—​in ethnographic small-​scale societies; household wealth is a subset of their material wealth category. One factor that has held back archaeological progress in the analysis of wealth and standard of living is a continuing reliance on the concept of ‘status’. Status has two primary meanings in the social sciences, neither of which provides a good model for archaeological analysis. First, status is often defined as honour or prestige; the status of an individual or household is determined by the subjective evaluations of other people. This usage can be traced back to Max Weber’s work over a century ago, for whom wealth, status, and power were primary dimensions of social inequality. Subjective evaluations of status or prestige are difficult or impossible to document archaeologically, particularly at the household level. The second meaning of status in the social sciences is rank or position in a hierarchy, such as the concept of ‘socioeconomic status’, which is widely used by sociologists (e.g. Bollen et al., 2001). This concept includes several dimensions, most commonly income, education, and occupation. Sociologists use status in this sense either as a general category label for these variables, or else they combine the variables into a single measure for statistical analyses of social data (e.g. Stevens and Featherman, 1981). Again, this is not a promising concept for archaeologists, for whom education and occupation are either irrelevant or unmeasurable in most contexts. But in fact most archaeological discussions of ‘status’ do not adhere explicitly to either of these meanings; rather, in archaeology status is used as a vague catch-​all term that combines wealth and sometimes prestige into a variable with no clear social definition (e.g. Clark, 1986; Díaz-​ Andreu et al., 2006). The implication here is clear: archaeologists would do best to avoid using the concept of ‘status’. We should use measures derived from theory and concepts that have direct applicability for archaeological data on premodern societies, such as wealth or some of the indicators of household capabilities.

Household Capabilities: Introduction In most research on quality of life, the non-​economic aspect is investigated in terms of the opinions of individuals about their well-​being or happiness. Indeed, ‘happiness studies’ is a rapidly expanding field of research (Layard, 2006, 2010). Because archaeologists rarely, if ever, have access to the subjective opinions or emotions of ancient people, we must devise new measures for the non-​economic component, or the capabilities, of past households. Although Sen’s concept of capabilities suggests a rich, contextual approach to QOL, the national-​scale implementation of his concept uses just two rather

Quality of Life and Prosperity in Ancient Households    491 generalized measures:  life expectancy and educational level. I  propose two kinds of measures for the capabilities concept for ancient households: diversity of possessions and access to social networks external to the community; these networks can be either local (links with nearby communities) or distant. High values on these measures would suggest that people were able to exercise choices beyond (or within) the economic realm, allowing them to achieve a ‘good life’ within the context of their particular social and cultural setting.

Diversity of Possessions The link between the diversity of possessions and capabilities focuses on ‘the individual’s ability to pursue and realize the goals that he or she values’ (Stiglitz et al., 2010: 63). The greater the diversity of possessions in a household, the greater is the capability of household members to pursue various goals, or at least to carry out basic activities in more than one way. I have defined this measure informally as the number of different kinds of goods within individual functional categories. For example, in sites I have excavated, objects used in domestic ritual are found at all houses, but some houses have more different kinds of ritual objects than others; similarly, all houses have ceramic serving bowls, but some have a richer collection of categories of bowls (in terms of form and/​or decoration) than others. Whether the diversity of possessions is measured in the stylistic or functional realm (Dunnell, 1978; Hegmon, 1992), higher levels of artefact diversity point to a higher QOL. Beyond this kind of informal measure (numbers of categories), quantitative diversity measures (Kintigh, 1984; Leonard and Jones, 1989) hold promise for measuring the diversity component of capabilities.

External Social Networks External social networks are a measure of household capabilities because they provide social and economic opportunities for household members. The theoretical rationale derives from social network theory (Kadushin, 2011; Sampson, 2004) and social capital theory (Portes, 1998; Woolcock and Narayan, 2000), where network connections have positive value for individuals, households, and societies (Putnam, 2000). ‘Social capital emanates from the idea that relationships can be viewed as a resource and, therefore, may contribute to production just as physical or human capital may contribute’ (Larsen et  al., 2004:  65). Whether or not one accepts the term ‘capital’ as an inappropriate label for the social value of network connections (Bowles and Gintis, 2002; Fine, 2010), the fact remains that network effects are one of the major categories of explanatory mechanisms in history and the social sciences (Little, 2010: 104–​105). For an empirical example, ethnographer Sandra Wallman (2011) studied three matched pairs of contemporary urban neighbourhoods scored on a variety of

