IHOPE (Integrated History and Future of People on Earth) - International and interdisciplinary projects working to make the past better serve the future.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Colleen Strawhacker. Peter Pulsifer. Shari Gearheard.

Scientists are realizing the importance of social science research to fully understand how the rapid environmental change in the Arctic will affect human populations living in the Artic and beyond. Millions of dollars are invested in scientific research, including in the social sciences, on the changing Arctic every year, and with that investment, scientists have begun stressing the importance of preserving these collected data for future analysis. With the increased recognition of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Keith Prufer.

Since 2007 the IHOPE Maya team has focused on synthesizing dynamic human-environmental interactions of the ancient Maya of southeastern Mexico and upper Central America (400BC-900AD). A series of great tropical societies, the Maya occupied a diverse range of tropical environments, adapting local strategies to meet varied subsistence, economic, political, and ecosystem service needs at large and small urban centers. Cycles of expanding populations, increasing despotism, and reliance on...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sander Van Der Leeuw.

This paper argues that we would massively increase the value of our archaeological understanding of the past for the present if we cast it differently. Rather than use a reductionist, 'ex-post' approach (which explains the present by invoking the past, looking for origins), we should be using an "ex ante" approach that looks at the emergence of change, allowing us to learn from the past about the present and for the future. The paper first briefly summarizes some of the difficulties encountered...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Megan Hicks. Árni Einarsson. Kesara Anamthawat-Jónsson. Ágústa Edwald. Thomas McGovern.

Archaeological, paleo-environmental and ethnographic research in the lakeside community of Mývatn, N. Iceland, is uncovering the millennium-long history of interactions between people and seasonal populations of waterfowl. Protection of waterfowl from hunting seems to have been applied in tandem with annual, managed egg harvesting as a common resource management strategy. The interdisciplinary investigation underway seeks to understand long term norms and local traditional knowledge (LTK)...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katie Manning. Sue Colledge. Enrico Crema. Adrian Timpson. Stephen Shennan.

The domestication of plants and animals facilitated major changes in human ecology, demography, and social organization. Despite the seeming advantages of domestication, however, new analysis reveals major episodes of collapse in the early agricultural systems in Neolithic Europe. In this paper we present evidence for a progressive deterioration in arable farming conditions, alongside a reversion to wild resource exploitation across different regions in Europe. These apparent failures in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tristram Kidder.

I use geoarchaeological data to argue that human activity in the late Holocene transformed the environments of the Yellow River, China, into an anthropogenic landscape and that these changes altered China’s history. Ancient China provides a critical case study for understanding how economic intensification, demographic change, technological innovation, and political centralization combine to create the roots of the modern Anthropocene. The Yellow River-- known as "China’s Sorrow"—is seen as a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jago Cooper. Alice Samson.

Water security is the capacity of a population to safeguard sustainable access to adequate quantities of acceptable quality water for sustaining livelihoods. Small islands can often face particularly problematic issues surrounding water security with the impacts of precipitation variability and relative sea level change keenly felt on islands with limited rain catchment and fast draining hydrological systems. This paper explores some archaeological case studies on small islands from the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Oram.

Archaeological excavation of medieval settlements in the coastal districts of Scotland has revealed significant evidence of protracted environmental impacts on their material culture exploitation regimes and domestic economies between the later 13th and early 16th centuries. These impacts are represented chiefly by shifts in the marine species being exploited or changes in the levels, species and age profiles of livestock carried on grazing-land, or trends in the suite of cultivars represented,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aleksander Pluskowski. Alexander Brown. Rowena Banerjea. Krish Seetah. Daniel Makowiecki.

In the 13th century, crusading armies unleashed a relentless holy war against indigenous non-Christian societies in the eastern Baltic region. Tribal territories were replaced with new Christian states run by the Teutonic Order and individual bishops, who constructed castles, encouraged colonists, developed towns and introduced Christianity. At a time of deteriorating climate, their impact on the local environment, especially plants and animals, would have been profound. Furthermore, since many...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Margaret Nelson.

Vulnerability to climate change is a central issue in contemporary policy at local, state, national, and global scales. Facing an uncertain future, public and private organizations, policy makers, and resource managers are concerned about our ability to develop social-ecological systems resilient to climate change. "Long-term sustainability" in the face of present and anticipated climate impacts is a national and international goal. However, planning for long-term sustainable management is a...