New Paths Into The Anthropocene

New Paths into the Anthropocene
Oxford Handbooks Online

New Paths into the Anthropocene: Applying Historical
Ecologies to the Human Future
Carole Crumley
The Oxford Handbook of Historical Ecology and Applied Archaeology
Edited by Christian Isendahl and Daryl Stump
Online Publication Date: Sep

2015
Subject: Archaeology, Archaeological Methodology and

Techniques
DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199672691.013.3
Abstract and Keywords

Historical ecology is a practical framework of concepts and methods for studying the past and future of the
relationship between people and their environments. Its holistic, ethical, and place-based approach can grow
regional expertise in managing the future. This chapter offers an overview of the origins and growing integration of
several strands that comprise historical ecology, paying particular attention to theoretical contexts and offering
examples of practical applications. Historical ecology is not a new discipline so much as a cluster or cloud of
mutually compatible questions, concepts, methods, and values that provide a rich environment within which to find
common cause with other initiatives; such communities are taking shape and broadening their inclusivity.
Keywords: regional expertise, historical ecology, environment, holistic, place-based approach, communities
While global change scientists struggle to define the Anthropocene (Crutzen and Stoermer, 2000; Rockstrm et al.,
2009; Steffen et al., 2015; Zalasiewicz et al., 2010; see also Doolittle, this volume), archaeologists know that the
record of human entry into the planetary machinery begins much earlier than the beginning of the Industrial
Revolution or the end of the Second World War (see also Ruddiman, 2003, 2005, 2013; Williams, 2003). Below
ground, where archaeologists focus their attention, this longer history is not entirely about the release of millennia
of stored carbon into the atmosphere or the invention of ever larger tools to dig out the Earths resources and
reconfigure its landscapes: other changes tell more about the intimate details of the human affair with Earth. For
millennia people have altered their surroundings by using fire, propagating certain species of plants and animals,
building dams that change the course of rivers, clearing land, and generally making themselves at homeand in
the process altering the course of human evolution.
Historical ecology is a practical framework of concepts and methods for studying the past and future of the
relationship between people and their environment (Bale, 1998, 2006; Bale and Erickson, 2006; Crumley, 1994,
2012, 2013a, 2013b; Meyer and Crumley, 2011). While historical ecology may be applied to spatial and temporal
frames at any resolution, it finds particularly rich sources of data at the landscape scale, where human activity
and cognition interact with biophysical systems, and where archaeological, historical, ethnographic,
environmental, and other records are plentiful.
The term historical ecology draws attention to a definition of ecology that includes humans as a component of all
ecosystems and to a definition of history that goes beyond the written record to encompass both the history of the
Earth system and the social and physical past of our species. Historical ecology provides tools to construct an
evidence-validated, open-ended narrative of the evolution and transformation of specific landscapes, based on
records of human activity and changing environments. Historical ecology offers insights, models, and ideas for a
sustainable future of contemporary landscapes based upon this comprehensive understanding of their past.
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Integrating the History of People and Earth: Landscapes, History, Heritage
Several independent developments in the 1990s were products of an effort to heighten collaborative research
across certain disciplines. These include the work of William Bale, who introduced historical ecology to
ethnobotanists and to a broader community of cultural ecologists within anthropology (Bale, 1998, 2006; see also
Bale and Nolan, this volume). Anthropologists and geographers also drew on cultural ecology as they explored
political ecology, which became a society and a journal in the early 1990s, with a focus on the political economy of
contemporary environmental processes and practices.
Political ecology resonates with historical ecology in several respects (Robbins, 2012), including the influence of
Eric Wolf and Robert Netting on both fields (Netting, 1981, 1993; Wolf, 1982, 1990). Because thoughts are acted
out on landscapes, the history of a landscape can be seen as congealed politics (Crumley, 2010: 10): the
physical outcome of the struggle over resources and ideas. Political ecology, which deals with shorter spans of
time, can take advantage of more complete records; historical ecology, with a longer temporal perspective, can
detect change that builds more slowly but may have sudden effects. As geographer David Harvey has put it,
ecological arguments are never socially neutral any more than socio-political arguments are ecologically neutral
(Harvey, 1993: 25).
