Archaeology for Sustainable Agriculture

Fisher, Chelsea

doi:10.1007/s10814-019-09138-5

Cited by 49 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 258 publications

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“…As the study of human behavior and its mutability over time, archaeology poses conceptual challenges for the concept of sustainability. As Fisher shows, this is because of the historically contingent [10] (p. 394) aspect of sustainable modes of subsistence. Human behavior and the biophysical feedbacks with which it intersects are intrinsically dynamic over centennial to millennial scales.…”

Section: Conceptualizing Sustainability Over Archaeological Timescalesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…When viewed over the very long term, it seems likely that no mode of subsistence is truly sustainable. Comparably, as Fisher [10] also stresses, we should not make the culturally uniformitarian mistake of assuming that humans recognize or value what we now describe as sustainable subsistence practices. Current human society is unique in impacting the majority of Earth's biosystems [11,12], but there are examples in deeper time of human behavior driving unidirectional change in the biosphere and beyond, suggesting that preindustrial lifeways were not intrinsically sustainable, e.g., [13][14][15][16][17].…”

Section: Conceptualizing Sustainability Over Archaeological Timescalesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Thus, over large spatial and temporal scales, we can conceptualize modes of subsistence as either resilient or transient. Without wishing to parse this terminology more minutely, and recognizing Fisher's [10] arguments about the utility of the sustainability concept over very long spans of time, we view resilient and sustainable economic organization as essentially identical: longevity of settlement that, premised on modes of subsistence, can persist over millennial scales without causing environmental degradation to the extent that it becomes unviable. Here, we do not address certain other aspects of sustainability (e.g., [19,20]); we simply examine durable settlement over millennial scales founded on known types of subsistence.…”

Section: Conceptualizing Sustainability Over Archaeological Timescalesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Island Colonization and Environmental Sustainability in the Postglacial Mediterranean

2021

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Island environments present challenges to human colonization, but we have a poor understanding of how environmental difference drives heterogeneous patterns of insular settlement. In this paper, we assess which environmental and geographic variables positively or negatively affect the long-term sustainability of human settlement on islands. Using the postglacial Mediterranean basin as a case study, we assess the impact of area, isolation index, species richness, and net primary productivity (NPP) on patterns of island occupation for both hunter-gatherer and agropastoral populations. We find that models involving area most effectively accounts for sustainability in hunter-gatherer island settlement. The agropastoral data are noisier, perhaps due to culturally specific factors responsible for the distribution of the data; nonetheless, we show that area and NPP exert profound influence over sustainability of agropastoral island settlement. We conclude by suggesting that this relates to the capacity of these variables to impact demographic robusticity directly.

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Section: Conceptualizing Sustainability Over Archaeological Timescalesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Conceptualizing Sustainability Over Archaeological Timescalesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Conceptualizing Sustainability Over Archaeological Timescalesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Island Colonization and Environmental Sustainability in the Postglacial Mediterranean

2021

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“…In a similar vein, Guttmann‐Bond's (2019) monograph, Reinventing Sustainability: How Archaeology Can Save the Planet , discusses a variety of past agricultural technologies that could be (and are) implemented today to confront environmental crises. Fisher (2019) systematically discusses how archaeology can address the Food and Agriculture Organization's five principles of sustainable agriculture: efficiency, conservation, rural livelihoods, resilience, and governance. Reed and Ryan (2019) encourage archaeologists to contribute to modern food systems studies, using evidence of (un)sustainability in the past to “help identify intervention points for enhancing food security” in the present (1).…”

Section: Contemporary Archaeology and Future Archaeologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Confronting the Present: Archaeology in 2019

Rosenzweig

2020

American Anthropologist

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Postmodernity has a distinctly pre‐apocalyptic feel to it, and this feeling has seeped into archaeology. A review of the scholarship from 2019 attests that archaeologists are having to reckon with present‐day conditions and phenomena as they structure their research, delineate the material world, and affirm archaeology's relevance. Furthermore, these concerns have moved from the realm of the rarely spoken and come to constitute a critical conversation in the field. In a number of respects, the contours of archaeology now hinge upon the discipline's responses to developments in real time, including: How can archaeological knowledge production escape the logistical and epistemological bounds of late capitalism and its failures? Can archaeology contribute to future‐building, and what would that look like? Does archaeology have to be scholar‐activism to achieve the goal of making the past matter (to whom) (for what)? [archaeology, contemporary archaeology, future archaeology, current issues]

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“…Over the last decade archaeologists have begun to catalogue the discipline's potential to contribute to future sustainability (Guttman-Bond 2010, 2014Fisher 2020), and even to outline manifestos for action (e.g. Sinclair, Barthel, and Isendahl 2019).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Landscape archaeology, sustainability and the necessity of change

et al. 2020

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For future landscapes to be sustainable, significant changes in land-use and management practices will be needed. This article argues that landscape archaeology can make distinctive contributions to sustainability in two ways: firstly, by researching what were and were not sustainable ways of life in the past, and secondly by using this knowledge to explain how landscapes of the past differed to those in the present, and in doing so to disrupt the invented connections between past societies, tradition, heritage and conservation. The article draws on three case-studies in China, the Mediterranean and the UK to suggest that archaeological knowledge could be used to help stakeholders imagine future landscapes which are better and more sustainable than those of today. To succeed archaeologists will need to make deeper commitments to transdisciplinary work.

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Archaeology for Sustainable Agriculture

Cited by 49 publications

References 258 publications

Island Colonization and Environmental Sustainability in the Postglacial Mediterranean

Island Colonization and Environmental Sustainability in the Postglacial Mediterranean

Confronting the Present: Archaeology in 2019

Landscape archaeology, sustainability and the necessity of change

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