492   Michael E. Smith economic and social traits and found that prosperity and success are strongly predicted by the degree of ‘openness’ of a neighbourhood. Those neighbourhoods with more numerous and stronger links to the outside world scored higher on a series of measures linked to economic and social prosperity. In the language of social capital, Wallman’s findings indicate that contemporary urban neighbourhoods are more prosperous when their bridging social capital is stronger than their bonding social capital (Woolcock, 2001). The archaeological application of network connections to the capabilities framework requires a higher level of abstraction than is characteristic of most research on social networks and social capital. I  suggest that archaeological household data can provide evidence for two types of external social networks: exchange systems and style networks. Imported goods are evidence for exchange systems, and style networks are signalled by the presence of locally produced goods that share a style with goods in a geographically distant area. The most promising approach for establishing the archaeological application of these concepts relies on the numerical frequency of imports and foreign-​style  goods. Higher frequencies of such goods signal greater participation in external networks. Networks of long-​distance exchange and stylistic communication typically carry other information and ideas (Munson and Macri, 2009), and this observation provides the rationale for using network connections as a measure of household capabilities. Households with greater participation in external networks have more access not only to imported goods, but also to diverse kinds of information, and this may help them pursue their particular goals and contribute to resilience in situations of change. While it may be tempting to examine the diversity of foreign (or foreign-​ style) goods in a given household context, the number of distant areas represented may not be a good indicator of the number of network connections. For example, a household can have ceramic vessels imported from five different areas, all of which were obtained from a single merchant; this can be viewed as a single network connection or node.

The Prosperity of Ancient Communities My starting point for exploring the concept of prosperity at the community level is a political-​economy approach to the concept of community. Economists Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis articulate this approach, which emphasizes social interactions: By community we mean a group of people who interact directly, frequently and in multi-​faceted ways. People who work together are usually communities in this sense, as are some neighbourhoods, groups of friends, professional and business networks, gangs, and sports leagues. The list suggests that connection, not affection, is

Quality of Life and Prosperity in Ancient Households    493 the defining characteristic of a community. Whether one is born into a community or one entered by choice, there are normally significant costs to moving from one to another. (Bowles and Gintis, 2002: F420)

In this chapter I limit consideration to place-​based communities, including both urban neighbourhoods and discrete small settlements. Although it is sometimes claimed that the advent of online Internet communities will reduce the importance of face-​to-​face residential communities today, research in several disciplines shows clearly that neighbourhoods and other local communities remain crucial social units, both in the lives of members and in the dynamics of cities and regions (Brower, 2011; Forrest, 2008; Sampson, 2012). In the political-​economy approach, communities are seen as distinctive social-​spatial units because of the nature and intensity of their social interactions (Brower, 2011; Ostrom, 1998; Sampson, 1999). Fig. 25.1, adapted from Bowles and Gintis (1998: 6), identifies communities as institutions characterized by enduring and personal social interactions. Institutions based on less personalized interactions include markets and states; see Temin (1980) for a similar scheme that highlights the distinctiveness of communities relative to markets and states. This political-​economy approach to communities has been very productive in a number of disciplines (e.g. Bowles and Gintis, 2002; Ostrom, 1998; Sampson, 2012), largely because it identifies why the community is such an important level of social organization. One of the most detailed models is that of Elinor Ostrom (1990, 1998), illustrated in Fig. 25.2. For Ostrom, the bolded terms and arrows indicate what she calls the ‘core relationships’. Trust, reputation, and reciprocity are able to generate cooperation and positive outcomes for communities because of several community properties, such as small group size and face-​to-​face communication (unbolded labels in Fig. 25.2). Unfortunately, a popular concept of community among archaeologists working on complex societies—​the ‘community as a socially constituted institution’ (Canuto and Yaeger, 2000: 5)—​is incapable of addressing issues like poverty or prosperity. Canuto and Yaeger (2000) adopted a relativist perspective that emphasizes subjective meaning,

Anonymous

Personal

Ephemeral

Enduring

Markets

States

–

Communities

Figure  25.1 Classification of institutions by the anonymity and endurance of their social interactions. Based on Bowles and Gintis (1998).

494   Michael E. Smith A Simple Scenario Information about past actions Small Group +

+

+

+ REPUTATION LEVELS OF COOPERATION

TRUST Face-to-face communication –

+ RECIPROCITY

+

+ Cost of arriving at agreement

NET BENEFITS

–

+

Long time horizon

Low-cost production function

Development of shared norms

– Symmetrical interests and resources

Figure 25.2  Community-​level cooperation model From Ostrom (1998: 15). Reprinted with the permission of Cambridge University Press.

personal identity, agency, and social construction. A decade later this approach had fossilized into a view of the constitution of past social groups through dialogic relations to other subjects as well as the material world [ . . . ] community is a social group with an explicit discursive identity that develops through participation in meaningful practices, at meaningful places, and using meaningful objects. (Canuto and Yaeger, 2012: 702)

The constructivist and relativist underpinning of this approach prevents objective empirical comparisons of social phenomena (Haber, 1999; Mjøset, 2001; Smith, 2017; Tilly, 2008: 4–​5). The Canuto–​Yaeger concept of community is a prime example of an archaeological concept out of step with the social sciences today (Bowles and Gintis, 2002; Chaskin, 1997; Sampson, 2012; Wallman, 2011). Adherence to this kind of relativist and interpretivist approach only serves to isolate archaeological research from the concerns of the contemporary world. I follow sociologists Monica Budowski et  al. (2010) in using Sen’s capabilities approach to define prosperity at the community level:

