Environmental determinism and archaeology. Understanding and evaluating determinism in research design

Abstract

With the emergence of modern techniques of environmental analysis and widespread availability of accessible tools and quantitative data, the question of environmental determinism is once again on the agenda. This paper is theoretical in character, attempting, for the benefit of drawing up research designs, to understand and evaluate the character of environmental determinism. We reach three main conclusions: (1) in a typical pattern of research design, studies seek to detect simultaneous shifts in the environmental and archaeological records, variously positing the former to have influenced, triggered or caused the latter; (2) the question of determinism involves uncertainty about the justification for the above research design in particular in what comes to biologism and the concept of environmental thresholds on the one hand and the externality of the drivers of transformation in human groups and societies on the other; (3) adapting the concepts of the social production of vulnerability and the social basis of hazards from anthropology may help to clarify the available research design choices at hand.

Paleoenvironmental humanities: Challenges and prospects of writing deep environmental histories

“…In addition to the fragmentation afforded by these specialisms, there is a deep‐seated controversy about the status of the natural environment in archeological knowledge production (Arponen et al, 2019)—a discipline‐internal quarrel fuelled by opposing preconceptions of human biocultural evolution and underpinned by period‐specific preoccupations and prejudices. For example, in later prehistory, historical archeology, and archeologies of the so‐called “early civilisations,” the guiding assumption is often that the natural environment acts as some kind of inert backdrop of cultural history (e.g., Thomas, 1998; Trigger, 2003).…”

“…Swanson, 2016) and it is therefore vital that archeology learns to avert the epistemological extremes of its own disciplinary history (cf. Arponen et al, 2019; Livingstone, 2012) and to navigate both climate determinism and marginalization more effectively. The objective must be to embrace past humans as earth‐bound creatures and to make space for a less‐anthropocentric perspective on the early evolution of our species and the planet, so that the deep history of the hominin lineage can come into view as a genuine co‐production of humans and nonhumans encompassing techno‐artifacts, environments, animals and climates (Box 1).…”

Long-term human impact and environmental change in mid-western Ireland, with particular reference to Céide Fields – an overview

“…10; especially the tree-ring (both pine and oak) records from Ireland and Ger-many), it is difficult to justify invoking climate change as the main factor determining levels of farming activity in the north Mayo region and indeed Ireland generally (cf. Krossa et al, 2017;Stevens and Fuller, 2015;Stolze et al, 2013;Turney et al, 2006Turney et al, , 2016; for a general discussion on determinism in archaeological contexts see Arponen et al, 2019a). Rather it would appear that farming and human population dynamics were more influenced by factors such as cultural developments and societal changes (cf.…”

Power and all its guises. Environmental determinism and locating ‘the crux of the matter’

“…Clearly, the Arponen et al (2019) paper demonstrates that there is a dispersion of events that can help us understand the matter at hand; there is a cluster of correlative events that are entwined, and it would seem foolish to portray the matter through slicing and compartmentalizing the events arbitrarily. Foucault queries determinism and unmasks Newtonian causality as problematic, offering instead a polymorphous structure of relations (Foucault 1991, 58; polymorphous here means 'many forms'); he writes, 'I would like to substitute this whole play of dependencies for the uniform, simple notion of allocating causality; and by suspending the indefinitely extended privilege of the cause, to render apparent the polymorphous interweaving of correlations' (ibid., 58).…”

“…Does the environment shapeor determinehuman action or does human agency play a vital role in the events that come to pass (see Arponen et al 2019)? Perhaps we can simply put a stance on the matter down to opinion, but a significant problem arises when one discourse negates the possibility of the other.…”