The Interaction between Political and Ecological Frontiers

This session seeks to explore archaeological perspectives on the relationship between ecological and political frontiers. Sometimes at least, ecological and political gradients may be largely coterminous. Prominent examples might include the pastoralist polities of the Eurasian steppe such as the Xiongnu and the Scythians, and their more agrarian neighbors to the south. In other cases, political and ecological borders may often be starkly at odds with each other; the Inka Empire, for instance, successfully extended itself across the highly divergent ecozones of the Andes. Yet, even where political frontiers follow ecological boundaries, they only ever do so for a time. The pastoralist-agricultural boundaries of Eurasia were sharp political borders until they weren’t – and eventually polities emerged that transcended them. The point then is not to see ecological lines as determining their political counterparts, but rather to recognize that although ecological and political borderlands are always interacting, this occurs in complex, and often unpredictable ways. Papers are therefore sought which explore such dynamic interactions between ecological and political frontiers, explicitly set within their historical contexts. The session is intended to be global in scope, and aims to include case studies of polities that vary in both scale and organizational character.