ABSTRACTS AND PROGRAMME

Programme

This is the final programme for the conference. All paper sessions, discussions and keynote lectures will take place in room D110 in the Dawson Building (Department of Archaeology). Registration on the 4th of December will take place in the Room D210 (the Birley Room) in the Dawson Building. Registration on the 5th of December tea/coffee breaks, lunch and the wine reception will take place in the Room 205 (The Common Room) in the Dawson Building.Directions to the Dawson Building can be found here.

4th December

Time Event Location

14.15-15.45 Registration, tea and coffee Birley Room (D210)

16.15-17.30 Keynote Lecture by Prof. Robert van de Noort Room D110

(University of Reading)

After Prof. van de Noort's lecture we will go to the Swan and Three Cygnets Pub for informal drinks, followed by a meal with the Keynote speakers at Bella Italia at 7.45. Please feel free to join us, but be aware that these events are at your own expense and that places for the meal are limited.

5th December

Time Event Location

8.30-8.50 Late registration Common Room (D205)

8.50-9.00 Welcome and introduction Room D110

9.00-11.00 Session 1: Perceptions of Climate Change Room D110

9:00-9.25 David Brown (Coventry University, UK): TheRepresentations of Climate Justice

Policy on a Multiscalar Level

9.25-9.50 William Wheeler (Goldsmiths College, University ofLondon, UK): The Desiccation

of the Aral Sea and its Implications for the Question of Resilience

9.50-10.15 Clare Shelton (University of East Anglia, UK): Risk Perceptions and Prioritisation

in a Fijian Delta: Implications for Adaptation

10.15-10.30 Discussion

10.30-11.00 Coffee/tea Break Common Room (D205)

11.00-13:00 Session 2: Adaptations and Responses to Climate Change Room D110

11.00-11.25 Penny Jones (University of Cambridge, UK): Adaptation and Agricultural

Resilience in the Face of a Drying Climate? Isotopic Evidence from

the Indus Civilization, 3000-1500 BC

11.25-11.50 Andrea Wilkinson (Newcastle University, UK): From bean to brew – Reacting

and Adapting to Climate Change in Northern Peru

11.50-12.15 Eva Jobbova and Dr. Sean Downey (University College London, UK): Human

Responses to Climate Stress: Results of Ethnographic and Ethno-Historical

Investigations among Contemporary Maya Communities in Belize

12.15-12.40 Dr. Mohan Kumar Bera (Masaryk University, Chech Republic): Traditional Activities

of Rural Communities to Reduce the Impacts of Land Erosion and Floods in Fiji

and Sundarban Islands

12.40-13.00 Discussion

13.00-14.00 Lunch Common Room (D205)

14.00-15.00 Keynote Lecture by Dr. Andrew Baldwin (Durham University) Room D110

15.00-15.30 Coffee/tea Break Common Room (D205)

15.30-16.30 Session 3: Impact of Climate Change Room D110

15.30-15.55 Emily Gal (University of St Andrews, UK): Sand and Settlement in the Scottish

Islands: Exploring Human-Environment Interactions on the Local Scale

15.55-16.20 Dr. Gabriel Moshenska (University College London, UK) and Dr. Jésus Fernández

(Oxford University, UK): Archaeology of Destruction: A Medieval Village during

the Little Ice Age in Asturias (NW Spain)

16.20-16.30 Discussion

16.30-17.15 Roundtable Discussion Room D110

17.15-18.15: Wine reception Common Room (D205)

After the wine reception we will go for dinner with Prof. van de Noort at Central Thai Restaurant at 7.30. Please feel free to join us at your own expense, but be aware that places are limited.

Keynote speakers

Please find the Abstracts for the two keynote lectures below. Click on the names of our Keynote speakers to find out more about their background and work:

Prof. Robert van de Noort (University of Reading)

Climate Change Archaeology: a new paradigm for the 21st century?

Archaeologists have studied the interrelationship between climate change (and environmental change forced by climate change) and cultural change for over 150 years but this research is largely ignored by the climate change science community as, for example, shown in the publications of the IPCC. This paper seeks to address four questions that follow from this observation:

Should archaeology contribute to climate change debates?
Why is archaeology’s contribution to climate change debates not recognised?
What do archaeologists need to do to be recognised in current climate change debates?
What can archaeology contribute to current climate change debates

Answering these questions require a critical reflection on current archaeological research and communication. The answers are, at best, the beginning of defining a new paradigm for archaeology.

