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| Research Background | Present Research | French Project Website | Selected Publications |
Other Positions: Executive Committee, Faculty Advisory Committee
and Fellow Carolina Environmental Program; Executive Steering Committee,
Past Global Changes Core Project, International Geosphere-Biosphere Program;
Vice Chair, U.S. Committee of the International Union of Anthropological
and Ethnological Sciences. Co-Editor (with William Balee) Columbia University
Press Series in Historical Ecology; Member, U.S. Committee of DIVERSITAS
(links the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP), International
Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU), United Nations Educational, Scientific,
and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Scientific Committee on the Protection
of the Environment (SCOPE), and the International Union of Biological
Sciences (IUBS).
Grants and Fellowships: 1964 to the present, from the National
Science Foundation, Ford Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities,
National Geographic Society, Wenner-Gren Foundation, University of North
Carolina; Kenan Research Leave of Absence in 1982 and 1995; and Senior
Fulbright Fellowship to France (1997)
Field Experience: Great Lakes Region; 1964-1966, Israel 1966; throughout
Europe 1967 to present, including Spain, Scotland, Republic of Ireland,
Northern Ireland, Italy, Hungary, but especially France (Dordogne, Burgundy,
Franche-Comté).
Courses Offered: Introduction to Anthropology; Formation of the State; World Archaeology; European Prehistory and History (to A.D. 900); Ethnohistory; Archaeological Theory; Historical Ecology; Teaching Anthropology; Seminar in Historical Landscapes (Burgundy).
Research Background:
My first work in anthropology was in museology and Native North American archaeology and ethnohistory, with fieldwork in the Great Lakes region. My doctoral work and subsequent research has reflected a keen interest in state-level societies (particularly aspects of status and class) and in macro-scale spatial configurations (settlement agglomeration and disagglomeration) and their relationships to socio-political organization. I have theoretical interests in dialectical and structural approaches to contemporary human/environment relations, and in utilizing an explicitly historical, culturally specific ecology to formulate regional mitigation plans. I continue to expand a critique of hierarchy as a means of calling attention to the existence of viable social structural alternatives, which have the advantage of being more responsive to environmental constraints.
Europe (especially France) offers a particularly rich archaeological, ethnohistoric, and ethnographic resource, and I concentrate research efforts there. My first major project, 1975-1987, explored the historical ecology of Burgundy (France) from before the Roman conquest (Celtic Iron Age) to the present, The volume Regional Dynamics: Burgundian Landscapes in Historical Perspective (Academic Press, Inc., 1987) reports that work. Our current research in Burgundy (since 1991) traces changes in settlement and land use from Celtic times two thousand years ago to the present, paying particular attention to the cultural transmission of ecological values that have ensured the long term durability of the Burgundian landscape.
An initial research objective was to interview current farmers and gardeners about their understanding of the relationship between environmental factors (climate, weather, soils, drainage, etc) and farm and garden practices (affected as they are by governmental regulations, markets, and regional and family history). This led us to explore the role of gardens in the transmission of cultural knowledge. There are many rationales for making gardens, ranging from practical utility to cosmic meanings. If pleasure gardens are theaters, then vernacular gardens are schools. The vernacular garden (from the Latin word for "native") is a conservative form, home to a mix of vegetables, fruit trees, and other elements useful in the maintenance of the household. The English term garden (French jardin) has vulgate Latin (gardinum), Teutonic, and Norse roots (garth), the latter of which defines "a small piece of enclosed ground, usually beside a house or other building, used as a yard, garden, or paddock". Vernacular gardens are defined as plots in which plants are tended by hand, and which form part of the domestic economy.
Gardens play a critical role in reducing risks associated with inclement weather all over the world. Unlike field crops, gardens shelter numerous species in special soils and under controlled microclimatic conditions. Plants receive individual attention and enable the gardener to develop an intimate understanding of soils, winds, and seasons as they relate to the garden plot. In addition to abundant produce, gardens both conserve traditional species and are filled with small experiments that yield new information
Present Research:
Our current research seeks to identify and document the social, political,
and economic elements of land use practice together with historical and
environmental circumstance that combine to sustain a productive regional
economy over the long term (centuries). Our larger project, underway for
a over quarter century, pioneered an interdisciplinary theoretical and
methodological framework termed historical ecology. Abundant data from
a consistently productive temperate region with a long agrarian (6000
years) and industrial (2000 years) history (Burgundy, France) permit integrated
analysis of socioeconomic and environmental change at local, regional,
and global spatial scales and at time scales of year, decade, and century.