But how can we investigate palaeopolitics which are, by definition, politics without history? One approach is to
study agency, the ability to act in society; its study explores the makers and contexts of decisions (Dobres and
Robb, 2000). Any entity that solely or collectively can affect the outcome of events can be an agent: individuals,
households, communities, corporations, and (some would argue) even objects (Latour, 2005) are actors with the
means to elicit change. This perspective contrasts with archaeological theory of the 1960s1980s (e.g. Binford and
Binford, 1968; Flannery, 1972), which rested on the assumption that an objective, scientific approach could alone
reveal broad patterns, and which paid scant attention to the meaning of objects, the lives of individuals, and the
always-present influence of the present in interpreting the past. Contemporary archaeological theory explores
agency in order to redress these missing persons and missing contexts problems in the rational choice and
optimization models of processual archaeology. Gender and mortuary studies are among the areas that have been
enriched by the analysis of agency.
Historical ecology in archaeology derives, for the most part, from archaeological best practice, which routinely
amalgamates information about the past from disparate sources (see also Butzer, this volume). In this context,
applied archaeology is used in heritage management, historic and environmental conservation, ecological
restoration, and landscape archaeology in local and regional context. Applied archaeology aids in crafting flexible
historical narratives and future scenarios and in highlighting the importance of integration with ecology in its
several forms.
Palaeoecology, an old friend of archaeology, offers another connection to historical ecology in integrating sources
of knowledge of vanished landscapes: vegetation dynamics, dendrochronology, disturbance history,
palaeoclimatology, environmental change, wetlands hydrology, restoration, seed banks, and plant communities
(Jackson, 2012; Jackson and Hobbs, 2009). Historical ecology has helped archaeologists and palaeoecologists
reconstruct a remarkable span of history, from the ancient landscapes of early hominids (Cachel and Harris, 2006)
and more recent agrarian landscapes (Caracuta et al., 2012; Fiorentino et al., 2012) to historic gardens (Currie,
2005; Malek, 2013).
A management approach derived from forest history and restoration ecology is also termed historical ecology or
applied historical ecology (e.g. Burgi, 2011; Egan and Howell, 2001; Foster and Aber, 2006; Grossinger, 2012;
Szab and Hdl, 2011). The Society for Ecological Restoration International (SER) structures its research and
instructional programmes around historical ecology. For SER, restoration embraces the interrelationships between
nature and culture, engages all sectors of society, and enables full and effective participation of indigenous, local,
and disenfranchised communities.
The United States National Park Service (NPS) employs historical ecology to both manage (e.g. Swetnam et al.,
1999) and interpret the enormous national park system, which must respond to the often contradictory needs of
many users. Among the NPS responsibilities is Devils Tower, a remarkable geologic feature that protrudes above
the surrounding terrain in the Black Hills of Wyoming. It is a favourite destination of climbers, but is also a Native
American sacred place. Core principles of historical ecology (e.g. equity, respect, tolerance of difference) guide
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the NPS mission to preserve the Towers cultural and environmental history, as well as the celebration of local
heritage and the creation of opportunities for everyone to enjoy the outdoors. Interpretation of the site and
especially the sites periods of opening and closing to visitors accommodate sport climbers while honouring the
beliefs of the Arapaho, Crow, Cheyenne, Kiowa, Lakota, and Shoshone peoples who have cultural, spiritual, and
geographical ties to the site that predate the arrival of Europeans in Wyoming.
The San Francisco Estuary Institute (SFEI) has pioneered the use of historical ecology to track linked biophysical
and anthropogenic changes in wetlands. One of their many projects is San Francisco Bay, which is surrounded by
densely populated municipalities and has particularly complex management needs. Combining environmental
methods with maps, documents, photographs, and enthusiastic public participation, the Bay historical ecology
project assessed watershed conditions prior to significant Euro-American modification. This assessment provided a
basis for understanding subsequent changes in watershed structure and function, and permitted assessment of
options for future environmental management. Throughout the region SFEI helps define environmental problems,
advance public debate about them through sound science, and support consensus-based solutions that improve
environmental planning, management, and policy development (<http://www.sfei.org/>).
The mission of the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL; <http://www.wsl.ch/>)
is to provide clear benefits for society and the public in Switzerland by guiding the use, development, and
protection of natural and urban spaces. WSL focuses on the responsible use of mountainous landscapes and
forests and a prudent approach to natural hazards; its research provides the basis for sustainable environmental
policies in Switzerland. Historical ecology guides the preservation of these landscapes cultural heritage by tracing
their historical trajectories, and informs their management by ensuring that this information is available to
understand a landscapes potential and constraints. For example, rare species dwelling on soils with low levels of
nutrients and high levels of light availability have become extinct in many forest stands; using evidence for historic
litter removal, Burgi and Gimmi (2007) studied the nutrient impact of this historic use on contemporary forest
stands. In addition to its use of historical ecology in research, WSL hosted the international conference Frontiers in
Historical Ecology in 2011, attracting environmental historians, archaeologists, ecologists, palaeoecologists, and
managers.
