Understanding human-environment interactions in space and time: 3 case studies from the Holocene in Australia
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Date
2018-12-10
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Publisher
Australasian Quaternary Association Inc
Abstract
Understanding human-environment interactions has emerged as a prominent research agenda
within both archaeology and palaeoecology. Palaeoenvironmental research has demonstrated the
important role that climate has in determining the development and distribution of ecosystems,
however the impact of humans on ecosystems and of environmental change on humans remains
contentious, particularly when studies of environmental change are conducted in isolation from
archaeology. Here we present three separate analyses of human-environment interactions through
time in Australia that are focussed at range of spatial scales: local, regional and continental. We
highlight a tight coupling between palaeoenvironmental change and human population dynamics at
all of these scales in the case studies and attempt to disentangle the reciprocal relationships
between environmental change and human activity. The governing question underpinning this
presentation is: how does the information provided by palaeoecology and archaeology about
human-environment interactions through time vary with the spatial and temporal scale of the
primary data? © The Authors
Description
Keywords
Human populations, Environment, Interactions, Quaternary period, Australia, Climates, Ecosystems, Archaeology
Citation
Fletcher, M.-S., Romano, A., Mariana, M., & Zawadski, A. (2018). Understanding human-environment interactions in space and time: 3 case studies from the Holocene in Australia. Paper presented at the AQUA Biennial Conference, 10-14 December, Canberra. (pp. 78). https://aqua.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/AQUA-2018-Program.pdf