The project goal is to construct a model for the comparative study of
enduring agrarian practice. Project objectives are to (1) trace the complex
history of events and conditions that have both jeopardized and fostered
sustainable land use strategies in an historically productive region,
(2) identify key elements and relations of that practice, and (3) assess
contemporary land use against the historical backdrop.
This project applies an integrated theoretical framework and mensurable
concepts of diversity and flexibility to analyze landscape elements and
land use strategies across time and space. The research can operationalize
the problematic concept of sustainability, add a significant new historic
dimension to the global sustainability dialogue, underscore the fundamental
importance of region-based cultural knowledge and practice, and inform
global and national agricultural policy decisions.
Our hypotheses, based on previous work with primarily earlier time periods and broader scales, are that even in industrial nation-states
Local knowledge-based smallholder land use strategies (e.g., scheduling,
species diversity, use of microenvironments) maintain environmental integrity.
Flexibility of choice, based on cultural and biotic diversity, is maintained
through intergenerational transmission of local environmental knowledge.
Interruption of this transmission compromises flexibility.
Homogenization of the rural economy reduces flexibility and leads to the
deterioration of key landscape elements.
The loss of key landscape elements renders the rural environment economically
and ecologically vulnerable.
An Interdisciplinary Collaboration
Through the integrated analysis of environmental and social information, researchers can read the results of human activities and choices that ultimately affect the entire system, including both human and non-human components. Varied sources of data enable hypotheses to be evaluated with greater independence. Since the success of mitigation is often determined by how well cultural practices have been understood, it is important to shape policy that can incorporate local and regional knowledge. Certain regions of the world are particularly sensitive to environmental changes that affect both human and other living populations. As a laboratory in which previous and current environmental experiments (intentional and unintentional) may be closely analyzed, such regions foster creative thinking about contemporary issues of risk and sustainability. The region of Burgundy, in east-central France, is remarkable in its environmental and historical complexity. An extensive database already exists, covering geology, biology, and the social sciences. Spatial data are aggregated into a Geographic Information System with over 100 layers. Available data include LANDSAT and SPOT imagery of the region (from 1979 onward), data from AIRES and other scanners, and digitized contemporary and historic maps (some going back as far as 1759).
Selected Publications: click here
for full list of publications
1974 Celtic Social Structure: The Generation of Archaeologically
Testable Hypotheses from Literary Evidence. University of Michigan Museum
of Anthropology, Anthropological Papers, no. 54.
1976 Toward a Locational Definition of State Systems of Settlement.
American Anthropologist 78(1) 59-73.
1979 Three Locational Models: An Epistemological Assessment for
Anthropology and Archaeology. Michael B. Schiffer (ed.) Advances in Archaeological
Method and Theory, pp. 141-173.
1987 A Dialectical Critique of Hierarchy. Power Relations and State
Formation, Thomas C. Patterson and Christine Ward Gailey, eds., pp. 155-168.
Washington: American Anthropological Association.
1987 Regional Dynamics: Burgundian Landscapes in Historical Perspective.
San Diego: Academic Press. (senior editor, with William H. Marquardt).
1990 Landscape: A Unifying Concept in Regional Analysis (with William
H. Marquardt) Interpreting Space: GIS and Archaeology, eds. Kathleen M.
Allen, Stanton W. Green, and Ezra B. W. Zubrow. London: Taylor & Francis.
1990 An Application of Remote Sensing and GIS in a Regional Archaeological
Survey (with Scott L. H. Madry). Interpreting Space: GIS and Archaeology,
eds. Kathleen M. Allen, Stanton W. Green, and Ezra B. W. Zubrow, pp. London:
Taylor & Francis.
1991 Global Energy Balance and Regional Hydrology: A Burgundian
Case Study, (with Joel Gunn). Earth Surface Processes and Landforms, vol.
16:1-14.
1991 Region, Nation, History: Sacred Landscapes in the Druidic
Presidency of Francois Mitterrand. Excursus, I(4):3-8. Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Program in Religion.
1992 Historical Approaches to the Assessment of Global Climate
Change Impacts. Washington: Committee for the National Institutes for
the Environment.