The integrated framework of historical ecology makes it possible to understand and manage historic and currentday ecosystems and landscapes and it supports planning their future. In multiple-use landscapes such as public
lands and urban spaces, managers must understand the combined physical and social history of the ecosystems
and landscapes in their charge, and provide for the participation of diverse stakeholders. Historical ecology plays
an important part both in fundamental research and in developing new strategies for integrated and equitable
landscape management.
With a distinguished record of recording and reflecting on environmental change dating back to antiquity,
environmental history was taken up by historians as a field of study during the 1970s. Donald Worster captures its
core narrative and reflexive strengths when he characterizes environmental history as the exploration of the ways
in which the biophysical world has influenced the course of human history and the ways in which people have
thought about and tried to transform their surroundings (1993: 20). An important but understated critical and
questioning thread winds its way through environmental history, whether it is highlighting the results of disastrous
policies (e.g. Chase, 1987; see also Herrera this volume; Minnis this volume) or finding recent strength in the
investigation of social and political theory in policy (Srlin and Warde, 2009).
All these strands of history, politics, landscape, and culture, as they relate to the physical world, have been
informed by the French tradition in historical analysis termed Annales (Burke, 1990; Knapp, 1992). In the 1920s a
group of young historians in France broke with their discipline by emphasizing the context of events: geography,
ethnography, folklore, geology, and climate. The Annalistes humanistic and dialectical approach provided a new
collaborative framework for the study of regional history (e.g. the work of Braudel, 1996; Duby, 1968; Le Roy
Ladurie, 1988; and many others). Their analysis of processes that vary along temporal scales of duration,
intensity, and periodicity has proven especially fruitful: they conceived of historical processes in terms of
vnement (event), conjoncture (their cultural and historical context), and longue dure (long-term trends).
Interpretation relies on all three: an account must be set in immediate and more distant contexts, whether found in
a clerics records of famine victims or deep in a glacier half a world away.
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Broad temporal frameworks guide many historical sciences and conform to a holistic view of the multivalent and
permeable Earth system. For example, geological interpretation deftly combines structures (e.g. crystallography,
stratigraphy) and processes (weathering, uplift), linking scales of time and space (De Landa, 1997). A fundamental
Annales concept, paysage (landscape), is widely deployed in historical ecology and allied fields of study.
Broadened to include old and new sciences of the environment, inclusive ethics, and reflexive practice, this
heterarchy of approaches allows researchers to address time and space simultaneously, follow intentional and
unintentional acts, study human modification of the global ecosystem, and assess past events in shaping human
thought and action. We shall return to heterarchy, a useful concept in the characterization of diversity, in the next
section.
Integrating the History of People and Earth: Ecology, Systems, Complexity, and Change
Ecology is itself an amalgamated field of study that focuses on relationships among organisms and with their
environments. Ecology and archaeology share a long intellectual history in the study of systems (Bateson, 1972;
Clarke, 1972; Golley, 1993; Odum, 1953). Recent research in ecology has abandoned earlier assumptions about
equilibrium states and, since the 1990s, increasingly includes human activity (e.g. Berkes et al., 1998). The pairing
of ecology with economics began in the 1980s, but has recently succeeded in raising many political and ethical
issues both within and beyond both fields (e.g. Norgaard, 2010). The integration of mainstream ecology with the
humanities and other social sciences has been slower to develop. It is still the case that a more nuanced account
of human presence in the study of ecosystems emanates from the social sciences (e.g. human, cultural, and social
ecologies).
Levin (1998) defines ecosystems as complex adaptive systems in which the interactions of life processes form
self-organizing patterns across different scales of time and space. Complexity science is the transdisciplinary
study of complex adaptive systems (CAS): dynamic, nonlinear systems that are not in equilibrium and do not act
predictably. A CAS has no overarching hierarchy of dominant/determining stimulators and subordinate
responders. Rather, it is a complex heterarchy of interacting elements that may sometimes dominate the system
and at other times may be subordinate to it. These key features distinguish contemporary complex systems
thinking from earlier systems theory, which, following Clements (1928), assumed that natural systems could be
modelled with a few key variables and would return to equilibrium after being disturbed.
