What makes us different is what makes us human..
Winds, Mountains, Oceans, Rivers: Ecologies and Their Social Impacts in the New World
A Symposium Funded By:Center for Latin American Studies, UCISDean, School of Arts and Sciences, and theDepartment of Anthropology
March 20, 2009
Provost's Suite, 2500 Wesley W. Posvar Hall
View Full Poster
Building on the work of Dr. James B. Richardson III, the proposed symposium will focus on recent and ongoing research dealing with questions about the relationship between ecology and society in the Caribbean and southern, central and northern America. Dr. Richardson has conducted extensive research in Peru on economic development, contact and interconnections between and among societies, geoarchaeology, and maritime and riverine adaptations. Bringing together Dr. Richardson's former students and colleagues as well as other leading scholars in the field, the symposium will focus on the impact that environmental factors have on the dynamics of economic, political and social organization in different contexts. Given that ecological relationships are operative on both a macro and micro scale, involving individual households and local topography as well as empires, hemispheric climate change and geo-tectonics, the symposium will explore recent developments in methodological and theoretical approaches to the study of the complex ways in which human groups interface with the natural environment.
As the title indicates, the symposium is interdisciplinary in several important ways and, therefore, brings together the intellectual resources of a broad range of academic departments within the School of Arts and Sciences. In terms of topical and theoretical focus, the symposium seeks to engage with cutting edge interdisciplinary work on the impact of environments and environmental patterns of change on various forms of social organization. As such this represents a unique articulation of interdisciplinary concerns bringing together methodologies of geology, climatology and other earth sciences to address theoretical questions in the social sciences that relate to patterns of stability and change and processes of trade, population mobility and cultural diffusion.
Eleven scholars with research expertise in the Caribbean, and South, Central and North America have been be invited to participate in a day-long symposium at the University of Pittsburgh, Oakland. Three symposium panel sessions are organized around common methodological and/or theoretical questions.
Symposium Participants and Paper Abstracts (pdf file)
Program
8:00 – 8:30 Continental Breakfast (By invitation)
8:45 Welcome and Opening Remarks
9:00 – 10:15 Panel 1: Rivers and Settlement
Patterns in North America
Chair: Richard Scaglion, Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh
Speaker 1: Ellen R. Cowie: Down by the River: Riverine Adaptations in Northern New England
Speaker 2: David Anderson: Monongahela Culture Agriculture and Settlement Patterns: Using GIS to examine Prehistoric Agriculture in Southwestern Pennsylvania
Speaker 3: Harry O. Holstein: In Search of the 16 th Century Spanish Expedition Tristan de Luna's Principal Town of Coosa within the Coosa River Drainage.
10:15 – 10:30 – Coffee Break
10:30 – 12:00 Panel 2: Environments, Ecology, and Social Complexity
Chair: Marc Bermann, Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh
Speaker 1: Alejandro Chu: Searching for the Origins of North Central Coast Late Preceramic Period Monumental Architecture
Speaker 2: Denise Schaan : Managing Water, Building Landscapes: The Ecology of Social Complexity in Ancient Amazonia
Speaker 3: Michael Heckenberger: Bounty from the River Sea: Fishing, Wetland Management and the Raise of Complex Societies in Amazonia
Speaker 4: Michael E. Moseley: Andean Pearls of Wisdom: Shucking Shells, Pioneering Environmental Dynamics
12:00 – 1:30 Lunch for Panelists (Anthropology Lounge)
1:30 – 3:00 Panel 3: Oceanic Influences and Currents of Change
Chair: Mark Abbott, Department of Geology and Planetary Sciences, University of Pittsburgh
Speaker 1: James M. Adovasio: Inner Continental Shelf Archaeology in the Northeast Gulf of Mexico
Speaker 2: Mark McConaughy : ENSO We Come to an End or How I learned to Love Coastlines
Speaker 3: John G. Crock: Pre-Columbian Maritime Adaptations in the Eastern Caribbean
Speaker 4: Dan Sandweiss: Jim Richardson: Paleodisaster Pioneer for Peru
3:00 – 4:30 Key Note Address
Global Climate Change: A Paleoclimate Perspective from the World's Highest Mountains
Professor Lonnie G. Thompson
Distinguished University Professor, School of Earth Sciences, Senior Research Scientist, Byrd Polar Research Center, The Ohio State University
4:30 – 6:00 Reception: 2501 WWPH