Archaeology and Landscape Learning for a Climate-Changing World
Part of: Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)
This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Archaeology and Landscape Learning for a Climate-Changing World" at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.
How do we figure out how to live in unfamiliar places? For nearly 20 years, the model of landscape learning—which outlines how humans gather, use, remember, and share environmental information—has been a pathway for archaeologists to explore the processes of adaptation as part of human colonization and migration in many times and places around the world. But from its inception, landscape learning was also recognized as something humans need to do any time they find themselves in environments they do not know. Modern anthropogenic climate change is now changing environments around the world in new and rapid ways. The World Bank estimates that more than 200 million people will likely migrate due to climate by 2050—and billions more will experience their environments changing around them. Landscape learning is becoming a project for all of human society. Therefore, we now ask: What has archaeology learned about landscape learning that can help with the challenges of climate change? This session explores human capacity and practices in learning environments, examines how threads of learning—or lack thereof—have contributed to our present, and proposes ideas for policy for archaeology, migration, and climate adaptation going forward.
Other Keywords
Geoarchaeology •
Landscape Archaeology •
arctic •
Landscape Learning •
Coastal and Island Archaeology •
Environment and Climate •
Ethnography/Ethnoarchaeology •
Resilience and Sustainability •
Migration •
Zooarchaeology
Geographic Keywords
North America (Continent) •
Alberta (State / Territory) •
Yukon Territory (State / Territory) •
British Columbia (State / Territory) •
Alaska (State / Territory) •
Saskatchewan (State / Territory) •
Manitoba (State / Territory) •
Canada (Country) •
Northwest Territories (State / Territory) •
North America: Arctic and Subarctic
Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-10 of 10)
- Documents (10)
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Climate Change Has a History and Landscape Learning Is One of Its Storytellers (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology and Landscape Learning for a Climate-Changing World" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Development of the landscape learning model began more than 20 years ago as part of my work to find ways to use the past to help address modern environmental problems. Combining initial work with nineteenth-century gold rush miners in Wyoming with models of Paleoindian colonization and assemblages led to the hypothesis that...
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A Deep History of Human Activity in the Jiuzhaigou National Park (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology and Landscape Learning for a Climate-Changing World" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. China’s tuigeng huanlin, or “Returning Farmland to Forest,” program has been widely praised as the world’s largest and most successful payment for ecosystem services program, as well as a major contributor to China’s dramatic increase in forest cover. In order to the preserve the biodiversity and the scenic lakes found in...
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Landscape Learning and Climate Change: A Perspective from South-Central Alaska (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology and Landscape Learning for a Climate-Changing World" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The circumpolar north is one of the most rapidly warming places on the planet, resulting in changing vegetation, precipitation, and fire regimes along with altered animal migration cycles. Combined these trends are transforming once familiar places into environments to which people are unaccustomed, perhaps even new...
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Landscape Learning during the Early Upper Paleolithic of Southeastern Europe (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology and Landscape Learning for a Climate-Changing World" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The initial settlement of western Eurasia by anatomically modern humans is thought to have taken place in discrete dispersal phases ca. 50–40 ka ago. Here, lithic toolkits are thought to be linked to founding phases indicative of discrete, rapid, westward movements into and across Europe triggered by climate amelioration...
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Learning about a Place through Time: Kilusiktok Lake, North Slope, Alaska (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology and Landscape Learning for a Climate-Changing World" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper examines landscape learning through the lens of a particular landform near Kilusiktok Lake. The landform has been used by humans for at least 2,000 years, as evidenced by radiocarbon dates on a burnt bone layer, right up to the present, based on coffee cans, meat packages from the local store with expiration...
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“Like Mushrooms after Rain”: Learning the Land on the Late Nineteenth-Century Central Great Plains (USA) (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology and Landscape Learning for a Climate-Changing World" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. After the Civil War, settlers moved into a Great Plains landscape from which Native Americans had been extirpated; i.e., a foreign land with few local experts. In the case of late nineteenth-century Custer County, Nebraska, settler towns sprang up and disappeared “like mushrooms after rain.” Settlers initially sought out...
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Objects of Adaptation: The Role of Play Objects in Adaptation to Environmental Change in the North Atlantic Islands (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology and Landscape Learning for a Climate-Changing World" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We present a comparative analysis of Norse and Thule play objects and practices (i.e., toys and games) in the North Atlantic islands, focusing on their role in enculturation and information transmission between generations. When considered together with environmental records, this information offers insights into processes...
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Remembering the People in Peopling Narratives: Landscape Learning as a Bridge between Traditional Knowledge and Archaeology (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology and Landscape Learning for a Climate-Changing World" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The debate over the Peopling of the Americas is one of grand narratives and contested archaeological evidence. The Landscape Learning Framework provides a mechanism for approaching the archaeological record at a difference scale, allowing us to rehumanize the study of population expansions in the terminal Pleistocene....
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Transplanted at the Coast: The Adaptation of Caribbean Resourcing Practices during the Late Holocene (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology and Landscape Learning for a Climate-Changing World" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The movement of early agriculturalists from the South American continent during the Early and Late Ceramic Ages (500 BCE–1500 CE) marked a significant transformation of the cultural landscapes of the Caribbean archipelago. These arriving groups expressed a strong cultural identity in their ceramic materials, settlement...
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Understanding Past Human Securities, Sustainability, and Migration for a Climate-Changing World (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology and Landscape Learning for a Climate-Changing World" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the 1200s–1400s CE in the US Southwest and Mexican Northwest, tens of thousands of people were on the move—many leaving places where knowledge of landscapes had accrued at the scale of millennia. By the end of the 1400s, population levels had declined by about 50%. What conditions led to this migration and...