While both the systems theory of the mid-twentieth century (roughly the 1930s through the 1970s) and the new
complex systems thinking address the organization of information, an important contrast between them should be
noted. The earlier paradigma cornerstone of the New Archaeology during the 1960s and 1970sheld the
tantalizing possibility for many archaeologists that a predictive science of human behaviour could be framed in the
language of mathematics and philosophy (Binford and Binford, 1968; Flannery, 1972; Watson et al., 1971). Parallel
trends developed in ecology and elsewhere in the biological sciences (Ellen, 1982).
Contemporary CAS research is not a single theory but a highly transdisciplinary aggregate of several strands of
investigation that are widely applied in the biological, physical, and social sciences. CAS brings concepts such as
nonlinearity, initial conditions, emergence, basins of attraction, and path dependence to the analysis of systems;
these intriguing ideas, applied to human societies, can broaden the archaeological study of change across time
and space and into the future (Beekman and Baden, 2005; Crumley, 2005; Redman, 2005; van der Leeuw, 2009;
van der Leeuw et al., 2009).
As an antidote to Clementsian equilibrium models in ecology noted above, C. S. Holling (1973) introduced a
different framework for the study of humanenvironment dynamics that is based on the concepts of resilience and
the adaptive cycle (Gunderson and Holling, 2002). Now designated resilience (Walker and Salt, 2006), the
approach has been widely incorporated into the larger discourse on global environmental issues. In the last
decade the concept of socioecological systems (SES) was introduced to incorporate human activity in ecosystems
into the framework (Folke et al., 2002).
Resilience has met with its share of criticism, even within ecology and ecological economics (Norgaard, 2010). The
social science and humanities research community working at the humanenvironment interface has been hesitant
to embrace this approach, in part due to an historic unwillingness to accept biological models for cultural behaviour
(see Descola and Palsson, 1996; Ellen, 1982 for the long history of this debate). Despite some successful
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applications of resilience thinking to ancient societies (e.g. Hegmon et al., 2008), a number of issues of particular
importance for historical ecology, applied archaeology, anthropology, and human geography have not been
resolved (for a balanced treatment, see Plieninger and Bieling, 2012).
In the resilience framework the central model of a system is the adaptive cycle: exploitation, conservation,
release, and reorganization. An understanding of the character and dynamics of cycles at various scalese.g. the
rise and demise of Maya politiesentails an examination on a long time scale; for example, the Maya case covers
approximately 2,500 years. Resilience practitioners, mostly ecologists, work with time scales of a few decades (see
Lane, this volume). While the long-term humanenvironment dialectic is understandably beyond the scope of some
strains of ecology, that should not obviate the significance of the past. Landscapes are not stable and timeless:
impacts on land use, culture, politics, and environments matter, at time scales both short and long.
Archaeologists are acutely aware of the second law of thermodynamics: everything, and every system, decays,
falls down, dies, is forgotten. The standard model of the adaptive cycle (growth, conservation, collapse,
reorganization) reflects that fact. By defining resilience as the ability to absorb disturbance, be reorganized, and
retain the same basic structure and ways of functioning, resilience thinking is stuck in the K (conservation) phase.
Thus we are encouraged to think that it is possible to engineer a future that is not so different from the present. But
the Anthropocene demurs: enormous changes will be necessary to alter the path we are on.
Almost by definition, landscapes are theatres of conflict over resources and values. While Elinor Ostroms
admirable global examination of collaborative management is much cited (e.g. Ostrom and Hess, 2006), and
adaptive governance is a recurrent theme in resilience research, there has been little engagement with community
building, multi-level politics, or ethical issues such as indigenous rights (Cote and Nightingale, 2012; Doubleday,
2007; Hatt, 2012; Nadasdy, 2007; Welsh, 2013). To be politically feasible and equitable, planning must engage
diverse stakeholders; its implementation must adapt when conditions change. Flexible and resilient local and
regional management requires understanding the regions past; that understanding requires a more
comprehensive grasp of the social, historical, cultural, and political aspects of complex adaptive systems than is
apparent in resilience theory (ambel 1993).
The larger, more flexible complex systems framework offers some lively and intriguing avenues of investigation that
are not yet incorporated into resilience thinking. For example, archaeologists pay close attention to scales of time
and space. Historical ecology, with its deep-time perspective and regional context, enables archaeologists to take
into account not only rapid variables, but also slower, more obscure features of what would appear to be stable
systems. Archaeologists, historians, and palaeoscientists can therefore make sense not just of the traditional
periods of seeming stabilityphases, periods, epochsbut of periods of transition as well, with the possibility of
deriving valuable lessons for the future.
