“Now, evidence is growing that, faced with a climate crisis, the civilization did not disappear but adapted and moved.” #climateheritage
ways that #archaeology provides the long view for thinking about #climatechange
www.theguardian.com/science/2025...
How can we make ourselves a place—politically, morally, practically—in the world as it is, a world suffering the ecological and temporal dislocations of modernity, a world in which civilization threatens its own material roots in nature? How can we be truly at home in such a world, in post-Nature nature? What will ground us? What will guide us? The answer I’ve come to is “history.” Over time I’ve come to realize that our ecological crisis is also a historical crisis. By this I mean not that the moral and ecological problems that result from our technological, industrial domination of nature have become manifest at a particular historical moment (although, of course, they have) or that our ecological problems are serious enough that they have to be mentioned in any narrative account of our culture that tries to be complete (although I believe they are). What I mean is this: the cultural attitudes toward nature that produced our ecological crisis have symptomatic and consequent parallels in our cultural attitudes toward history. If we are out of place in nature, we are also out of place in time, and the two kinds of exile are related.
Oh, this is good.
From the preface to Eric Zencey's Virgin Forest...
Interesting article which highlights the potential conflict between cultural heritage and nature. There is space for both though.
just realised never replied to this! Many thanks for your prompt reply! The paper was really useful.
Excellent. Did you get a sense of any cultural heritage value in brownfield sites or were they overwhelmingly seen as negative in those terms?
BFI film of the week - the ever festive Watership Down. One of the most traumatic movies ever - I think Bright Eyes should become a traditional carol. ...'Following a river of death down stream Oh, is it a dreeeeeeaaaammmmmm. Merry Christmas'
Our new article is out now: "Animal Cultures at the Edge of Extinction" (open access). It takes a critical #envhum approach to biological research on animal cultures and asks how humanities scholars might contribute to these discussions in a time of extinctions.
journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....
At Wildwood in Kent today - Britain was full of wild and ferocious beasts in the past - surprised we made it through!!
Indeed, and my personal favourite fossil fuel company sustainability reports.
That's true but the purpose is not to produce a good piece of work but to aid in decision-making. Reports can be disagreed with or ignored rather than redrafted. I bet you could point to some pretty ropey Palaeolithic gray lit evals which wouldnt have made it through your peer review??
Must admit - I assume gray lit essentially means lack of external peer review, which is a useful distinction. In planning, documents can easily be factually correct with a clear conscious or unconscious bias.