Quality of Life and Prosperity in Ancient Households    495 ‘Prosperity’ inevitably has material dimensions. Although the term has not found entry into social science dictionaries, ‘prosperity’ in economic thinking has been associated with economic prosperity that eventually provides more choices, richer lives, and an improved quality of life. Sen’s capability approach suggests that (individual) financial well-​being is not enough for prosperity; capabilities are opportunities that individuals have reason to value. [ . . . ] Another perspective of prosperity is tied to the notion of a ‘common good’ balancing both individual and collective responsibility for prosperity (e.g., Catholic Social Thinking); it links structures within time and place that provide conditions for (material and non-​material) prosperity. (Budowski et al., 2010: 275)

While the wealth component of community prosperity can simply be summed from individual household wealth values, the capabilities component will be very different from that of the household level. Most research on contemporary community prosperity uses concepts and measures that are not directly useful for archaeologists—​things like income, community cohesion, employment rates, real estate prices, and crime rates. My translation of the concepts of interaction-​based community and prosperity into archaeological terms is shown in Table 25.2 (see also Smith, 2016).

Sum of Household Wealth The level of wealth or aggregate standard of living in a community can be calculated by summing up the individual wealth levels, or standard of living measurements, of the constituent households as measured for household QOL. An alternative approach is to examine standard of living or well-​being as reflected in the bioarchaeological analysis of human skeletal samples (Steckel, 2008). Most studies of this type rely on samples from community tombs or cemeteries (e.g. Ubelaker et al., 1995), permitting analysis at the community but not the household level. Table 25.2 Community prosperity Component

Indices

Wealth

Sum of household wealth

capabilities

Collective construction projects Stability of residence Population growth Longevity of settlement Resilience to external shocks

496   Michael E. Smith

Collective Construction Projects The collective construction of buildings and monuments is a signal of the prosperity of a community. The rationale for this index comes from the model of communities based on social interaction. In discussing the continuing importance of communities in contemporary society, sociologist Robert Sampson noted that: Local community remains essential as a site for the realization of common values in support of social goods, including public safety, norms of civility and mutual trust, efficacious voluntary associations, and collective socialization of the young. (Sampson, 1999: 247)

I am viewing collective construction projects in ancient states as examples of the social goods discussed by Sampson. In a similar fashion, Bowles and Gintis note that communities are important today because they solve problems and accomplish goals that are not done by governments or markets. The successful completion of a collective construction project can therefore be seen as part of the very success of a community: But the basis for the rise, fall, and transformation of communities, if we are correct, is to be sought not in the survival of vestigial values of an earlier age, but in the capacity of communities, like that of markets and states, to provide successful solutions to assist in solving contemporary problems of social coordination. (Bowles and Gintis, 2002: F433)

For measuring community prosperity, the organizational form of the construction projects is not of primary consideration. Whether the project is organized in a top-​down manner—​using forced labour to build a new temple or palace—​or in a bottom-​up fashion—​with people working together on a local project without central supervision—​ both cases involve collective action to create something that serves the entire community. The social implications of these two forms of organization are quite different, of course, but that should not obscure the direct link between collective projects and community prosperity. This index can be defined in various ways, from simple enumeration of community-​level projects to more complex estimates of labour investment and perhaps organizational form. Archaeologist David Carballo (2013) has begun to explore some of the implications of Bowles and Gintis’s work for understanding ancient construction projects, focusing on the visibility of collective activities and the role of peer monitoring in stimulating cooperative public activities.

Stability of Residence Sociologists and criminologists have shown that residential instability in modern cities is linked to a variety of social problems at the neighbourhood (community) level,

Quality of Life and Prosperity in Ancient Households    497 including higher crime rates, social disorder, poverty, and lowered health outcomes (Boggess and Hipp, 2010; Sampson, 2012; Schieman, 2005). Although the time scales at which archaeologists can study residential stability—​typically on the order of centuries, not years—​are much greater than the time scales in the contemporary literature, it seems likely that similar or parallel social mechanisms may have operated in the past. That is, the negative social impacts on community capabilities and prosperity may be similar at the longer time scale. Sociologists Lyndsay Boggess and John Hipp (2010) describe the causal mechanisms that drive social order and disorder in contemporary cities as follows: The systemic model of neighborhood structure argues that residential stability is strongly related to community attachment and involvement; and that residential stability leads to the formation of social networks, community cohesion, and informal social control. Social expectations, common values, and informal sanctions are therefore transmitted though social ties at the same time that residents develop a cohesive community structure, supervise the neighborhood, and collectively address community incivilities. Neighborhoods with more stability therefore should have lower crime rates while neighborhoods with a more transitory population—​more neighborhood change—​have greater crime and disorder because the higher rates of residential turnover disrupt social networks. (Boggess and Hipp, 2010: 353; in-​text citations have been removed from this quotation)

Archaeologists working on small-​scale societies in the south-​west of the United States have documented very high rates of residential mobility, and population movements are often viewed more as successful adaptive strategies than as negative, disruptive events (Nelson, 1999; Schachner, 2012). But in agrarian states, particularly those located in more productive and secure environmental settings, it is hard not to focus on the negative outcomes of residential instability for communities. Movement often meant the abandonment not only of houses but of associated agricultural and craft facilities, perhaps including nearby installations of landesque capital. Peasants view residential disruption as detrimental to QOL and prosperity. One approach to measuring residential stability is the percentage of houses occupied across chronological periods; if finer-​scale house occupation data are available, those can provide a more detailed picture of the extent of residential stability in the past.

