Many problems face the world today: global warming and possible climate change, ongoing regional conflicts, manmade and natural disasters, endemic diseases such as HIV/AIDS and bird flu, crushing poverty and famine. In such a world, the study of archaeology and the preservation of cultural heritage can seem trivial when compared with human losses sustained by other pressing needs. However, many of these issues can be addressed with the assistance of archaeologists, whether by looking to the past for successes and failures of our ancestors or by applying the excavation methodology to modern problems.
Global Warming and Climate Change
Adaptation to climatic change is in many respects archaeology’s stock in trade. Where early theoretical studies placed the causation of social changes perhaps too much on climatic fluctuations, more recent studies have emphasized archaeological evidence for climatic instability and cultural adaptations to it. Recent studies of cultural reactions to climate change include the Bronze Age/Iron Age transition in England, the Middle Holocene-Late Holocene climatic change in the Great Basin, the Early/Late Natufian boundary in the Levant, Early Mesolithic settlements in northern Sweden, and the colonization of the island of Rapa Nui. Periglacial studies have examined the patterns of glaciers and ice patches in the Arctic, extended droughts in the Great Basin of the United States, and the impact of the El Nifio/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) on Australia, Fiji, and South America.
Speaking to the worldwide interest in global warming, several popular books by archaeologists and others have addressed this issue, most recently Brian Fagan’s The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civilization and Steven Mithen’s After the Ice: A Global Human History 20 000-5000 BC.
Disease Studies
Continuing studies in ancient epidemics promise to provide useful information about the progress and spread of disease, as discussed in The Archaeology of Disease, by Charlotte Roberts and Keith Manchester. Investigations have included identifying the evidence of disease in human skeletal material, discerning mortality rates, and the regularity of disease outbreaks. Several recent studies have focused on the spread of smallpox resulting from its use as a chemical weapon in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries of North America. Recently, several papers have investigated leprosy in Medieval Europe; salmonella bacilli have been discovered as the cause of a pandemic in the fifth century BC Athens; and the onset and spread of the Black Death has also been traced archaeologically. The dietary component of diabetes was traced in historic period Omaha peoples of the American Midwest, and the prevalence of parasites has often been used in archaeological data to identify modern-day health situations. Other disease histories investigated by archaeologists in the recent past include syphilis, hantavirus, and tuberculosis.
Agricultural Origins and Methods
Investigations into ancient methods of agriculture have the potential to assist in creating sustainable growth progress. Applied archaeology projects are exemplified by the Lake Titicaca project, where researchers worked with indigenous peoples to recreate raised field agriculture in highland Bolivia and Peru. Other studies include the use of differential techniques on fluctuating crop variability in central India beginning in the Chalcolithic period, and research into the origins of agricultural crops including rice, emmer and einkorn wheat, millet, and maize.
Desaparecidos and Disasters
In the recent past, archaeologists have been called in to use their special skills in the wake of disasters, and in searching for evidence of genocide. The term desa-parecidos is the Spanish term for the ‘disappeared’ and it has been used to refer to the thousands of Argentineans who were murdered under Pinochet’s military junta between 1976 and 1983. Studies of the desaparecidos of Argentina by Clyde Snow were the first of the genocidal events and mass killings studied by archaeologists; others have taken place in Rwanda and Yugoslavia. In addition, archaeologists have assisted at modern-day natural and manmade disasters such as the tsunami in the Indian Ocean in December 2004, the World Trade Center bombings of 2001, and Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in the Gulf Coast region of the United States in 2005. Tasks have included excavations, identification of the victims using DNA and other information, processing of massive amounts of data, and preservation techniques on damaged documents.
See also: Antiquities and Cultural Heritage Legislation; Careers in Archaeology; Cultural Resource Management; DMA: Ancient; Ethical Issues and Responsibilities; Historic Roots of Archaeology; Illicit Antiquities; Internet, Archaeology on; Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act; Native Peoples and
Archaeology; Remote Sensing Approaches: Aerial; Geophysical; Stable Isotope Analysis; World Heritage Sites, Types and Laws.
World History
