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Geoarchaeology: The Human-Environmental Approach

Geoarchaeology is the subdiscipline of archaeology concerned with reconstructing ancient landscapes, environmental aspects of past societies and site formation processes using the methods of the Earth sciences. As a geoarchaeologist, I got very excited when I was asked to review Carlos Cordova’s new book Geoarchaeology: The Human-Environmental Approach. I teach Geoarchaeology to archaeology students, not without struggling. I teach it as a blend of geomorphology and a series of archaeology case studies in which the Earth sciences component was used as the key to understand the human past. I use Goldberg and MacPhail (2006) as a textbook for my course, but the students – I am afraid – do not really appreciate it. I would use Karl Butzer’s (1982) ‘Archaeology as Human Ecology’, but it is 37 years old. So, a new Geoarchaeology book with a strong emphasis on the Human–Environment interaction that could be used as textbook sounded like a wonderful breakthrough for Geoarchaeology. And indeed, Carlos Cordova’s book is a bit of that much-needed game changer in the discipline, especially in the class room, although the author himself states that his book is ‘not meant to be a Geoarchaeology textbook’ (p. 1). The major strength of the book is its focus on the theoretical aspects of the discipline and the re-elaboration of Butzer’s ‘Archaeology as Human Ecology’ approach. I appreciated the organization of the book very much. The book starts with discussing the nature of the discipline and the theoretical and methodological foundations, moves into how to define the archaeological context and the many challenges of this task, continues with case studies from the Early Stone Age to the Neolithic and ends with the collapse of the Maya, natural disasters, native and colonial landscape and modern traditional society geoarchaeology. Chapter 1, ‘The Nature of Geoarchaeology’, is an extensive overview of the traditions within the discipline, the place of the discipline in the sciences, its status quo and the future of the many subdisciplines. Chapter 2, ‘Theoretical and Methodological Foundations’, treats the different theoretical approaches in archaeology, anthropology and science and sets out to define the geoarchaeology theoretical framework rooted in the geosciences with some theoretical basis for interpretation and research adopted from archaeology and anthropology. Nevertheless, at the end of Chapter 2, Carlos Cordova also highlights the intellectual conflict that geoarchaeologists are facing: ‘Although the geoscience -archaeology relationship is understood, at least on paper, it is a complex one in practice because geoscientists and anthropological archaeologists are interested in different kinds of theories’ (p. 37). In Chapter 3, Cordova sets out to define the geoarchaeological record as opposed to the archaeological and the geological record and proposes four divisions for the geoarchaeological record: visible, invisible, absent and virtual. Chapter 4 addresses issues in the interpretation of the geoarchaeological record and provides aspects of the interpretation that are rarely discussed in the literature such as causality, equifinality and time transgressive phenomena. In Chapter 5, Cordova illustrates the nature of the human-environmental approach in geoarchaeology – the main theme of the book. Here, Carlos Cordova clearly establishes that geoarchaeology deserves a fundamental role in Anthropocene and climate change research. Chapters 6–12 address geoarchaeological issues from the human ecological and cultural ecological perspectives stretching from research in early hominin sites through cultural developments stages such as hunter-gatherers, early agricultural societies, early complex societies and the rural world of more recent historical periods. Particularly innovative I found Chapter 7, ‘The Geoarchaeology and the Anthropization of the World’, where the geoarchaeological record derived from the peopling of Australia and North America is carefully vetted. In this chapter, Cordova introduces the concept of the ‘gray zone’, a long period during which there is unclear evidence of human presence in Australia and North America. The geoarchaeological record of some of these North American sites (Schaefer and Hebior, La Sena and Helena Mammoth Kill Sites) is very well illustrated and discussed. Chapter 13 takes on natural disasters and presents the geoarchaeological evidence of the Xitle volcano eruption that destroyed Cuicuilco in Mexico 2000 years ago and the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans. From the latter geoarchaeological study (Nelson and Leclair, 2006), one very important lesson was learned: the flood in New Orleans was caused by crevasse splay sedimentation in an urban context, an event never documented before. This unique occurrence is evidence of how complex environmental processes are where natural and cultural processes mix. Chapter 14 deals with environmental crises, showcasing the geoarchaeological evidence of the devastating floods in the Levant at the end of the third millennium BCE, and – most interestingly – the ‘Dust Bowl’ phenomenon of the 1930s in the Great Plains. Chapters 15–17 very interestingly treat the geoarchaeology of native and colonial societies, modern traditional societies and the contemporary past. To best illustrate his arguments, Cordova included more than 20 case studies representative of the human environment aspects discussed in each chapter. A large number of the case studies came from Cordova’s own research and experience. The case studies are presented covering in great detail both the cultural aspects and the geomorphological settings, which means that anthropologists, archaeologists and historians can appreciate the connection between cultural developments Holocene book reviews 837034 HOL0010.1177/0959683619837034The HoloceneHolocene book review book-review2019