Population Growth Population growth is considered an indicator of success or prosperity in many fields. In ecology, species that increase their numbers and expand their range are judged successful, and in both urban history (Bairoch, 1988) and economic history (North, 1981), growing settlements are considered prosperous and successful. Archaeologists can measure population levels through time to monitor this index of prosperity. Today,

498   Michael E. Smith the relationship between growth and prosperity has been radically transformed to the point where many visions of prosperity and sustainability explicitly exclude high levels of growth (e.g. Jackson, 2009), but this should not blind us to the often positive effects of population growth in past state societies.

Longevity of Settlement Sociologists studying historical data on communes in the United States have used longevity as a measure of community success (Kanter, 1972; Kitts, 2009), as have economists studying resilience and robustness in Midwestern forest communities (Fleischman et al., 2010). My notion of prosperity is similar to the concept of success in this research, which suggests the possibility of using longevity as a measure of community prosperity. For a number of sustainability scholars, longevity is one of the basic components of the concept of sustainability (Patten and Costanza, 1997; Tainter, 2006; see also Tainter and Allen, Chapter 29), a concept related to my notion of prosperity. On the other hand, studies of neighbourhood change have identified cases where certain disadvantaged neighbourhoods have remained in a state of severe poverty for long periods of time, a situation described by the concept of ‘poverty traps’ (Bowles et  al., 2006). Sampson (2009, 2012:  364), for example, discusses patterns of long-​ term stability in the socioeconomic conditions of neighbourhoods in Chicago. Some neighbourhoods have remained in severe poverty for many decades, even a century or more, and thus the simple fact of longevity or persistence of the community in these cases cannot be taken as a measure of prosperity. More research is needed to evaluate the context and meaning of settlement longevity before this can be used as an index of community prosperity.

Resilience to External Shocks My final measure of community prosperity is resilience to external shocks. Geographer Neil Adger (2000: 347) defines social resilience as ‘the ability of groups or communities to cope with external stresses and disturbances as a result of social, political and environmental change’. Rather than viewing resilience as a particular state of a system—​as in the phrase, ‘resilient system’ (Folke, 2006; Redman, 2005)—​I focus on the empirical fact of resilience, documented by the response of a community to an actual external shock. Unlike much work in the field of resilience theory I  am not concerned with identifying the social or ecological conditions that produce a resilient community. Instead, my basic assumption is that the ability to withstand an external shock—​environmental or social—​is a signal that a community is prosperous. While the results of a single shock to a single community can form the basis for a provisional judgement of prosperity, a more informative approach is to compare

Quality of Life and Prosperity in Ancient Households    499 cases using the method of the natural experiment (Diamond and Robinson, 2010). A  natural experiment can be defined as ‘an observational study that nonetheless has the properties of an experimental research design’ (Gerring, 2007: 216). There are various strategies, including comparison of two distinct communities affected by similar shocks, or comparison of the reaction of a single community to different shocks. For example, I  found that three communities that withstood conquest by the Aztec Empire with few changes scored higher in most measures of both household QOL and community prosperity than a community that was more strongly affected by Aztec conquest. In other words, the first three communities were more resilient to external conquest. None of these communities, however, were resilient to subsequent conquest by the Spanish Empire. This finding helps establish the limits of resilience and prosperity in central Mexico. Another example of a natural experiment approach to exploring the relationship between resilience and prosperity is historian Kerstin Höghammar’s (2010) study of the effects of successive earthquakes in the Greek polis of Kos. Needless to say, this measure of prosperity can only be applied when one or more significant external shocks—​and their consequences—​can be documented archaeologically.

The Usefulness of Archaeological Research Much current research under the banner of ‘applied archaeology’ proceeds on a very concrete or empirical level. Studies of ancient farming systems, for example, have led to the revival of such methods among contemporary peasant farmers in the developing world (e.g. Erickson, 1998; Herrera, Chapter 24; Kendall, Chapter 22; Spriggs, Chapter 20). This requires a simple and direct translation of archaeological knowledge into specific modern practices. An alternative approach generates findings at an abstract level, contributing understandings of high-​level concepts such as diversity, vulnerability, and resilience (e.g. Nelson, 2009). At this level of abstraction, the usefulness of archaeology lies not in our specific findings (e.g. artefact distributions or features), nor in their social interpretation (e.g. domestic activities or exchange systems), but rather at the level of general systems concepts. In contrast to these two approaches, the concepts of household QOL and community prosperity operate at an intermediate level of abstraction that matches archaeological research with contemporary concepts and issues in the social sciences (Smith et al., 2012). At this middle level of abstraction, archaeological research contributes to broader societal concerns by adding new and often unique data to social-​science knowledge. Archaeology provides a long-​term perspective on change lacking in other disciplines, and it broadens the samples of social practices, institutions, and processes available for

