S35: Cultivation under uncertainty - the interplay of social and ecological factors in prehistoric and ancient agriculture

Hostettler, Marco; Hafner, Albert; Weiberg, Erika (15 March 2023). S35: Cultivation under uncertainty - the interplay of social and ecological factors in prehistoric and ancient agriculture. In: KIEL CONFERENCE 2023: SCALES OF SOCIAL, ENVIRONMENTAL AND CULTURAL CHANGE IN PAST SOCIETIES. Kiel University. 13.03.–18.03.2023.

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Human societies rely on agriculture for their subsistence. Yet farming is not one activity but includes a myriad
of human practices from gardening to extensive field crop cultivation, from pasture farming to long-distance
transhumance – and it leaves traces in the landscape.
Agriculture is an interplay between culture and nature. On the one hand, it is the (subsistence) economy that
influences agricultural activities, and on the other hand, it is the environmental settings of agriculture that play a
major role in determining the possibilities of the respective economic system. At the same time, both are subject
to climate and environmental variability, which can stimulate change in current practices. The choice of crops and
cultivation regimes (e.g., high input gardening cultivation vs. extensive field cultivation), the choice of livestock and
breeding objective (e.g., meat vs. dairy production) or production and management of surplus ultimately depend on
conscious decisions – decisions that depended on the respective context and always were subject to uncertainty and
risks.
The respective communities lived in different social arrangements (level of hierarchical structure, urban vs. rural,
degree of centralization) and are likely to have had different approaches to social dynamics such as consumption,
internal and external competition, or the extent of mobility and exchange networks. This in turn means, that their
exposure to risks and uncertainties arising from both climatic and social dynamics might have differed significantly.
• Is it possible to disentangle societal from environmental impacts on agricultural changes?
• Do specific agricultural strategies correlate with specific environmental conditions or social arrangements?
• Or can agricultural strategies only be understood in the context of their specific environmental and societal
settings?
It is to address these questions aiming to better understand the interplay of social and environmental factors
in agriculture, that this session is convened. We invite interdisciplinary contributions from archaeological,
archaeobiological and paleoenvironmental research.

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