Rediscovering Sustainability
Erika Guttmann-Bond
Abstract
There has been a lot of interest in the failures of the past and the environmental disasters that have ensued because of poor land management practices. I argue that the successes of the past are of equal importance, and my research focuses on pre-industrial techniques that have been rediscovered, either through archaeology or anthropology, and put back to work. Such systems often prove to be not only more sustainable than modern approaches, but more resilient in the face of environmental extremes.
Ancient engineering and agricultural techniques are often more appropriate for developing countries than technologies based on fossil fuel and imported materials, but often the best results are achieved by combining ancient and modern technologies, such as tractors using conservation tillage. Sustainable and green solutions are often presented as costly, inefficient extravagances, but actually there are ways to capture carbon and increase biodiversity while producing more food on less land and for lower costs, using less fossil fuel. What's not to like?
Bio
Dr. Guttmann-Bond has been working in Archaeology for nearly 30 years, mainly in the UK but also in Ireland and the Netherlands. I specialise in environmental archaeology, specifically geoarchaeology, but I also have many years of experience in professional archaeology. In 2009-2011 I held a Chair at the Institute for Geo and Bioarchaeology (IGBA) at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU), where I was Professor of Landscape Archaeology, Assistant Director of IGBA and Head of the inter-Faculty Landscape Archaeology research group.