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27 - Diatoms and archeology

from Part V - Other applications

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

By
Steve Juggins  and
Nigel G. Cameron
Edited by
John P. Smol  and
Eugene F. Stoermer
Steve Juggins
Affiliation:
Newcastle University
Nigel G. Cameron
Affiliation:
Environmental Change Research Centre (ECRC)
John P. Smol
Affiliation:
Queen's University, Ontario
Eugene F. Stoermer
Affiliation:
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
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Summary

Introduction

One of the goals of modern archeology is to understand how past communities interacted spatially, economically, socially, and culturally with their biophysical environment (Butzer, 1982). To this end archeologists have developed strong links with zoologists, botanists, and geologists to provide information on the environment of past societies and to help understand the complex relationships between culture and environment. This chapter reviews the role of diatom analysis in such studies, and illustrates how the technique can be applied at a range of spatial and temporal scales to place archeological material in its broader site, landscape, and cultural contexts. In particular, we examine applications to establish the provenance of archeological artefacts, the analysis of archeological sediments and processes of site formation, the reconstruction of local site environments, and the identification of regional environmental processes affecting site location and the function of site networks. We have chosen a small number of examples that best illustrate these applications; other case studies directly motivated by archeological problems may be found in reviews by Battarbee (1988), Mannion (1987), Miller & Florin (1989), and Cameron (2007), while diatom-based studies of past changes in sea level, climate, land use, and water quality that are also relevant to archeological investigation are reviewed elsewhere in this volume (e.g. Cooper et al., this volume; Horton & Sawai, this volume; Fritz et al., this volume; Hall & Smol, this volume).

Type
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The Diatoms
Applications for the Environmental and Earth Sciences
 , pp. 514 - 522
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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