The Anthropogenic and Geogenic Coproduction of Seismically Triggered Soft Sediment Deformation Structures (SSDS) in Helike, Greece

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Political Geologies in the Ancient and Recent Pasts: Ontology, Knowledge, and Affect" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Factors of earthquakes in archaeology are often relegated to disaster and collapse narratives. Causality runs from the “natural” extreme to its human impacts. Following political ecology and Science and Technology Studies literatures and using the case of Helike, Greece, from the third millennium BCE to fifth century CE, I demonstrate how an empirical separation and ontological conception of human/culture versus nature proves to be misleading in archaeological investigations of earthquakes and other geological hazards. Applications of soil micromorphology and considerations of local environmental knowledge reveal how combined anthropogenic constructions and geological conditions coproduced seismically triggered soft sediment deformation structures (SSDS) in direct association with characteristic architectural damage. The material-geological observations from Helike resemble Greco-Roman perceptions as gleaned from ancient textual sources on earthquakes (seismos, terrae motu) in relationship to soil and water conditions and the human-built environment. Divergent natural scientific preconceptions versus socio-natural Greco-Roman perceptions reveal the consequences of present-day politics and power in the identification and interpretation of geological aspects of the human past from the material-geological record. This reflection on the anthropogenic and geogenic coproduction of SSDS demonstrates the need for both rigorous critique and advancement of scientific approaches and also the incorporation of local environmental knowledges.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Political Geologies in the Ancient and Recent Pasts: Ontology, Knowledge, and Affect   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37019.0