A regions history reveals how that place has responded to extreme events: harsh climate, war, shortage of
essential resources, pestilence, and mismanagement. In mediating these events, successful adjustments to fit
changing circumstances have accumulated. Following complex systems terminology, there may be particular
economic and social strategiesbasins of attractionwhose strength fluctuates over time. Knowledge of a
particular landscapes past management strategies can help to avoid earlier mistakes, or, in the case of good
results, offer viable alternatives to a similar contemporary challenge. These old-and-new solutions stimulate
tinkeringtrying to improve on an old idea or materialleading to hybrid innovations. That a technique dates to
prehistory does not necessarily mean it is sustainable today, but its longevity certainly demonstrates its utility. Old
ways of doing things can have advantages that go beyond nostalgia and tourism.
Future climate change will likely increase the frequency, intensity, and duration of extreme temperature and
precipitation anomalies and have severe economic and social impacts. The long-term records of regional climate
reveal many such anomalies, termed excursions. Such records are particularly valuable, as they point to how the
regional system responds to specific conditions. I have worked for several decades in Burgundy, in central France,
usually a region of plentiful springs and abundant rainfall (Crumley, 2012; Crumley and Marquardt, 1987, 1990). In
August 2003 a 14-day heat wave in France left over 15,000 people dead (Vandentorren et al., 2006). Already
suffering from two years of drought, Burgundy was at the centre of the extreme conditions map of Europe. This was
the hottest year recorded in France since modern record keeping began in 1873; based on historical records,
2003 has been compared with the disastrous drought and heat wave of 1540 which led to widespread famine and
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loss of life (Wetter and Pfister, 2012).
In 2003 Burgundys early August temperatures remained above 40C/104F around the clock; springs began to run
dry. Due in large part to European Union and French government policies, farms in the rolling, granitic landscape of
the commune of Uxeau are almost exclusively pastureland for the historic breed of Charolais beef cattle. In 2003
farmers lost great numbers of cattle, had their breeding programmes demolished, and saw their pastures become
deserts. The 1540 and 2003 climate excursions were hundreds of years apart, but future climate projections
indicate that such events in the region will be much more likely.
There are solutions to be found in the regions landscape history that could ameliorate similar situations. For
example, in the nineteenth century Uxeau had dozens of farm ponds that watered cattle (an adult Charolais drinks
200 litres of water a day) and served a more diverse rural economy in which cattle played a much more modest
role; today, with five times as many cattle as were pastured even 30 years ago, only a few ponds remain (Madry et
al., 2011). The most significant differences between 1540 and today are telling. Today there is much greater ability
to transport necessities to stricken regions, but that only serves to increase many economic and social costs
(Wetter et al., 2014). The dangers today include lost resilience in many farming contexts (e.g. domestic and wild
species diversity, social networks, reservoirs of water and knowledge), farmers extreme economic and
environmental vulnerability, and their entanglement in a rigidity trap wherein subsidies and indebtedness are
intertwined (Crumley, 2012).
Paths into the Anthropocene

The emergent, collaborative, transdisciplinary research environment of historical ecology draws on a broad
spectrum of concepts, methods, theories, and evidence taken from the biological and physical sciences, the social
sciences, and the humanities. It is not a new discipline so much as a cluster or cloud of mutually compatible
questions, concepts, methods, and values that are germane to diverse challenges. As such, it is a rich
environment within which to find common cause with other initiatives. Such communities are taking shape and
broadening their inclusivity.
One exciting possibility is that organizations, particularly international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that
garner support for environmental action or for heritage preservation, might realize that their goals are intertwined
and pool resources. At the local/regional scale, many communities already understand this biocultural heritage link
and work together (Barthel et al., 2013). As several historical ecology studies have demonstrated, much of the
biodiversity found in these landscapes has emerged as a direct result of the presence of humans and the patterns
of ecological mutualism that have evolved between humans and non-human species over the longue dure
(Arroyo-Kalin, 2010; Bale and Erickson, 2006; Ford and Nigh, 2009; see also Arroyo-Kalin, this volume; Bale and
Nolan, this volume; Ford and Clarke, this volume). For example, the Yucatan Peninsula and the Amazon basin are
regions of great biodiversity that warrant cultural, linguistic, and heritage conservation (see Maffi and Woodley,
2010). Terralingua (<http://www.terralingua.org/>) and the Maya Forest group Exploring Solutions Past
(<http://exploringsolutionspast.org/>) are examples of organizations that promote the preservation of biocultural
diversity.
