Landscape and Human-environment Interaction in the Middle Habur Drainage from the Neolithic Period to the Bronze Age - article ; n°1 ; vol.28, pg 43-53

J. Mccorriston

Description

Travaux de la Maison de l'Orient méditerranéen - Année 1998 - Volume 28 - Numéro 1 - Pages 43-53
This paper will explore the ecological dynamics of long-term interaction between the open steppe and occupied lands (espace naturel, espace habité) through a discussion of the plant resources used and discarded in archaeological contexts. Plant remains from cultivated and wild plants have been recovered from numerous Middle Habur excavations. These remains provide significant insight into how the landscape and its resources were used through the long trajectory of human occupation. This paper will also draw upon these insights to address how a changing landscape may have been perceived and access to resources may have shifted during different periods of occupation at the steppe margins.
Cet article va s'intéresser à la dynamique écologique de l'interaction à long terme entre la steppe ouverte et les terres occupées (espace naturel, espace habité) au moyen de l'étude des plantes utilisées et rejetées dans des contextes archéologiques. Des restes de plantes cultivées et sauvages ont été récupérés sur plusieurs chantiers de fouilles sur le moyen Khabour. Ces restes nous fournissent des indications claires sur la manière dont le territoire et ses ressources naturelles étaient utilisées au cours de la longue histoire de l'occupation humaine de cette région. Partant de ces données, cet article se demandera aussi comment un territoire en transformation peut avoir été perçu par ses occupants et comment l'accès aux ressources naturelles a pu avoir été modifié durant les différentes périodes d'occupation de la marge steppique.
11 pages
Source : Persée ; Ministère de la jeunesse, de l’éducation nationale et de la recherche, Direction de l’enseignement supérieur, Sous-direction des bibliothèques et de la documentation.