500   Michael E. Smith comparative analysis. But just how can archaeological findings inform contemporary issues? Although some scholars claim that managers or policy-​makers should and will take archaeological findings into account (e.g. Sabloff, 2008), I am more pessimistic; it seems unlikely that policy-​makers will pay any attention to archaeology (Smith, 2012). Indeed, within the policy world, relevant scientific and social-​scientific evidence typically plays a minor role, and it is not uncommon for policy to be established without any consideration of the relevant research at all (Bogenschneider and Corbett, 2010; Tseng, 2012; Van Langenhove, 2011). Given this situation, I argue that archaeological data can best be of wider use if presented in such a way as to be useful to other social scientists whose fields may, in turn, have greater bearing on present-​day social policies. Our findings can improve the social-​scientific understanding of many phenomena, from households to economies, and if we want to have an impact, archaeologists should strive to make our findings known and used by scholars in other disciplines. Van Langenhove (2011, 2012) and other policy researchers advocate a pro-​active approach for social scientists interested in disseminating their results. The key concept here is ‘translation’, the way research results get translated into useful form (Tseng, 2012). In a paper on the contemporary relevance of archaeological research on urbanism (Smith, 2010), I argue that the successful translation of our findings into usable results will require re-​analysis of our data and the presentation of our results using concepts and measures that match those used by scholars of contemporary society. Otherwise archaeological results will remain ‘locked up’ within the discipline. In this chapter I have attempted to use concepts and methods that can help frame archaeological research on households and communities in terms understandable to other social scientists. For the broad realm of social science, this kind of archaeological research has two kinds of value: it provides additional case studies of households and communities and their patterns of QOL and prosperity; and it provides examples of long-​term changes in households and communities on a scale not possible in most social science disciplines. Archaeologists have developed increasingly detailed reconstructions of ancient life and social dynamics, and a growing number of social scientists are starting to recognize the value of archaeological data on a variety of topics, from inequality to urbanism to food systems. We now need to work on concepts and methods that will allow the ‘translation’ (Tseng, 2012) of our findings into contributions to broader realms of scholarship.

Acknowledgements I thank Christian Isendahl for inviting me to prepare this chapter, and for his editing and guidance. Shauna Burnsilver, Sharon Harlan, Angela Huster, and Juliana Novic provided helpful comments on an earlier draft of this chapter. Some of these ideas were presented as seminars at the Amerind Foundation, the Archaeology Centre of the University of Toronto, and the Museum of Anthropology of the University of Michigan, and I thank colleagues and students at those institutions for useful discussion and feedback.

Quality of Life and Prosperity in Ancient Households    501

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Chapter 26

Applied Per spe c t i v e s on Pre-​C olum bia n Maya Water Manag e me nt Syste ms What Are the Insights for Water Security? Christian Isendahl, Vernon L. Scarborough, Joel D. Gunn, Nicholas P. Dunning, Scott L. Fedick, Gyles Iannone, and Lisa J. Lucero

Introduction Building resilient and socially just water management systems that meet the water security needs of all people is a fundamental global challenge for humanity. We define water security as the situation whereby people have physical and economic access to water of sufficient quantity and quality to meet their physiological needs, including drinking water, water for food production and processing, and water for sanitation. A water management system is the sequence of actions that links water ‘production, processing, distribution, consumption, and waste management, as well as all the associated regulatory institutions and activities’ (Pothukuchi and Kaufman, 2000: 113). Throughout history, the demand for water security and functioning water management systems has been a catalyst of social cooperation as well as a source of human conflict (Scarborough, 2003). The need for designing secure water management systems is urgent since fresh water of adequate quality for human consumption is a finite resource, and it can be argued that we have entered a global post-​peak-​water

Pre-Columbian Maya Water Management Systems    507 scenario with rapidly inflating costs for meeting rising demands on a diminishing supply. Contemporary challenges for resilient water management systems that provide water security are growing at an alarming global rate, with explicit issues not dissimilar to those dealt with by past societies at regional and local scales. Suggesting that scholars, water management engineers, and policy-​makers draw from a wide range of examples, we argue that knowledge gained from archaeological research provides unique insights into the long-​term function and efficacy of water management systems. Our data sets introduce and identify factors that have established water security in the past as well as demonstrate vulnerabilities in different socio-​environmental contexts; contexts frequently concealed from current planners and policy-​makers because insufficient time has elapsed for evaluating these processes. We present a series of water management systems in the pre-​Columbian Maya lowlands that demonstrate significant variation; with this variation being product of the interplay between social, political, and economic factors and hydrological regimes. We outline and contextualize these systems, discuss their efficacy for water security, and conclude with some implications for current concerns.

