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Initiation workshop for a network for the development of analysis and visualisation tools for database orientated environmental archaeological, palaeoenvironmental and palaeoclimatic studies. See Conference & workshop participation below.
HUMlab, Umeå, Sweden.

April
2009

Presentation available from HUMlab as a stream: http://stream.humlab.umu.se/

The SEAD project, at the Environmental Archaeology Lab and in collaboration with HUMlab and the NEOTOMA project, will host a small international, multidisciplinary workshop. As the title implies, the aim is to promote the development of tools to facilitate the easier and more powerful analysis of palaeoecological data. This will be achieved by bringing together a diverse group of database active individuals in the fields of palaeoecology, environmental archaeology and database/software development, and presenting, dissecting and designing solutions to community wide problems. Representatives from a number of national and international databases will be present, and the results will be made freely available to other interested parties.

Workshop schedule: tools_workshop_schedule.pdf

The hotel: Hotell Aveny, Rådhusesplanaden 14

The Environmental Archaeology Lab is here, on the bottom floor of the building to the left of the marked street.

HUMlab is here, in the basement.

The Elk House, is our excursion destination.

Environmental change, climate change and human impact are rarely accurately represented by single proxy data sources. These deficiencies can be compensated for by the use of multiproxy investigations, where the relative advantages of multiple methods can be used to provide a broader, more detailed picture of the nature of changes in the past. The combined analysis of archaeological deposits and off-site sediments, along with the construction of reliable chronologies, forms the backbone of our understanding of past interactions between people and the environment. This represents a massive amount of empirical data, for which there is currently no consolidated, publicly accessible database or integrated analysis package. The Strategic Environmental Archaeology Database project (http://www.sead.se/), will create an online system for the storage, extraction, visualisation and analysis of multiple lines of proxy data from Quaternary geological and archaeological sites.

The initial datasets will primarily consist of quantified records of plant macrofossils, pollen, soil chemistry and physical properties accumulated by the Swedish Environmental Archaeology Lab at Umeå University, as well as Swedish grey literature and the contents of the Bugs Coleopteran Ecology Package insect database. The database system will then be used to help improve methodologies, look for patterns geographical patterns in the evidence for environmental and climate change, investigate the history of agriculture, examine past variations in resource use in Arctic environments, and as a springboard for more advanced interface and data mining developments, among other things.

Environmental change has a human dimension, and has had so for at least the last 10 000 years. The prehistoric impact of people on the landscape around them has occasionally left visible traces, such as field structures and mining waste. More often than not, however, the only evidence available is at the microscopic or chemical levels. This may take the form of proxy indicators such as insect remains, plant macrofossils and pollen which indicate past states of vegetation, hydrology and climate among other things. In addition, the chemical and physical properties of soils may also help delineate spatial anomalies which represent human induced changes caused by actions such as manuring, drainage or animal corralling.

By measuring past changes in these proxy variables, we can gain important insights into both past changes in the natural landscape and human components of these. This represents a massive amount of empirical data, for which there is currently no consolidated, accessible database. The Strategic Environmental Archaeology Database Project, currently underway at the Environmental Archaeology Lab, Umeå University, aims to provide a centralised, publicly accessible resource for the storage, extraction, analysis and visualisation of data on past climates, environments and human impacts. SEAD will form part of an international network of research infrastructure for environmental archaeology and Quaternary palaeoecology, which will help us to understand better past natural and human induced changes in the environment and climate, and thus to predict, and perhaps cope with future change scenarios.