Environmental Archaeology

259 Pages·2018·7.93 MB·English

by  Evangelia Pişkin

Interdisciplinary Contributions to Archaeology
Evangelia Pişkin · Arkadiusz Marciniak 
Marta Bartkowiak Editors
Environmental
Archaeology
Current Theoretical and Methodological
Approaches
Interdisciplinary Contributions to Archaeology
Series editor
Jelmer Eerkens
University of California, Davis
Davis, CA, USA
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/6090
Evangelia Pişkin • Arkadiusz Marciniak
Marta Bartkowiak
Editors
Environmental Archaeology
Current Theoretical and Methodological
Approaches
Editors
Evangelia Pişkin Arkadiusz Marciniak
Department of Settlement Archaeology Institute of Archaeology
Middle East Technical University Adam Mickiewicz University
Ankara, Turkey Poznań, Poland
Marta Bartkowiak
Institute of Archaeology
Adam Mickiewicz University
Poznań, Poland
ISSN 1568-2722
Interdisciplinary Contributions to Archaeology
ISBN 978-3-319-75081-1 ISBN 978-3-319-75082-8 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75082-8
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018936129
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Preface
In September 2014 at the 20th European Association of Archaeologists Annual
Meeting held in Istanbul, Turkey, we organised a session entitled “Environmental
Archaeology and Archaeology: Divided we Stand (still?)”. The inspiration for this
stemmed from our concern and interest in a variety of issues. One of the most
important was the actual position of what is termed “environmental archaeology”
within the field of what one may call “mainstream archaeology”. This issue was
tackled before, and perhaps the book with most prominent expression is the one
edited by Umberto Albarella back in 2001, entitled Environmental Archaeology:
Meaning and Purpose. There, the definition of the discipline and indeed the very
usefulness/uselessness of the term itself were intensively questioned by several
researchers. The issue of what environmental archaeology is has also been discussed
briefly or extensively in various other works and in almost every “handbook” pub-
lished on the matter. This seems to have been a long and hard debate without con-
sensus being reached yet.
Next to this was the consideration and concern with new developments in the
field including a proliferation of new techniques, methods and approaches that have
introduced a range of possibilities next to traditional subjects, which surely is a
certain achievement; nevertheless their technical concepts are sometimes difficult to
comprehend, evaluate and make useful. A further inquiry was the integration of vari-
ous lines of evidence to produce a stronger basis for archaeological interpretation.
Environmental archaeology today encompasses an ever-widening suite of subdis-
ciplines. “Environmental archaeologists” of whatever field of specialisation are rou-
tinely called upon to collaborate in archaeological projects under the fashionable
“interdisciplinary approach” umbrella. Despite its long history, exceptional projects
and numerous such studies addressing wider issues of archaeological research, the
discipline often remains to be seen as an auxiliary undertaking aimed at supporting
“mainstream” archaeology. It is also not unusual that different specialists work along-
side with each other but the results they produce have hardly any reference to other
specialised analysis, despite the fact that they address similar issues. Nevertheless,
the need to collaborate and communicate is apparent today more than ever.
v
vi Preface
Here, we wanted to refresh the discussion and touch on what the current state of
the affair is after many years of environmental archaeology theory and practice.
This book contains a selection of papers, some of them presented at that meeting,
some other written for this volume, discussing the position of the discipline and its
practitioners from various standpoints as well as some case studies targeting to
showcase that environmental archaeology is nothing else but archaeology.
Ankara, Turkey Evangelia Pişkin
Contents
Environmental Archaeology: What Is in a Name?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Evangelia Pişkin and Marta Bartkowiak
Environmental Archaeology: The End of the Road? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Umberto Albarella
Changing Perspectives: Exploring Ways and Means of Collaborating
in Environmental Archaeology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
G. V. Campbell, C. Barnett, W. Carruthers, L. Pearson, R. Pelling,
and D. N. Smith
Environmental Archaeology in Southern Scandinavia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Kurt J. Gron and Peter Rowley-Conwy
A Man and a Plant: Archaeobotany . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Maria Lityńska-Zając
Bridging Archaeology and Genetics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
Ophélie Lebrasseur, Hannah Ryan, and Cinthia Abbona
Wood Charcoal Analysis in Archaeology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
Ceren Kabukcu
Palaeoethnobotanical Contributions to Human-Environment
Interaction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
Gary W. Crawford
Ethnoarchaeology as a Means of Improving Integration:
An Ethnozooarchaeological Study from Cyprus and Its Contribution
to the Integration of Zooarchaeology with Archaeobotany
and Other Lines of Archaeological Evidence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
Angelos Hadjikoumis
vii
viii Contents
Exploring the Wetland: Integrating the Fish and Plant Remains
into a Case Study from Tianluoshan, a Middle Neolithic Site
in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
Ying Zhang
All or Nothing: Spatial Analysis and Interpretation
of Archaeological Record Based on the Integration of Artifactual,
Ecofactual, and Contextual Data at the Medieval Site of Komana . . . . . . 229
Mustafa Nuri Tatbul
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
Contributors
Cinthia Abbona Museo de Historia Natural de San Rafael, San Rafael, Mendoza,
Argentina
Umberto Albarella Department of Archaeology, University of Sheffield, Sheffield,
UK
C. Barnett Department of Archaeology, University of Reading, Reading, UK
Marta  Bartkowiak Institute of Archaeology, Adam Mickiewicz University,
Poznań, Poland
G. V. Campbell Historic England, Research Group, Fort Cumberland, Portsmouth,
UK
W. Carruthers Sawmills House, Mid Glamorgan, UK
Gary  W.  Crawford Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto
Mississauga, Mississauga, ON, Canada
Kurt J. Gron Department of Archaeology, Durham University, Durham, UK
Angelos Hadjikoumis UMR 7209, Archéozoologie et Archéobotanique, CNRS,
Muséum National d’ Histoire Naturalle, Paris, France
Ceren Kabukcu University of Liverpool, Department of Archaeology, Classics
and Egyptology, Liverpool, UK
Ophélie  Lebrasseur Palaeogenomics & Bio-Archaeology Research Network,
School of Archaeology, Oxford, UK
Maria  Lityńska-Zając The Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology, Polish
Academy of Sciences, Kraków, Poland
L. Pearson Worcestershire Archaeology, Worcester, UK
R. Pelling Historic England, Research Group, Fort Cumberland, Portsmouth, UK
ix