Surviving Together: Catastrophic Events Within The Environmental Humanities
Thu
7
Mar
Thursday 7 March, 2024at 15:00 - 17:00
HUM.J.118
The Research Seminar Series in Archaeology and Environmental archaeology invites you to a seminar with Peter Jordan, Lund University, "Surviving Together: Catastrophic Events Within The Environmental Humanities".
Abstract: Today around three billion people live in close proximity to volcanic geohazards including many Indigenous cultures and descendent communities. This paper starts by examining recent research in the Environmental Humanities which adopts a holistic, relational and multi-species perspective on dynamic human lifeworlds. It then examines the extent to which situated TLK (“Traditional and Local Knowledge”) Systems can ever evolve to cope with living, surviving and indeed thriving in ultra high-risk geological environments, where adaptation to one catastrophic “shock” shapes cultural and ecological responses to the next. In many cases, mobility, migration and long-range social networks are deployed flexibly to bolster resilience and support eventual human return to severely damaged landscapes and ecosystems which tend to recover at different rates. These human-animal-environment processes are viewed within a long-term historical perspective to understand how extreme events of unexpected magnitudes can impact on human lifeworlds and stretch traditional coping mechanisms to breaking point, preventing cultures from returning to their previous developmental pathways, and tipping them into entirely different trajectories. The paper presents some emerging results from CALDERA, a new Nordic-Japan research initiative focusing on the cultural significance of catastrophic environmental shocks in Northeast Asia.
Peter Jordan is a Professor of Archaeology at the Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Lund University. He is also a member of the Global Station for Indigenous Studies and Cultural Diversty (GSI), Hokaido University, Japan.
The Research Seminar Series in Archaeology and Environmental Archaeology presents and discusses current research in archaeology and environmental archaeology. See more upcoming seminars in the series