The Maya Lowlands The Maya lowlands cover about 250,000 km2 within present-​day Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras. Lowland Maya prehistory unfolded over several millennia with the development of state polities, urban centres, long-​distance exchange networks, innovative technologies, and complex resource management systems by the first millennium Bc. Long-​term lowland history suggests a series of broad regional and subregional cycles of growth, decline, and reorganization during the course of the Preclassic (1000 Bc–​Ad 250), Classic (Ad 250–​1000), and Postclassic periods (Ad 1000–​1500); processes in which long-​and short-​term rainfall variation seems to have played an important role (Kennett et al., 2012). Set in a highly heterogeneous tropical environment, the ancient Maya developed a series of water management systems to build water security. Although archaeologists have uncovered several different critical aspects of these systems, few have focused on assessing water security, as we do here. Lowland hydrological regimes share the two basic characteristics of a tropical climate with a pronounced dry season, and a karst limestone geomorphological framework, but how these played out vary significantly. With a pronounced dry season from October to May, wet season precipitation generally follows a south-​east to north-​west gradient of decreasing rainfall, with nearly arid conditions (400 km network of irrigation canals, each measuring 30–​40 metres in length, that supplied irrigation water to various parts of the Jequetepeque Valley. Evidence indicates that not

544   E. Christian Wells all canals were in use simultaneously, suggesting that communities (or factions within them) regulated the flow of water to different parts of the valley through coordinated water scheduling. This kind of flexible agricultural regime allowed some communities to be resilient in the face of environmental change and catastrophe.

Power Archaeological and historical studies of socioecological systems can shed light on how (and why) environmental decision-​making becomes politicized and how (and why) environmental resources become commoditized. For example, in what social, political, or economic contexts are certain resources leveraged for political gain, and what are the short-​and long-​term consequences of these actions for both society and environment? Perhaps of equal importance, to what extent are different subsets of society (arranged by age, gender, ethnicity, class, and the like) able or willing to do anything about these consequences or the actions that generated them? Archaeological investigation of these issues often frames the research in terms of ‘political ecology’, which examines power dynamics surrounding the exploitation of natural resources as well as negotiation of the role of the environment in society, economy, politics, and religion (Robbins, 2011). Power contests among individuals, groups, or even nation-​states (and world systems) of unequal standing are an important theme in recent studies, with special attention focused on conflicts over access to ecosystem services (i.e. natural assets provided by ecosystems, such as the provisioning of food and water or the decomposition of wastes) and the roles and fates of marginalized and vulnerable populations (Hardesty, 2007). Recently, research has included the impacts of land and water degradation as an outcome of power struggles, particularly in research on farming, mining, ranching, fishing, and other lifeways (Fisher and Feinman, 2005). Archaeology has contributed to political ecology studies along a wide range of fronts. In the Maya region of southern Mexico, for instance, there is growing research interest in understanding the role that human–​environmental interactions played in the Classic Maya ‘collapse’ of the ninth century ad. It has been proposed that large-​scale land degradation and increasing demands on ecosystem services during the Classic period (c.ad 400–​800) generated ‘high-​stress environmental conditions’, leaving the region vulnerable to collapse (Turner and Sabloff, 2012). Abandonment of these anthropogenic landscapes further exacerbated soil erosion, leaving vast tracts of the interior of the peninsula transformed in new ways, and ultimately unable to support the population sizes and densities of earlier times (Luzzadder-​Beach et al., 2012). Recently, Nicholas Dunning and colleagues (2012) examined the dynamics of growth and decline among Maya settlements during the ninth and tenth centuries ad in the karst terrain of the Yucatán Peninsula in southern Mexico, with the goal of understanding the complex adaptive cycles that led to the Classic Maya collapse. Multiple palaeoenvironmental proxies indicate that deforestation escalated in the seventh and

Culture, Power, History    545 eighth centuries ad, as populations increased and demand for timber and arable land grew. Around ad 760, the data indicate the first of a series of multi-​year droughts that impacted the lowlands. The marginal quality of soil resources in this area, coupled with the arid conditions, sent Maya cities into violent competition with one another for resources and labour. By about ad 850, many of the cities were abandoned. This pattern did not, however, characterize the entire lowland region. Some areas, such as the Puuc region in the northern lowlands nearer to the coast, were able to delay this process by taking advantage of more fertile soils and domestic cisterns to manage water (Isendahl et al., 2014; Sinclair et al., Chapter 27). Dunning and colleagues argue that the elevated interior areas of the Yucatán Peninsula were more susceptible to rapid collapse and less suitable for resilient recovery than adjacent lower-​lying areas, although these regions later experienced major organizational shifts and abandonment linked to demographic changes in the peninsula’s interior (see also Heckbert et al., Chapter 16; Isendahl et al., Chapter 26). Elsewhere in the Maya region, human–​environmental interactions led to alternative trajectories. Cameron McNeil and colleagues (2010), for instance, interrogate the arguments for socioecological collapse of Classic Maya cities by evaluating sediment cores from lagoons in and around the ancient Maya city of Copan in western Honduras. A commonly accepted cause for the decline is environmental degradation, especially deforestation that accelerated soil erosion. McNeil and colleagues find, however, that Classic period deforestation was most pronounced at Copan around ad 400, when the Maya began to construct the Classic period city, and that local forests rebounded thereafter. With arboreal pollen accounting for 60–​70 per cent of the pollen record at the time of the city’s demise around ad 900, they argue that deforestation and land degradation likely did not play as central a role in the city’s collapse as has been assumed. Their work suggests that the Maya developed and deployed conservation and management strategies for natural resources to adapt to the needs of the city’s growing population (see also Ford and Clarke, Chapter 9), and that social and political factors for the collapse need to be reconsidered.

