“Ancient and Backward or Long-Lived and Sustainable?” The Role of the Past in Debates Concerning Rural Livelihoods and Resource Conservation in Eastern Africa

Stump, Daryl

doi:10.1016/j.worlddev.2010.02.007

Cited by 56 publications

(48 citation statements)

References 39 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…These tend to be more place-and problem-focused, and are often oriented toward deconstructing prevailing policy narratives that have directed (some might argue misdirected) environmental interventions at a local level for decades (e.g., French et al 2009;Lane 2009;Sulas 2010). Other projects have sought to better delineate which aspects of contemporary practices can be said to genuinely contribute to socio-ecological and cultural resilience (e.g., Sulas et al 2009;Davies 2012), while also offering critical perspectives on concepts such as 'Indigenous Knowledge' and TEK, and especially the ahistorical manner in which these concepts are currently deployed in rural development projects across the region (Stump 2010(Stump , 2013. Although their specific focus has varied, a unifying aspect to all of these studies has been their concern as much with the limits of archaeological contributions to the task of devising sustainable and resilient agricultural practices today, as on what can be learned by adopting a deep-time perspective and how this knowledge might be applied at a local, community level.…”

Section: Archaeology Of the Anthropocenementioning

confidence: 99%

Archaeology in the age of the Anthropocene: A critical assessment of its scope and societal contributions

Lane

2015

Journal of Field Archaeology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Recent decades have witnessed heightened public and governmental awareness of the nature and scale of environmental challenges likely to face the planet over the course of the next fifty to one hundred years. Scholars from across a broad range of disciplines have been drawn into these debates and have begun to reorient their research towards finding solutions to some of the most pressing problems and to devising more sustainable and resilient livelihoods. Archaeologists, with their conventional orientation toward past events and processes have been rather slower to engage with these issues. Recently, however, there has been a steady shift within the discipline so as to incorporate more future-oriented perspectives, and 'the use of the past to plan for a better future' is rapidly becoming a common theme within archaeological research projects and publications. While welcoming some of these developments, this paper offers a critical assessment of the various claims that are now being made of archaeology's potential to help overcome current environmental challenges and its contributions to defining and understanding 'the Anthropocene.'

show abstract

Section: Archaeology Of the Anthropocenementioning

confidence: 99%

Archaeology in the age of the Anthropocene: A critical assessment of its scope and societal contributions

Lane

2015

Journal of Field Archaeology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Lessons should also be drawn from the success stories of indigenous soil water conservation measures, ISWC. Focusing on examples of indigenous intensive agriculture in Eastern Africa, Stump (2010) reviewed the potential use of past and precedent data for sustainable resource conservation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Long-Term Indigenous Soil Conservation Technology in the Chencha Area, Southern Ethiopia: Origin, Characteristics, and Sustainability

Assefa

Bork

2014

AMBIO

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The purpose of this study is to examine the origin, development, and characteristics of terraces (kella), plus their potentials and determinants for sustainable use in the Chencha-Dorze Belle area of southern Ethiopia. Field surveys were conducted to determine the various parameters of the indigenous terraces and in order to collect samples for radiocarbon dating. To identify farmers' views of the terrace systems, semi-structured interviews and group discussions were also carried out. Terraces were built and used-as radiocarbon dating proves-at least over the last 800 years. The long-term continued usage of the indigenous terraces is the result of social commitments, the structural features of the terraces, and the farmers' responses to the dynamics of social and cultural circumstances. We dubbed that the terraces are a success story of fruitful environmental management over generations. Thus, a strong need is to preserve and develop this important cultural heritage and example of sustainable land use.

show abstract

“…Doing so can act to put modern landscapes and farming practices in their historical context (e.g., Hall et al, 2013;Morrison, 2015) and can correct simplistic assumptions that evidence of cultural continuity constitutes evidence of sustainable resource use (Stump, 2010) or that the abandonment of a practice demonstrates that it was necessarily unsustainable (for a discussion of which, see, e.g., Balée and Erickson, 2006).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Geoarchaeological evidence for the construction, irrigation, cultivation, and resilience of 15^th--18^th century AD terraced landscape at Engaruka, Tanzania

Lang

Stump

2017

Quat. res.

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Agricultural landscapes are human-manipulated landscapes, most obviously in areas modified by terracing and/or irrigation. Examples from temperate, arid, and desert environments worldwide have attracted the attention of many disciplines, from archaeologists, palaeoecologists, and geomorphologists researching landscape histories to economists, agronomists, ecologists, and development planners studying sustainable resource management. This article combines these interdisciplinary interests by exploring the role archaeology can play in assessing sustainability. Our case study is Engaruka, Tanzania, archaeologically famous as the largest abandoned irrigated and terraced landscape in East Africa. The site has been cited as an example of economic and/or ecological collapse, and it has long been assumed to have been irrigated out of necessity because agriculture was presumed to be nearly impossible without irrigation in what is now a semiarid environment. Geoarchaeological research refutes this assumption, however, demonstrating that parts of the site flooded with sufficient regularity to allow the construction of more than 1000 ha of alluvial sediment traps, in places greater than 2 m deep. Soil micromorphology and geochemistry also record changes in irrigation, with some fields inundated to create paddylike soils. Geoarchaeological techniques can be applied to both extant and abandoned agricultural systems, thereby contributing to an understanding of their history, function, and sustainability.

show abstract

“Ancient and Backward or Long-Lived and Sustainable?” The Role of the Past in Debates Concerning Rural Livelihoods and Resource Conservation in Eastern Africa

Cited by 56 publications

References 39 publications

Archaeology in the age of the Anthropocene: A critical assessment of its scope and societal contributions

Archaeology in the age of the Anthropocene: A critical assessment of its scope and societal contributions

Long-Term Indigenous Soil Conservation Technology in the Chencha Area, Southern Ethiopia: Origin, Characteristics, and Sustainability

Geoarchaeological evidence for the construction, irrigation, cultivation, and resilience of 15^th--18^th century AD terraced landscape at Engaruka, Tanzania

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About

“Ancient and Backward or Long-Lived and Sustainable?” The Role of the Past in Debates Concerning Rural Livelihoods and Resource Conservation in Eastern Africa

Cited by 56 publications

References 39 publications

Archaeology in the age of the Anthropocene: A critical assessment of its scope and societal contributions

Archaeology in the age of the Anthropocene: A critical assessment of its scope and societal contributions

Long-Term Indigenous Soil Conservation Technology in the Chencha Area, Southern Ethiopia: Origin, Characteristics, and Sustainability

Geoarchaeological evidence for the construction, irrigation, cultivation, and resilience of 15th--18th century AD terraced landscape at Engaruka, Tanzania

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About

Geoarchaeological evidence for the construction, irrigation, cultivation, and resilience of 15^th--18^th century AD terraced landscape at Engaruka, Tanzania