Introduction

Our perception of the past has changed enormously over the course of time. Early travellers – geographers avant la lettre – have contributed to our knowledge by giving descriptions and conceptualizing what they encountered (Lacoste 1996). Much of this knowledge disappeared for long periods. With the ‘Golden Age’ discoveries of the 15th and 16th centuries and, in its wake, the reinterpretation or outright rejection of religious dogmas – for instance, the claim that the Earth was created in the year 4004 BC – Europe ushered herself, and the world, into the ‘scientification’ of the past. This process of making empirical observations, interpretations and experiments, i.e. the scientific method, led to the mechanization, then historization of the ‘European’ worldview, as expounded in Chapter 1. It has led to more efficient use of and increased control over the environment in the form of technology. It has also been applied to understanding and reconstructing the puzzle of our own past. The old sciences – history and geography – regained new vigour, new branches of science emerged – archaeology, palaeo-ecology and palaeo-climatology.

Using available methods and inference techniques, one can attempt to reconstruct ‘scientific facts’ about the past from what remains of it in the present. In this chapter, we focus on some of the methods to collect such empirical ‘facts’. The methods to look into the distant past are still evolving.We see more and realize that what was ‘seen’ in the past was itself part of that past – as is also true for the present. Our knowledge, both in the form of data and concepts, always came – and comes – through filters and ‘scientific’ data and theories are biased accordingly. The larger part of historic and palaeo-climatic research, for instance, has been done by European and North American researchers, and ultimately set by their research agendas. This has resulted in relatively more knowledge being available for certain places – and time periods – and in predominantly ‘Eurocentric’ interpretations. In addition, information about the past may have been or be distorted or withheld for (geo)political reasons. The more advanced societies have left conspicuous and lasting material remains which naturally became the main focus of archaeology.