Environmental Reconstruction in Archaeology

Why reconstruct past ecosystems? The farther back one goes in the past, the more closely were people bound to their ecosystems. Processes of social and cultural change are imbedded within this relationship. Present and past landscapes are/were anthropogenic. One can arrive at an understanding about how landscapes came to look the way they do as a result of past human activities.

Star Carr, Yorkshire, UK

Star Carr was investigated from 1949-51 by Grahame Clark of Cambridge University. He pioneered an environmental approach at the site. Harry Godwin Botanist

Clark had been searching for a Mesolithic site where conditions favored the preservation of organic material. Organic remains do preserve well in peat.

The Vale of Pickering today

Lake Flixton 11,000 years ago

Palynology

Geomorphology at Bolsa Chica

History Rancho Los Nietos was granted to Jose Manuel Nieto in 1784. It consisted of 167,000 acres. It was broken up in 1841, and part became Rancho Las Bolsas. This became the Stearns ranch in 1860. The lagoon was an estuary of a branch of the Santa Ana River called Freeman Creek. Oil was discovered in the 1920’s, leading to the building of dikes, water drainage, and the building of roads.

Archaeology The lagoon is flanked by Bolsa Chica mesa to the northwest, and Huntington mesa to the southeast The Spanish called the area shell beach due to the shell eroding out of numerous middens. There are multiple sites on the mesas: ORA-83, ORA- 85, ORA-365, ORA-82, ORA-88. The sites show human activity from 9,000 to 1,000 years ago. ORA-83, the Cogged Stone site is the most famous.

Sites on the Mesa were excavated by Hal Eberhart of CSULA in 1964, and Paul Langenwalter II and Nancy Anastasia Wiley in recent decades. When asked about the presence of shell at a site far distant from the ocean, Langenwalter commented that a lagoon had once existed that had been filled up by erosion generated by cattle grazing.

The Burren of County Clare, Ireland

Geologically the Burren is composed of limestone from a 350 million year old seabed that was uplifted and then sculpted by glaciers. Upland areas are devoid of soil cover. The topography is described as karstic, meaning that it is heavily weathered and eroded.

Evidence for the Burren’s former soil and tree cover Palynology – indicating a pine forest prior to human arrival. Soil in grikes (grikes are karstic crevices). Soil preserved under Neolithic monuments, eg. Poulnabrone dolmen (Early Neolithic Portal Tomb). Prehistoric horicultural settlements and field boundary wall systems in upland settings.

Poulnabrone portal tomb 3800-3600 BC

C-221: occupied from the Neolithic to the Late Bronze Age

Stone hoe blade dating to the Late Bronze Age (c. 1000 BC).