MedLanD at the Society for American Archaeology - April 2016

Post date: Jun 3, 2016 8:54:00 PM

MedLanD project doctoral students Sean Begin and Grant Snitker (Arizona State University) organized a symposium at the 2016 Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology on the topic of Human-Environmental Interactions in the Mediterranean Basin. This symposium featured presentation on the MedLanD project and other research on socioecological systems in this region of the world.

Symposium Abstract

As a center of agricultural invention and a major route for the spread of early agriculture, the Mediterranean Basin has long been an area of research for those interested in the modification of the landscape by humans. Yet even before the arrival of agriculture, humans played an active role in transforming the Mediterranean Basin for millennia. Recent research challenges the notion of pristine, balanced, or stable social-ecological systems in the past by investigating 1) recursive relationships between humans and ecosystems, 2) humans as actors in complex, non-equilibrium systems influenced by a variety of human and non-human drivers, and 3) long-term social and ecological change. Because the Mediterranean Basin represents a diverse range of cultures, adaptations, and interactions, it serves as a useful laboratory for a wide range of techniques and regionally centered research. This session showcases multiple perspectives used to tease apart the impacts and repercussions that occur within the dialectic relationship between humans and their surroundings. Our efforts will focus upon new computation methods, including agent-based simulation, geographical information systems (GIS), network analysis, climate modeling, and the integration of these techniques to address questions centered in the Mediterranean Basin.

Symposium Participants and Presentations

Claudine Gravel-Miguel: Analyzing Magdalenian Social Networks in Their Environmental Context

Dario Guiducci: Reading the Landscape: A Model Of Environmental Legibility For Assessing Hominid Dispersals During The Late Pleistocene

Nicolas Gauthier: Agricultural Risk Management in Mediterranean Environments: A Computational Modeling Approach

Isaac Ullah: Traces of Complexity: Connecting Model Output with Archaeological Reality

Sean Bergin: Neolithic Spread Models, Agricultural Islands and Pivotal Parameters: Impressions Gleaned from Simulating the Spread of Agriculture in the West Mediterranean

Grant Snitker: Fire, Humans, and Landscape Evolution: Modeling Anthropogenic Fire and Neolithic Landscapes in the Western Mediterranean

Sergi Lozano, Luce Prignano, Magdalena Gómez-Puche and Javier Fernández- López de Pablo: Early Holocene Socio-Ecological Dynamics in the Iberian Peninsula: A Network Approach

Wendy Cegielski: Networks of Social Stability in the Mediterranean Bronze Age 4:30

Discussants: Javier Fernandez-Lopez De Pablo and John Robb