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School of History, Welsh History and Archaeology

New Module for 2011/2012: Achaeology and Environmental Change (HTA2115/HTA3115)

The role of people in bringing about or contributing to environmental change – and how human societies adapt to that change – is a high profile topic, highlighted by recent inter-governmental meetings in Copenhagen and Cancun for instance. A growing body of Archaeology and Palaeoecology research seizes upon these topics, and is gaining significant momentum with its explorations of how people have interacted with their environments IN THE PAST. Fresh new priorities have been advocated as well as theoretical approaches and methodological techniques pioneered, with some of these new techniques being developed here in Bangor – i.e. sclerochronology (using marine mollusc shells) and tephrochronology (using volcanic airfall deposits). The module aims to explore these methodologies and new perspectives on the past and to apply them to investigate a wide range of topics, such as the inter-connectedness of prehistoric people and ethno-genesis along Europe’s Atlantic coasts, the origins of the human role in climate change, and the evolution of people themselves – as well as the mass extinctions of prehistoric megafauna (e.g. woolly mammoth), and the survival and disappearance of medieval European populations in the north Atlantic islands. As a consequence of the radical re-thinking proposed in this varied work (and with an eye to the future), we are beginning to appreciate the impressive complexity of possible relationships between people and their environments. In this way, the module aims to develop within each student an awareness of the human-environment dimension to studying the past.

Summary of Course Content

SECTION A) Theory

1. Ways of inter-relating People and their Environments
2. Environments and Environmental Change

SECTION B) Methods

3 & 4: Methods for Palaeoecology and Climate Records

SECTION B) Case Studies

5: Climate Change and Human Agency
6: Human Origins
7: Megafaunal Extinctions
8: Managing Environmental Change