Dr. Andrew Baldwin (Durham University)

Climate change and migration: governing the other, or reinvigorating the human?

Human migration and climate change pose two of the greatest challenges of our time. Migration is fundamental to human life and economy, and yet it elicits increasing antipathy around the world, including in the UK. Meanwhile, climate change is said to threaten the very biophysical conditions that make modern life and economy possible. But, as climate change unfolds, its impacts will invariably intersect with existing practices, regimes and cultures of migration. This lecture examines the recent proliferation of political and cultural concern for migration and climate change from the perspective of critical posthumanism. In particular, it examines how the relation between climate change and human migration is now increasingly configured in the language of socio-ecological systems theory with a special emphasis on its non-linearity and emergence and with an eye towards fostering human security and greater resilience and adaptive possibilities for human life. The principal argument is that at stake in much contemporary discourse on climate change and migration is a burgeoning politics of the human. On the one hand, the discourse seems to assume a notion of the human taken from the paradigm of human security. This is a notion of the human as an autonomous, rights-bearing agent whose humanity is defined in opposition to Nature. However, on the other hand, the discourse seems to privilege a notion of the human that is irreducibly constituted by and through a set of socio-ecological relations. This lecture examines this tension and proposes that contained within the discourse on climate change and migration is not simply a desire to manage human mobility under changing environmental conditions, but perhaps more profoundly an attempt to redefine what it means to be human.

Abstracts

Below you will find most abstracts for the conference. More will appear as and when the authors give permission.

Session 1: Understanding and Perceptions of Climate Change

David Brown (University College London, UK: The Representations of Climate Justice in Climate Change Policy on a Multiscalar Level

This presentation will introduce a current research project, which is examining the ways in which climate justice, and marginalised groups within this context, are discursively constructed in climate change policy. These representations have significant implications for current and future climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies. The research will explore three case studies on a multiscalar level to examine the flows and interconnections of climate justice representations across and between international, national and local scales. The method of Critical Discourse Analysis will be used here, as well as in-depth interviews. As well as outlining the current project, results from previous research will also be discussed, where the dominant, scientific discourse of the IPCC was examined from a climate justice perspective. Climate justice has encapsulated literature surrounding climate change and society. In this research, such questions will be considered: How do the constructions of climate justice evident in climate change policy relate to idealistic interpretations of climate justice identified in the literature? To what extent is climate justice (de) politicised in each of the three scales? What is the nature of the linkages and interactions across and between the three scales of climate justice?

William Wheeler (Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK): The Desiccation of the Aral Sea and its Implications for the Question of Resilience

The desiccation of the Aral Sea is famous across the globe as one of the most serious anthropogenic disasters of the twentieth century: over a matter of decades, the fourth-largest inland body of water in the world receded dramatically owing to extraction of water from the sea’s feeder rivers by the Soviet authorities to grow cotton and rice in Soviet Central Asia. The fishing industry collapsed and the climate in the region changed, with less rainfall, hotter summers and colder winters, and dust storms became frequent, with deleterious effects on health of local populations. However, my ethnographic research in the Kazakh part of the region shows that locally the sea’s desiccation is not conceptualised as a disaster, not least because the Soviet authorities ensured that there was still work, in the fishing industry, even after the sea had dried up. Hence today, narratives of economic collapse following the collapse of the USSR overshadow narratives of ecological change, and complaints about toxic dust in the air are intertwined with commentary on corruption in Kazakhstan today. Therefore I argue, first, that experience of environmental change is always entangled with expe15riences of other forms of change and stability, especially economic, which may be only indirectly connected with environmental change; and, secondly, that the dominant framework for understanding resilience, as adaptive capacity of small-scale, bounded communities, needs to be re-thought in terms of the connections between different scales.

Clare Shelton (University of East Anglia, UK): Risk Perceptions and Prioritisation in a Fijian Delta: Implications for Adaptation

Communities in Fiji's Rewa River delta experience high naturally occurring climatic variability, as well as impacts from changing regional land-use and economic development. Compounding this are current and projected climate change impacts. This PhD project uses interviews, observation and a questionnaire in three villages on Fiji's Rewa River to explore local perceptions of climate change and the natural environment. This presentation will describe how people's experiences and understandings of flooding and erosion and the underlying cultural context influence responses at the household and community scale. These responses occur within the messy biophysical and sociocultural context of human lives. Decisions to respond are shaped by underlying perceptions and understandings of change, risk and the natural environment, as well as economic and social pressures. Understanding how people respond to climate change is useful for understanding a local context, however we also need a greater understanding of how these perceptions shape responses and actions. Understanding how and why different scales prioritise risks from natural variability and climate change differently can have important implications for planning and implementing climate change adaptation strategies.