Informations

• Publié par: TRAVAUX_DE_LA_MAISON_DE_L-ORIENT
• Publié le: 01 janvier 1998
• Nombre de lectures: 142
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Joy McCorriston
Landscape and Human-environment Interaction in the Middle
Habur Drainage from the Neolithic Period to the Bronze Age
In: Lyon : Maison de l'Orient et de la Méditerranée Jean Pouilloux, 1998. pp. 1-2. (Travaux de la Maison de l'Orient
méditerranéen)
Abstract
This paper will explore the ecological dynamics of long-term interaction between the open steppe and occupied lands (espace
naturel, espace habité) through a discussion of the plant resources used and discarded in archaeological contexts. Plant remains
from cultivated and wild plants have been recovered from numerous Middle Habur excavations. These remains provide
significant insight into how the landscape and its resources were used through the long trajectory of human occupation. This
paper will also draw upon these insights to address how a changing landscape may have been perceived and access to
resources may have shifted during different periods of occupation at the steppe margins.
Résumé
Cet article va s'intéresser à la dynamique écologique de l'interaction à long terme entre la steppe ouverte et les terres occupées
(espace naturel, espace habité) au moyen de l'étude des plantes utilisées et rejetées dans des contextes archéologiques. Des
restes de plantes cultivées et sauvages ont été récupérés sur plusieurs chantiers de fouilles sur le moyen Khabour. Ces restes
nous fournissent des indications claires sur la manière dont le territoire et ses ressources naturelles étaient utilisées au cours de
la longue histoire de l'occupation humaine de cette région. Partant de ces données, cet article se demandera aussi comment un
territoire en transformation peut avoir été perçu par ses occupants et comment l'accès aux ressources naturelles a pu avoir été
modifié durant les différentes périodes d'occupation de la marge steppique.
Citer ce document / Cite this document :
McCorriston Joy. Landscape and Human-environment Interaction in the Middle Habur Drainage from the Neolithic Period to the
Bronze Age. In: Lyon : Maison de l'Orient et de la Méditerranée Jean Pouilloux, 1998. pp. 1-2. (Travaux de la Maison de l'Orient
méditerranéen)
http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/mom_1274-6525_1998_act_28_1_1098LANDSCAPE AND HUMAN-ENVIRONMENT
INTERACTION IN THE MIDDLE HABUR DRAINAGE
FROM THE NEOLITHIC PERIOD TO THE BRONZE AGE
J. McCORRISTON
RESUME. - Cet article va s'intéresser à la dynamique écologique de l'interaction à long terme entre la steppe ouverte et les terres occupées (espace
naturel, espace habité) au moyen de l'étude des plantes utilisées et rejetées dans des contextes archéologiques. Des restes de plantes cultivées et
sauvages ont été récupérés sur plusieurs chantiers de fouilles sur le moyen Khabour. Ces restes nous fournissent des indications claires sur la manière
dont le territoire et ses ressources naturelles étaient utilisées au cours de la longue histoire de l'occupation humaine de cette région. Partant de ces
données, cet article se demandera aussi comment un territoire en transformation peut avoir été perçu par ses occupants et comment l'accès aux
ressources naturelles a pu avoir été modifié durant les différentes périodes d'occupation de la marge steppique.
Mots clés: agriculture préhistorique, paysage, paléobotanique, Syrie, Mésopotamie, néolithique, âge du Bronze, pastoralisme spécialisé.
ABSTRACT. - This paper will explore the ecological dynamics of long-term interaction between the open steppe and occupied lands (espace naturel,
espace habité) through a discussion of the plant resources used and discarded in archaeological contexts. Plant remains from cultivated and wild
plants have been recovered from numerous Middle Habur excavations. These remains provide significant insight into how the landscape and its
resources were used through the long trajectory of human occupation. This paper will also draw upon these insights to address how a changing land
scape may have been perceived and access to resources may have shifted during different periods of occupation at the steppe margins.
Key-words: prehistoric agriculture, landscape, archaeobotany, Syria, Mesopotamia, Neolithic, Bronze Age, specialized pastoralism.
INTRODUCTION to alter the natural environment. Technology has been
conceptually situated as the fulcrum of human-environ
ment interaction. It is technology, evident from the first Recent paradigms in archaeology offer new ways in stone tools in Africa, that allows us to produce food, conwhich archaeologists focusing on cultural histories struct villages, and build cities. might explore past human experiences in greater Syria.
Natural space does not remain "natural" once it is This paper examines the concept of landscape as a cul
inhabited by humans. Yet a dichotomy established turally constructed space and explores a contrast with
between natural and inhabited space blurs somewhat human- environment histories, a theme with which most
when viewed with a longer temporal lens. Evolutionary Near Eastern archaeologists are more familiar. These dif
ecology offers a framework in which to consider humans ferent theoretical approaches have interesting applica
and their environments conjoined in continuous and histions when one considers landscape and human interac
torically conditioned change. In recent decades we have tion with the environment of the Middle Habur region in
recognized a profound dynamic of human occupation, in northern Mesopotamia.
the alteration of environments, landforms, vegetative "Espace naturel, espace habité." Does the theme not
associations, regional and global climates, and the funsuggest a contrast in perspective, a fundamental dichoto damentally historical process of human ecosystem my between nature and culture that pervades and shapes development. Today's African grasslands are the natural the debate about the human condition, our origins and spaces in which conservation biologists, tourists, poacheour place in the world? Although natural space can also rs, pastoralists, park rangers and politicians contend for be inhabited, that is, briefly occupied by humans, archae natural resources. Yet these same "natural " grasslands
ologists generally share a deeply embedded (Western) have been created through hundreds of thousands of view of nature as somehow the antithesis of the space in years of human occupation, manipulation, and interacwhich one dwells. This dichotomy, embraced by Western tion. Syria's steppe and cultivable lands are substan livehumanists and sharpened through a contemporary, ly, if not perhaps equally, an environment shaped by urban, industrial perspective, is nevertheless reified by human use. Before we can effectively discuss natural our archaeologically constructed views of the human and inhabited spaces, then, we need to establish both a past in which we emphasize technologies—as fundament perspective— whose?— on space and a temporal frameal expressions of human identity and ethnicity1 and as work—historical or static?— in which to consider it. changing economic adaptations2. Technology allows us
1961 (2) BINFORD, 1973. (1) BORDES,
TMO28 © Canadian BCSMS Society for 33 Mesopotamia!) (Québec, 1998) Studies © Maison de l'Orient Módilerr; méen 43 naturel, espace habité en Syrie du Nord (10c-2e millénaires av. J.-C.) Espace
One of the most difficult problems in a study of archaeological past. While they admittedly draw upon
space in prehistory arises with an attempt to draw on dif different ways of knowing, our understanding of human
ferent approaches, as attempted here. If one is to distin prehistory may be enhanced on the one hand by defining
guish between natural space and inhabited space in the quantified, bounded, non-overlapping natural and inhabi
past, one must establish defining criteria by which to ted spaces and on the other hand through a critique of
the one "reading" of environment that positivism recognize each in the prehistoric record. There are both
etic and ernie definitions of space. Western archaeologic affords. Archaeologists practicing in a postmodernist tra
al approaches have overwhelmingly preferred an etic dition decry an approach that a priori depicts environ
definition in which humans everywhere exist in an ment as a pre-existing surface or container in which
abstract landscape, the characteristics of which may be human action occurs6. Yet review of several postmode
described in universalizing language of "-- ologies" such rnist landscape archaeologies quickly shows that a
statement of environmental setting and subsistence as ecology, geomorphology, and climatology3. Within
these globalizing frameworks, regional and local env reconstruction, even if brief, precedes other attempts at
ironmental features such as water availability, plant dis hermeneutical analysis7. Although this paper will not
tributions, and seasonal cycles operate as quantifiable fully explore the latter way of knowing in the Habur, it
and objective dimensions to constrain human adapta is through pursuing both approaches and a diale