World Historical Ecology Network Seminar

World Historical Ecology Network är ett nätverk med bas i Uppsala som samlar forskare med fokus på global miljöhistoria. Jag vidarebefordrar en seminariekallelse från Christian Isendahl¨och länkar samtidigt till en sammanfattning som ger en bild av det projekt vi ska rapportera från: Mapping Global Agricultural History.

Christian skriver:
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Do not miss the upcoming WHEN Seminar on June 1!

We are very pleased indeed to announce the next open World Historical Ecology Network Seminar at Uppsala University.

MATS WIDGREN AND JANKEN MYRDAL
Global Agricultural History: Mapping the Past for Modeling the Future: Africa and Eurasia

Wednesday, June 1, 2011 at 15.00-17.00
Room 2/1024 in the Campus Engelska Parken, Thunbergsvägen 3H, Uppsala

Abstract
Climate change models can be improved by incorporating past human landscape transformations. Accurate maps of global agricultural history are critical in this regard. Agriculture is one of the oldest, most thorough and spatially extensive of all human activities on earth. This seminar provides the results of a four-year project by geographers, archaeologists, historians and economists from the United States and Sweden. Global and continental scale maps are presented for AD 1000, AD 1500 and AD 1800 (here only for Africa and Eurasia) with discussion of 19th and 20th century agricultural developments. Changes during the past millennium occurred suddenly, in great leaps, not in a slow and continuous manner. Qualitative changes within existing agricultural systems (intensification) were as important as quantitative changes (expansion) of previously established patterns of land use.

Mats Widgren is professor of geography at the Department of Human Geography, Stockholm University. Janken Myrdal is professor of agrarian history at the Section of Agrarian History, Department of Economics, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.

All welcome; please distribute this announcement freely!

For more information on the WHEN Seminars at the Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Uppsala University please contact Christian Isendahl (email: christian.isendahl@arkeologi.uu.se; phone: 018 471 22 15, 0709 367 666).