1992 Burgundians. Encyclopedia of World Cultures, vol. IV, Europe,
pp. 46-48. Linda A. Bennett, ed. Boston: G. K. Hall & Co.
1993 Analyzing Historic Ecotonal Shifts. Ecological Applications 3(3):377-384.
1993 Le Mont Dardon: Lieu de Culte, de l'Age du Fer au Moyen-Age.
Bourgogne Archéologique, 13. Dijon: Les Amis du Dardon, le Ministère
de la Culture (DRAC-Bourgogne), et le Conseil Général de
Saône-et-Loire.
1994 Historical Ecology: Cultural Knowledge and Changing Landscapes.
Organizer, Volume Editor, & Contributor, SAR
Advanced Seminar. Santa
Fe: School of American Research.
1995 Building an historical ecology of Gaulish polities. Celtic
Chiefdom, Celtic State, Blair Gibson & Bettina Arnold, eds. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, pp. 26-33.
1995 Heterarchy and the Analysis of Complex Societies. Heterarchy
and the Analysis of Complex Societies. Robert M. Ehrenreich, Carole L.
Crumley, & Janet E. Levy, eds. Archaeological Papers of the American
Anthropological Association no. 6, pp. 1-5. Washington: American Anthropological
Association.
1995 Reading the Land: the Archaeology of Settlement and Land Use.
Research Frontiers in Anthropology: Advances in Archaeology and Physical
Anthropology, pp. 149-174. Melvin and Carol R. Ember, Series Editors.
1995 Historical Ecology: Finding Common Ground. Human Dimensions
Quarterly, 1(3):6-8. Summer, 1995.
1996 Historical Ecology. Encyclopedia of Cultural Anthropology,
pp. 558-560.
1998 Foreword. Advances in Historical Ecology, William Balée,
ed., pp. ix-xiv. New York: Columbia University Press.
1999 Sacred Landscapes: Constructed and Conceptualized. Archaeologies
of Landscape: Contemporary Perspectives, Wendy Ashmore and Bernard Knapp,
eds., pp. 269-276. Oxford: Blackwell.
1999 Aeduan Gaulish Economy and Society on the Eve of the Conquest:
the Dialectics of Landscape and Power. Cuadernos de Arqueologia Mediterranea,
special issue (Apen Ruiz editor) Encuentros Culturales y Expansiones Coloniales,
3:31-46 (1997). Barcelona: Editorial Ausa.
1999 National Science Board, Social Science, and Environmental
Research. Anthropology Newsletter 40(5): 42 (May).
2000 Historical Ecology. PAGES: News of the International Paleoscience
Community 8(3):8-9.
2000 From Garden to Globe: Linking Time and Space with Meaning
and Memory. The Way the Wind Blows : climate, history, and human action.
Roderick J. McIntosh, Joseph A. Tainter, Susan Keech McIntosh, eds. Series
in Historical Ecology, William H. Balee and Carole L. Crumley, eds. New
York : Columbia University Press.
2001 New Directions in Anthropology
and Environment: Intersections. Carole L. Crumley, ed. Altamira
Press/Rowman & Littlefield.
2001 Communication, Holism, and the Evolution of Sociopolitical
Complexity. Leaders to Rulers: The Development of Political Centralization,
Jonathan Haas, ed. New York: Plenum.
2001 Mont Dardon. Medieval Archaeology: An Encyclopedia, Pam J.
Crabtree, ed., pp. 225-226; (with Elizabeth A. Jones). New York and London:
Garland Publishing.
2002 Space, Time, Mind: Varieties of Social Memory. Memory Construction
and the Need for History: Essays in Honor of Marea C. Teski, Jacob J.
Climo and Maria G. Cattell, eds. New York: Bergin & Garvey.
2003 Alternative Forms of Societal Order. Heterarchy, Political Economy, and the Ancient Maya. Vernon L. Scarborough, Fred Valdez Jr., and Nicholas Dunning, eds., 136-145. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
2004 A Landscape Analysis of Western Europe during the Early Middle Ages (with Joel Gunn, Elizabeth Jones, and Bailey K. Young) Human Impact on the Environment: an Archaeological Perspective. Charles L. Redman, Steven R. James, Paul R. Fish, and J. Daniel Rogers, eds. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press.
