ARK124 Landscape and Environment in Archaeology

This course introduces you to the methods of environmental archaeology to help us address questions about human-environmental interactions in the past.

Another goal is to provide examples for how dealing with the (often distant) past helps connect to current topics concerning humans around the globe and at home. This is where various Environmental Humanities approaches are discovered, such as, for example, Folklore studies.

Via a mixture of lectures and hands-on workshops, students are introduced to potentials and challenges connected to the elementary interdisciplinarity of environmental archaeology and environmental humanities.

Themes can include:

• “Humans in their natural state”
• Palaeoecology/ Archaeoecology
• Environmental Archaeology methods
• Environmental Humanities
• Landscape History and Folklore

While the practical sessions (e.g., Zooarchaeology, Archaeobotany, and Geoarchaeology) allow for active discovery and learning, the lectures and classroom interactions provide the context for these methods and approaches within the frameworks of Archaeology and Environmental Humanities.