Session 2: Responses and Adaptations to Climate Change

Penny Jones, Tamsin O'Connell, Martin Jones and Cameron Petrie (University of Cambridge, UK): Adaptation and Agricultural Resilience in the Face of a Drying Climate? Isotopic Evidence from the Indus Civilization, 3000-1500 BC

During the third millennium BC, populations associated with the Indus Civilisation stretched across the Indus floodplains, around the Thar Desert's fringe and into semi-arid Haryana. The inhabitants of Indus settlements employed varying agricultural strategies to exploit these often challenging environments, choosing crops and cropping methods adapted to local conditions.

However, monsoon rainfall declined abruptly c.2200-2000 BC. This decline was probably associated with the global '4.2 ka event' and superimposed on an underlying trend of decreasing monsoon rainfall, undoubtedly presented new, possibly serious agricultural challenges for many Indus populations.

How successfully were Indus settlements able to adapt to this drying and increasingly variable climate? Were they resilient, or able to adjust? Or did these changes undermine agricultural viability, perhaps contributing to the Indus urban centres' decline from c.2000 BC?

We use a novel approach–stable carbon isotope analysis of crop remains–to address these questions at several settlements. Using this method, we have directly tested the water status of Indus crops, before and after the 4.2 ka event. Matched with climatic and archaeobotanical data from the same sites, this has allowed us to test, on a site-specific basis, whether a drying climate led to increasing crop water stress, and to evaluate the evidence for adaptive responses.

The results presented in this paper do not suggest a simple story of climatic stress, and we hope to offer a thought-provoking new perspective on the capacity of settlements across a range of rainfall zones to cope with the climatic challenges they faced.

Andrea Wilkinson (Newcastle University, UK): From Bean to Brew - Reacting and Aadapting to Climate Change in Northern Peru. Adaptations and Responses to Climate Change by Human Societies

The negative effects of climate change can now be projected with relatively high degrees of certainty, impacting most on agricultural production, especially in developing countries. Climate change is threatening Fairtrade coffee farmers’ survival, posing a significant risk to socio-economic systems, threatening farmers’ livelihoods, food security, and reversing years of sustainable development work (Nelson et al 2010).

The overall objective of the research is to advance knowledge about the impact of climate change on the livelihoods and food security of Peruvian Fairtrade coffee farmers’, and the role of cooperatives and certification bodies in addressing climate change impacts and strengthening adaptive capacities of smallholder coffee farmers. A particular emphasis was placed on the analysis of how Fairtrade farmers themselves, as a representative of the climate vulnerable poor, have understood and adapted to climate change in relation to their own livelihoods and food security. The research examines the role of coffee cooperatives in responding to the impacts of climate change and employing sustainable solutions to farmer resilience, ecosystem protection and improved farming practices in securing Fairtrade farmers livelihood and food security.

Eva Jobbova and Dr. Sean Downey (University College London, UK): Human Responses to Climate stress: Results of ethnographic and ethno-historical investigations among contemporary Maya communities in Belize

Despite intensive research, we still know very little about the human-environment relationship dynamics, especially with respect to choices humans make in response to environmental change. This paper explores how the climate stress has affected contemporary Maya communities in Belize and how they have responded. During the ethnographic research undertaken in villages in the Cayo and Toledo Districts in Belize, people were interviewed about historical climate variability, drought, and adaptation to changing weather patterns. The two regions exhibit significant differences in geology, climate, land tenure systems, settlement history, and economic opportunities and were therefore used as a comparative study within Belize. Results indicate that rural communities in Cayo and Toledo responded by combining subsistence and wage-labour strategies with appeals for government aid. Traditional ecological knowledge was used to cope with climate stress (drought, locusts, hurricanes, and fire): hunting and gathering activities are more important when agriculture becomes less reliable. But even in rural areas a subsistence economy was integrated with the colonial economy, so wage labour and government aid was sought in times of climate stress, although these economic arrangements (in-kind payments of food and harvest-sharing) often seem to have been disadvantageous to people from the villages. The research revealed a surprising variety of contemporary religious ceremonies and rituals related to extreme climatic events, and drought in particular. In fact, the gradual erosion of ritual knowledge (largely due to the Protestant conversion that begun in the 1960s), and the perceived failure to perform critical ceremonies was cited as a reason for the climatic deterioration.

