Reflection of Current debates 14th Seminar-Ghide

Ghide Habtetsion Gebremichael

Reflection of Current debates 14th Seminar

On “from natural to cultural landscapes: agriculture, co-evolution and change perspectives from the Middle East”.

Uppsala University, 26 October 2015

Even though I have no background in archeology nevertheless the lecture ‘from natural to cultural landscapes: agriculture, co-evolution and change perspectives from the Middle East’ by Valentina Caracuta encouraged me to study more archeological methods in order to understand environmental problems. Particularly it made me curious on the topic of the idea of domestication and cultivation.

More over the methodology she employed to make her research was also another part of the talk which needs careful consideration. For example the use of carbon dating using charred seeds and charcoal is one way which bridge environmental historian with archaeology. Not only had that she also mentioned the advantage of multi-disciplinary to study environmental changes through time. With this regards she said it would be helpful if we could employ different methods and approach.

However when I read her article, I wasn’t convinced with her discussion and conclusion part. At the same time there were some terms and phrase which needs to be addressed in the very places. Moreover in her article, she presented more raw datas and gives less space for her discussion and analysis.

After we have finished the seminar in the class, we had also good time in discussion general environmental issue in the cafeteria. Especially with fauna beans and its domestication process in the northern Israel. She shared us her experience in the field work and challenges she has encountered. In addition to that other people from the panel enlightened us their experience with other perspectives of archeological research. For example Ezakia brought baobab as example of some trees even though they are in the forest but people keep the as a kind of domesticated in his countries.

The last point which touch me most was that when we had the debate of the landscape and culture relationship. In this part of the discussion we argued landscape was the result of culture and vice versa. People in the panel tried to prove the claim with different premises but I was curious with the argument of Lauri that he brought by saying that ‘we should also to think that human being was not only the key role in shaping the environment but also we should see from the opposite view which is the environment also plays a key role in shaping us’. This was furthered with a number of reasons like climate change, drought and other environmental activities made us to start different activities in certain area and enforced human being to become the center of the driving force.