The Integrated History and Future of People on Earth (IHOPE; <http://www.ihopenet.org>) is a global network of
researchers (many of them archaeologists) and research projects using historical ecologys integrated approach
to study combined human and Earth system history (Chase and Scarborough, 2014; Costanza et al., 2012; Sinclair
et al., 2010; van der Leeuw et al., 2009, 2011). IHOPEs long-term, human-scale perspective is intended as a
corrective to models based on Earth system science that exclude knowledge of the world drawn from the social
sciences and humanities and from communities of practice. Global-scale models of change cannot point to viable
modes of living on Earth without comprehending human history and cognition and incorporating regional diversity.
IHOPE aims to critically evaluate Earth system models portrayal of past human activities, demonstrate the
contemporary relevance of the past, and find useful paths into our future by focusing on the human scale of
landscapes and regions.
Now a global phenomenon, urbanism has unfolded over millennia, taking radically different forms in different times
and places, with widely varying consequences. Many archaeologists now focus on the infrastructure of ancient
agglomerations in an effort to learn about place-based management solutions that are sturdy, inexpensive,
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relatively easy to maintain, and applicable to contemporary problems. Two IHOPE activities take this approach.
Vernon Scarborough and his Mayanist colleagues collaborate on a Yucatan-wide project where they demonstrate
the contemporary utility of ancient water management systems (Chase and Scarborough, 2014; Isendahl et al., this
volume; Scarborough et al., 2012). Uppsala Universitys Urban Mind project has studied the resilience of ancient
and historic cities infrastructure (Sinclair et al., 2010; see also Sinclair et al., this volume).
The North Atlantic Biocultural Organization (NABO) was founded in 1992 to improve communication and
collaboration among scholars with interests in the North Atlantic region (McGovern et al., 2007). Initially focused
upon the archaeology and palaeoecology of Viking Age colonization, the NABO group studies the region from
prehistory through the early modern period, from Labrador to Finnmark. NABO cross-cuts national and disciplinary
boundaries and helps North Atlantic scholars engage the immense research potential of the region, improving data
comparability and supporting fieldwork, student training, and outreach to other scholars, communities, and the
general public. NABO contributes solutions to contemporary problems (e.g. Dugmore et al., 2013), and has
attracted substantial funding from sources on both sides of the Atlantic.
Recently NABO and its sister organization the Global Human Ecodynamics Alliance (GHEA) have begun
collaborating with the Nordic Network for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies (NIES). NABO practises historical
ecology, GHEA focuses on long-term dynamics of coupled human and natural systems, and NIES coordinates
member institutions and research groups in the study of literary texts, historical documents, and other textual
artefacts, among other things Icelandic sagas, with a view to qualitatively analysing environmental information and
representation. NIES fosters the development of aesthetically and ethically orientated historians, philosophers, and
literary scholars, helping them to become the next generation of environmental humanists. Together these
organizations have constructed a formidable regional network for circumpolar study, exactly the collaborative
regional goals IHOPE wishes to foster.
Each of these entities is autonomous, employs diverse but compatible competencies to take up key research
questions, and embraces several communities of knowledge and practice. In addition, such collaborations have
permeable geographical and research frontiers, respect for established methodological expertise, and tolerance
for differences in theoretical orientation. The framework of historical ecology offers a holistic, ethical, and placebased approach which can grow regional expertise in managing the future. Archaeology shares these values,
has strong ties to groups that safeguard biological and cultural heritage, and knowledge of the myriad experiments
that are part of our human past. Researchers, practitioners, and communities in this growing cluster or cloud of
shared goals can play an important role in safeguarding knowledge from the past while making an equitable and
secure future possible. It is timely that these clusters are forming, given the enormous challenges that humanity
faces as it fashions new paths into the human-driven, less predictable world of the Anthropocene.
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Carole Crumley
Carole L. Crumley is Professor Emerita of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Visiting
Professor at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (Uppsala), and Executive Director of the Integrated
History and Future of People on Earth (IHOPE) project based at Uppsala University. A founder of historical ecology
(Historical Ecology: Cultural Knowledge and Changing Landscapes, 1994), she studies long-term landscape change
in Burgundy, France; is active in the global change and complex systems research communities; co-editor of the Left
Coast Press series Frontiers in Historical Ecology; and recipient of the 2011 Wahlberg Gold Medal from the Swedish
Society for Anthropology and Geography.
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