Dr. Mohan Kumar Bera (Masaryk University, Chech Republic): Traditional Activities of Rural Communities to Reduce the Impacts of Land Erosion and Floods in Fiji and Sundarban Islands

Abstract: Rapid land erosion in coastal areas forces people to leave the place and change in livelihood and income generating activities. Changing livelihood activities become a temporary solution to cope with impact of frequent flooding and land erosion, but a large number of people try to continue with traditional source of income. Traditional livelihood activities help to maintain community identity and unity. The study in coastal villages in Fiji and Sundarban islands have found that villagers work together to protect the village from natural hazards. Villagers in Fiji islands do not want to lose the culture of sharing, community bonding, rule and regulations. Though they are forced to move in safer place, they come back in coastal areas and continue traditional livelihood activities. Villagers of Sundarban islands are forced to leave the coastal areas but community prefer to move together to maintain traditional livelihood activities and identity. Villagers are divided by caste, class, and religion, but uncertain future, and deep root of traditional practices and community bonding brings them together to protect the village. Though rapid land erosion and flooding affect the rural communities, collective activities help them to find solution to protect land, traditional livelihood, local community and their identity.

Session 3: Impacts of Climate Change

Emily Gal (University of St. Andrews, UK); Sand and Settlement in the Scottish Islands: Exploring Human-Environment Interactions on the Local Scale

Climate change and its effects on human populations is once again becoming a popular notion in the archaeological literature, and is beginning to feature more prominently on current research agendas. Historical sources provide a detailed view of environmental deterioration and its far-reaching effects on farming populations throughout Britain, particularly during the ‘Little Ice Age’ (c.16th-19th centuries AD). One notable impact is that of coastal sand movement and inundation, leading to marginalisation and abandonment of agricultural land. The presence of sand horizons at coastal archaeological sites attests to similar movements in the prehistoric period. However, the nature of impact and response in the prehistoric record is less clear, with environmental proxies often proving ill-defined. Prehistoric archaeologists are faced with the challenge of reconciling temporal scales provided by the environmental sciences with scales which are archaeologically-meaningful, in order to explore similar human-environment relationships on deeper timescales.

This talk will introduce a doctoral research project which aims to catalogue and characterise episodes of coastal sand movement in the prehistoric period, using the Northern and Western Isles of Scotland as a case region. The project emphasises the importance of local, site-based investigations which can then be placed within the wider socio-cultural context of a region. A mixed-methods approach has been taken to this research, combining archaeological evidence with historical analogy alongside the development of new, site-specific chronologies. The multi-period site at Pool, Sanday will be used as a case study for discussion to explore concepts of marginality, sustainability, economic change and abandonment in prehistory.

Dr. Gabriel Moshenska and Dr. Jesús Fernández (University College London and Oxford University, UK); Archaeology of Destruction: a Medieval Village during the Little Ice Age in Asturias (NW Spain)

Since 2009 the research group in Agrarian Archaeology has been excavating in and around two currently inhabited villages in Asturias (NW Spain). In one of them, Villanueva de Santo Adriano, we have discovered a series of flooding events that destroyed the medieval village and its agrarian land. The lower and upper stratigraphic levels relating to this event date to around the fourteenth century. This coincides with the Little Ice Age, which had a variety of effects in different regions of the world, as attested by numerous historical sources. In Asturias the effect seems to have been a greatly increased rainfall, with some disastrous consequences for the populations settled in the low fluvial terraces, as shown in the rather vague written documentation. The archaeology can provide a greater depth and detail of knowledge about the real impact of these phenomena. The excavation of a medieval house completely destroyed by flooding and the documentation of the resulting large alluvial fan which buried the agricultural fields indicate an event of catastrophic effects. This agrarian space failed to recover until centuries later due the sterile layers of sediment deposited above them. This provided an opportunity for emerging elite social groups who used the non-productivity as an argument to privatize the long-standing common land in the flood-damaged areas of the medieval village. Archaeological investigations of these areas have allowed us to more accurately gauge the impacts of climate change on the medieval village and its long-term socio-economic consequences.