History Archaeological and historical studies of socioecological systems can map the legacies of environmental decisions over long time spans, helping contemporary groups (farmers, water managers, urban designers, and so forth) understand how today’s ecosystems are the outcome of thousands of years of human–​environmental interaction. For example, what are the short-​and long-​term (i.e. decadal, centennial, millennial) consequences of over-​exploitation of one or more keystone resources at various spatial scales (i.e. household, community, region)? How do conservation and preservation measures enhance or degrade the resource and ecosystem services’ health? Archaeological study of these phenomena is often integrated with ‘historical ecology’, which considers

546   E. Christian Wells human–​environmental relationships over time and space along with the cumulative global effects of these relationships (Balée, 1998). The landscape (instead of the ecosystem) is one of the central concepts that organize research in this domain, because it materializes historical interactions between people and their surroundings and is the locus where those interactions occur with greatest visibility to human populations (Crumley, 1994). In addition, by emphasizing historical contingency and the role of human agency, the reconstruction of historical sequences of human–​environmental interactions can reveal unintended consequences of behaviours and the perceptions that shape them (Kirch, 2005). Archaeology has contributed to historical ecological studies in numerous ways. In northern Amazonia, for instance, there have been a number of recent projects that aim to better understand the long-​term impacts of different farming strategies and technologies on the environment. This body of work juxtaposes culture and agriculture to examine how food production might be intensified while mitigating climate change and conserving biodiversity (DeFries and Rosenzweig, 2010). Recent studies argue that historical contingencies of tropical landscapes render simplistic, single-​solution panaceas insufficient for balancing these objectives. Instead, it has been suggested that place-​based strategies for sustainable land management are needed, and must emerge from integrated, interdisciplinary inquiry into land use history, demographic change over space and time, and other deep-​time biophysical and socioeconomic parameters (Perfecto and Vandermeer, 2010). Doyle McKey and colleagues (2010), for example, investigate human–​environmental relationships on the Guianas coast of Amazonia, where pre-​Hispanic farmers constructed raised-​field agroecosystems with a high degree of physical and biological heterogeneity. When these fields were abandoned at Spanish contact, the mosaic supported by the fields was preserved by ecosystem engineers—​namely ants, termites, and earthworms—​that reduced field erodibility by safeguarding biodiversity. McKey and colleagues show that the pre-​Hispanic anthropogenic landscape has contributed a long-​ term environmental legacy that preserves the original human-​initiated resources. Likewise, José Iriarte and colleagues (2012) discuss their analysis of a peat core from a flooded coastal savannah in French Guiana that records over 2,000 years of environmental change in the region. Today, farming in the area is characterized by widespread slash-​and-​burn (swidden) agriculture, a farming technology long presumed to have been predominant among pre-​Hispanic populations in the Americas. However, the palaeoecological work by Iriarte and colleagues, which included pollen, phytolith, and charcoal analyses, reveals low levels of biomass burning prior to the arrival of Europeans and a sharp rise thereafter. They argue that local raised-​field farmers’ limited burning improved crop production and slowed soil erosion. This pattern is in stark contrast to today’s savannah environments in Central and South America, where slash fires constitute a primary mode of agriculture. The work of Iriarte and his colleagues brings to light important information about local indigenous resource management systems in this region that could offer alternative approaches to land use and conservation.

