Archaeology, Environmental

Historical Background

Environmental remains did not figure very prominently in the early history of modern archaeology. Researchers and antiquarians of the18th and 19th centuries primarily focused on architectural remains and their associated material objects. Highly prized precious metals, ceramics, and other cultural crafts were collected both systematically and quite haphazardly by various individuals, museums, and universities throughout this time period. The remains of mundane meal refuse such as fragmented animal bones and botanicals received little if any research attention and were usually discarded on the spot.

The Danish archaeologist Daniel Bruun was one of the first archaeologists on record to systematically recover animal bones from an excavation. As part of his 1896 Norse excavations in Greenland and his later work in Iceland, Bruun consistently collected the animal bones that were found as part of his research digs. Bruun believed in the possibility of having animal bones identified to species level for the purposes of simple economic and dietary reconstructions. Bruun solicited the advice and skill of Herluf Winge, the head zoologist at the Royal Zoological Museum in Copenhagen, Denmark. Winge's early cross-disciplinary work in zoology and archaeology at the beginning of the 20th century marked an early influence for modern environmental archaeology.

By the mid 20th century, archaeology both in Europe and the Americas was still largely the domain of avocationalists operating with a wide range of methods and with little interest in moving beyond artifact classification. With the writings of the English archaeologist Grahame Clark, archaeology began to interest itself in the economic and ecological aspects of past cultural systems. Clark's 1942 Antiquity article “Bees in Antiquity” was the official beginning of his pioneering work in environmental archaeology. From 1949 to 1951,Grahame Clark supervised the excavations of Star Carr in northeastern Yorkshire. Star Carr, with its moist, peaty conditions, revealed a wide range of faunal and botanical material that allowed Clarke the first views of early Mesolithic diet, economy, and ecology. Although Star Carr has been reevaluated more than once in the preceding years as technologies have improved, it remains as the premier example of early integrative archaeology.

Educated in the methods of Grahame Clark and influenced by the ecological theories of Julian Steward and Leslie White, the next generation of environmental archaeologists ushered in a period in which ecological theory reigned supreme. The 1960s and 1970s also witnessed a period during which university programs began to create specific environmental methodologies, such as zooarchaeology, paleoethnobotany, and geoarchaeology. With time, [Page 251]the ecological approaches and the more economic perspectives were incorporated into the processual theory of Lewis Binford. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, processual archaeologists made use of the newer specialties such as zooarchaeology and paleo-botany in studying past environments and the people that inhabited them. During this period, environmental archaeology was seen more as a collection of various sampling techniques than a coherent theoretical approach.

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