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Document Details : Title: The Pontine Marshes (Central Italy) Subtitle: A Case Study in Wetland Historical Ecology Author(s): WALSH, Kevin , ATTEMA, Peter , DE HAAS, Tymon Journal: BABESCH Volume: 89 Date: 2014 Pages: 27-46 DOI: 10.2143/BAB.89.0.3034668 Abstract : The citation of natural environmental processes as a key element in the formation of and changes in human culture has been unfashionable for some time. Whilst scepticism of certain unfettered cultural ecological or socioecological theories is understandable, archaeologists often fail to engage fully with the dynamic relationships between people and environment in the past. This paper provides a new assessment of the potential of more nuanced cultural and historical ecological frameworks that explicitly develop notions of environmental knowledge in the investigation of human engagements with the environment. More specifically, this contribution considers the development of the forms of environmental knowledge associated with a Roman wetland, the Pontine Marshes. Changes in settlement activity and practices in this central Italian wetland landscape close to Rome were the product of a complex interplay of elite political initiatives and management projects and local forms of environmental knowledge applied by ordinary people who had to engage with this landscape. The paper comprises an introduction to the research questions and the interpretive framework, followed by an assessment of documentary and recent archaeological research that serve to illustrate the development of human interaction with these marshes. The discussion considers the probable reasons for the waxing and waning of wetland activity, and the nature of different class-based understandings of the wetland during the Roman period. |
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