Human communities are dependant on and shaped by the environments in which they live, but are also a major factor in environmental change.  We are increasingly aware of how human activity affects the contemporary environment: sustainability, greenhouse effect, acid rain, deforestation have all become commonly used terms.  Environmental archaeology provides a way of tracing the long-term history and prehistory of such human-environment interactions.  This course examines its theory, techniques and practices, the latter via a series of case studies showing how artefactual, biological, climatic and geomorphological evidence are drawn together to illuminate the long-term dynamics of humans and the environments in which they are an intrinsic part.  Case studies will be drawn from Europe, the Americas, Asia, Australia and the Indo-Pacific region, focusing on the evidence for humans as agents of broad ecological change, especially extinctions, and the effects of environments and environmental change on the course of culture change.  The increasingly important and controversial role of these studies in the contemporary world will also be discussed.  The course is an introduction to the subject and requires no previous scientific background.

Annotated bibliography (25%), essay(50%), debate contribution (15%) and laboratory/field notebook (10%).

Normally offered in alternate years
2 hours of lectures and one hour of laboratories/tutorial per week

One first year course to the value of 6 units in Archaeology (ARCH or PREH) or permission of the lecturer.

PREH2041 Introduction to Environmental Archaeology.

Diamond, J. Guns, Germs and Steel: A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years, Vintage 1997.
Evans, J. and O'Connor, T. Environmental Archaeology: Principles and Methods, Sutton Publishing 1999.
Flannery, T. The Future Eaters: An Ecological History of the Australasian Lands and People, Reed Books, 1994.
Wilkinson, K. and Stevens, C. Environmental Archaeology: Approaches, Techniques and Applications, Tempus, 2003.