Living in the Desert as a Chalcolithic Farmer November 4, 2007

In conjunction with our new exhibit Journey to the Copper Age: Archaeology in the Holy Land the museum has invited scholars from around the world to present their most recent work on the early civilizations of the Southern Levant. Also, enjoy an expert led tour of the Copper Age exhibit following the lecture.

There is a popular notion that early village farmers living on the margins of the Negev Desert were at the mercy of a fickle environment which dealt out droughts versus abundant rainfall in seemingly random yearly intervals. We now know that Chalcolithic farmers had very sophisticated strategies for living securely in a marginal farming environment, and were able to make a good and secure living in that locality. This lecture explores some of the evidence for the climatic changes that impacted Chalcolithic farmers, the ancient farming strategies they used to adapt to them, and how this might be relevant to modern farmers within a context of impending global warming.

Arlene Rosen obtained a PhD in anthropology from the University of Chicago in 1985. She is currently a Reader in Environmental Archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London. She has participated in archaeological fieldwork in Central America, Europe, Africa, the Levant, Central Asia, and East Asia. Her primary research interests include human relationships with their environments, the impact of climate change on human societies, and the development of agricultural systems in the proto-historic Near East, Central Asia, and Neolithic to Bronze Age China. Rosens publications include Civilizing Climate: Social Responses to Climate Change in the Ancient Near East (2007), Altamira Press, and Cities of Clay: The Geoarchaeology of Tells (1986) Univ. of Chicago Press.

Event submitted by Eventful.com on behalf of lemonadepr.