Archaeology for the Anthropocene: Scale, soil, and the settlement of Iceland

摘要: Abstract Archaeologists have devised numerous methods for measuring and describing past human-environmental interactions, but connecting historic case studies with present-day global concerns often proves challenging. New ways of considering scale are needed to bring communities into productive conversation the Anthropocene. Iceland, one last land masses colonized by humans, was transformed agricultural practices first generations Norse settlers in 9th 10th centuries, including a significant reduction forest cover soil loss erosion. However, large-scale, island-wide process erosion manifested different that become clear when changes investigated at regional scale. These were beneficial some places detrimental others, development inequality contingent on both social environmental contexts. Scholars contemporary Anthropocene must likewise connect local effects, landscape degradation inequality, anthropogenic processes operate beyond everyday experience. Social landscapes, infrastructure degradation, act concert ecological reconstitute ‘natural’ new, taken-for-granted landscapes inequality. Studying way experienced relatively larger-scale change leads new thinking about, perhaps managing, human responses global-scale change.