Culture, Power, History    547

Case Study: Sustainability of Slash Fire Farming Iriarte’s work, discussed in the previous section, is a key example of one of the ways in which applied archaeological research can make a positive impact on policy development (see also Pivello, 2011). In this section, I offer an expansion of this topic, pointing out some of the broader issues of resilient agricultural regimes and offering thoughts on how applied archaeology might make a contribution to understanding the sustainability of slash fire farming in the Neotropics. By ‘sustainability’, I refer to the ability of an agroecosystem to maintain production through time in the face of long-​term ecological constraints and socioeconomic pressures (Altieri and Anderson, 1986; Altieri et al., 1983). Swidden agriculture (commonly seen as synonymous with slash-​and-​burn farming) is one of the few truly sustainable agroecosystems in the world. As a form of shifting cultivation, the swidden system is sustainable because low-​intensity fire regimes (slash fires) are deployed to convert forest biomass into available soil nutrients for plant uptake (Christanty, 1986). After harvest, the land is left fallow for a period long enough to allow forest succession and the regeneration of biomass (Kauffman et al., 1993; see also Ford and Clarke, Chapter 9). By managing multiple plots in this way, each at different stages of farming or recovery, crop yields can be maintained over long periods without the input of non-​renewable energy resources for fertilizers, pesticides, and irrigation (Fox et al., 2000). In this way, the energy and nutrient capital of the vegetation–​soil complex is exploited to construct physical and biogeochemical heterogeneity that mimics natural disturbance regimes (Altieri, 1999). Perhaps the most widely recognized and researched product of a form of shifting cultivation (namely, the incomplete combustion of organic matter) are Amazonian Dark Earths, often called terra preta de Índio—​ anthropic soils rich in biomass-​derived black carbon (pyrogenic carbon or ‘bio-​char’) developed by Amerindian populations over the past two thousand years (Glaser and Woods, 2004; Lehmann et al., 2003; Woods et al., 2009). The high levels of bio-​char are believed to have been created through the incomplete combustion of biomass carbon from burning wood in kitchen hearths that was then deposited in village middens and from charring intensively cultivated gardens and fields (Fraser et al., 2011; Glaser and Birk, 2012; Woods and McCann, 1999). Globally, swidden agriculture has a very long developmental history, beginning by at least 12,000 years bp (Bush et al., 2008; Mayle and Power, 2008; Ruddiman, 2003). Today, swidden subsistence systems concentrate in the tropics and subtropics, as farmers in these environments must contend with nutrient-​poor soils, which are highly weathered and thus susceptible to leaching and erosion (Brookfield and Padoch, 1994; Piperno and Pearsall, 1998; Woods et al., 2009). It has been estimated that swidden agriculture worldwide supports between 300 million and 500 million people (Denevan, 2001), the majority of whom occupy the Neotropics.

548   E. Christian Wells

Figure 28.1  Example of hillslope farming in north-​west Honduras Photo by the author.

Social, political, and economic shifts in the Americas over the past few decades have resulted in growing numbers of displaced populations who have only recently begun practising shifting cultivation, and typically do so without accounting for environmental constraints or else without being able to negotiate them (Kleinman et al., 1995). For example, as productive farmland in alluvial bottoms is occupied by cities or ranchlands, migrants often turn to hillslope farming (Fig. 28.1). Fire applied to land clearing for farming in these situations can result in irreversible losses of soil resources through erosion and downslope leaching (Fig. 28.2), as my research on hillside farming systems in Honduras has shown (Wells et al., 2013, 2014). A new set of challenges has thus emerged for Neotropical agroecosystems, which are increasingly characterized by fast-​growing populations, land degradation, and biodiversity loss, all of which threaten the resiliency of food production systems in the face of climate change and other global confrontations. One of the fundamental problems that has emerged in these settings concerns the sustainability of anthropogenic fire regimes for shifting cultivation, especially in marginal landscapes. In this context, how sustainable is the relationship between fire and farming (Bowman et al., 2013)? Many recent studies throughout the Americas demonstrate the efficacy of shifting cultivation over the short term by showing how sustainable food production systems can be enhanced through fallows that maintain ecosystem services and biodiversity

Culture, Power, History    549

Figure 28.2  Example of slash-​and-​burn in north-​west Honduras Photo by the author.

(Kleinman et al., 1995). However, since most research has focused on decadal performance (e.g. Hughes et al., 1999; Lambert, 1996; Lawrence et al., 1998; Styger et al., 2007), it is unknown to what extent and in what ways this system is sustainable and resilient over the long term, on the order of hundreds or thousands of years. Ecologists are well aware that the state of an ecological system is historically contingent (Foster et al., 2003; Lewis et al., 2006). The long-​term effects of swidden farming are recorded archaeologically in anthrosols by changing levels of phosphate and organic matter (Sandor et al., 2007), deposition and migration of heavy metals (Wells, 2010), the development of certain microfabrics and pedofeatures (Davidson, 2002), as well as differences in magnetic susceptibility (Linderholm, 2007). Ancient anthrosols are good indicators of agricultural sustainability over extended periods, because soil is the greatest limit to long-​term productivity in low-​input agroecosystems such as shifting cultivation (Kidd and Pimentel, 1992; Lauk and Erb, 2009; Wells and Terry, 2007). For swidden, I have referred to this dynamic as a soilscape legacy, or ‘the history dependence of soil systems that explains aggregate changes in soil properties over time as a result of external disturbances’ (Wells et al., 2013: 22; see also Wells, 2006). With all the cultural and historical contingencies of archaeological examples involving swidden agriculture, are such cases—​individually or in aggregate—​useful for modelling current and future scenarios at the nexus of fire, food production, and landscape

550   E. Christian Wells degradation? New research is needed to discover what integrated combinations of social, economic, political, and technological characteristics of past socioecological systems led to reorganization, adaptation, or innovation in specific environmental and demographic contexts. In the case of swidden, for example, we know the small-​scale (