The questions that archaeologists have asked using ecofactual or environmental remains are as diverse as the materials themselves. These questions may seem to have changed over time as more knowledge has been gathered and methods for analysis have been refined and diversified. However, the reality is that the basic questions have remained the same, while the perspectives used to approach them have changed. Our questions include (1) methods in the study of ecofacts, (2) environmental reconstruction, (3) ecofact use, and (4) environmental impact.
1. Methods. Archaeologists studying either artifacts or ecofacts have always been interested in devising ways to improve our methods of sampling, analyzing, and interpreting our data. As the above discussion of methods has highlighted, some questions of methodology in environmental archaeology are particularly important and therefore remain paramount. However, fascinating new methods in microdata analysis (biomolecules, chemicals, etc.), computer modeling, and other intriguing techniques have encouraged a growing emphasis on interdisciplinary research and the increasing use of methods from multiple science fields, often in simultaneous combination.
2. Environmental reconstruction. For as long as archaeologists have studied the ancient past, they have also asked questions about the environmental conditions surrounding the peoples and cultures they have studied. Environmental reconstruction, or defining the changing ancient environments inhabited by ancient peoples (reconstructing climate, landscapes, and resources), is still one of our most valuable research directions. However, these questions are now reformulated to reconstruct more than simply ‘what was there?’ and ‘how did it change?’. We are now able to ask questions about human perception and explore how landscapes, climates, or resources were perceived by archaeological peoples, and how this perception affected the way people used their resources. How people react to their environs is based as much on what is there as what they expect to be there, what history has told them was there previously, or what parts of their surroundings they consider ‘valuable’ or ‘useless’. So, human landscapes are defined not just by environmental inventories, but also by an understanding of how those environs have changed over time and how rapidly or periodically those changes have taken place. In addition, a landscape is defined by the value of its elements - a value that is specified by the culture itself, not the intrinsic value of any one environmental resource.
So, in a flat terrain, a hill is the center of attention, and in a dry land any source of water is noted.
3. Ecofact use. Over the years of research on ecofacts, our questions about their ancient use have shifted from simple inventories of ‘what was used and how’ to broader questions of why certain environmental elements were used or modified or otherwise incorporated into the culture. This group of questions includes the most common investigations of economics, subsistence (including domestication of plants and animals), and land use. However, other directions taken also include questions about resource management that ask how environments and resources were managed both to ameliorate risk and to correlate with changing cultural structures (including population sizes, increasing hierarchies, etc.). Here all aspects of ancient culture can be explored through the window of environments and landscapes because most ecofacts (as with most artifacts) are incorporated into the cultural milieu as symbolic elements to be described through cultural mores and norms, religion or politics.
4. Environmental impact. Questions about environmental impact have a surprisingly long history. Long before politicians began to stand on ‘green’ platforms, archaeologists studying ecofacts were well aware of the impact that people have had on their environments through overhunting, deforestation, and so on. This continues to be one of the most important ecofactually based questions, but it is now often reinterpreted in terms of the synergy and dynamics of the interrelated environment/human relationship. How did people and their activities change and create new environmental conditions - and how did they then respond to those changes? This research is often incorporated into conservation initiatives that are built on the archaeological data describing original plant and animal communities.
World History
