Lay of the Land

Archaeology Can Inform the Environmental Debate

One of the key practical consequences of modern archaeology is to gather a great deal of information about the prehistoric environment. Human garbage tells us how much mercury was in the Great Lakes thousands of years ago, before they were greatly impacted by humans. This provides a baseline of data from which to measure the conditions of the lakes today. And so it goes around the nation and the world. Archaeologists are digging up past environments to compare with those of today.

In this issue of American Archaeology (see “Can Archaeology Save The Environment?”, p. 12), we take a look at how archaeologists are studying past environments. We learn that the Mimbres people of southwestern New Mexico depleted local animal life as well as forests. Other data indicate that changes in the ecosystem became fatal during a small climate change like the Little Ice Age of the 15th century a.d.

As the planet faces major global warming, archaeologists have much to add to what climatologists, biologists, and other scientists have to tell us. Relatively small environmental changes have been causing large human consequences for thousands of years. Knowing what happened in the past can only help us deal with the large environmental changes that lie ahead.

Mark Michel, President