Issues and Concepts in Historical Ecology

Carole L. Crumley is Emerita Professor of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and Senior Researcher at the Swedish Biodiversity Centre, Sweden. She is a founder of historical ecology, editing Historical Ecology: Cultural Knowledge and Changing Landscapes, 1994. Her research interests are broad in both science and the humanities, including anthropology, archaeology, landscape ecology, palaeoecology and climatology. Tommy Lennartsson is Biologist and an Associate Professor in Conservation Biology at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and researcher at the Swedish Biodiversity Centre, Uppsala. His research focuses on applied aspects of biodiversity conservation and use of natural resources, with a historical perspective and in relation to climate change. Anna Westin is Biologist and an Associate Professor in Agricultural History at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and Researcher at the Swedish Biodiversity Centre, Uppsala. Her research uses historical ecology to study biodiversity, ecology, cultural heritage and history.

• List of contributors; 1. Is there a future for the past? Carole L. Crumley, Anna Westin and Tommy Lennartsson; 2. Historical ecology and the longue durée Paul Sinclair, Jon Moen and Carole L. Crumley; 3. Human and societal dimensions of past climate change Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist; 4. Rural communities and traditional ecological knowledge Anamaria Iuga, Anna Westin, Bogdan Iancu, Monica Stroe and Håkan Tunón; 5. Baselines and the shifting baseline syndrome – exploring frames of reference in nature conservation Tuija Hilding-Rydevik, Jon Moen and Carina Green; 6. Concepts for integrated research in historical ecology Ove Eriksson, Anneli Ekblom, Paul Lane, Tommy Lennartsson and Karl-Johan Lindholm; 7. Diversity in ecological and social contexts Tommy Lennartsson, Ove Eriksson, Anamaria Iuga, Jesper Larsson, Jon Moen, Michael Scholl, Anna Westin and Carole L. Crumley; 8. How to operationalise collaborative research Elizabeth Jones, Anna Westin, Scott Madry, Seth Murray, Jon Moen and Amanda Tickner; 9. Historical ecology in theory and practice: editors' reflections Tommy Lennartsson, Anna Westin and Carole L. Crumley; 10. Taking research into action in historical ecology Carole L. Crumley; Index.

'Historical ecology has become a master methodology of our time, part of the new holism. This volume explains the how and the why of it. Not only does it offer a critical synthesis with relevant examples, but also a prospectus for likely future developments and applications. The authors bring a wealth of complementary experience and expertise to their task, drawing on different backgrounds to delineate a field of research that is intrinsically and necessarily multi-disciplinary and collaborative. Readers are carefully led through the theoretical connections between an assemblage of intertwined concepts of current and increasing intellectual significance - the Anthropocene and landscape domestication, complexity, memory and local environmental knowledge, shifting baseline syndrome, biocultural diversity, niche construction and co-evolution. Together, these have progressively undermined older 'functionalist' and 'adaptionist' assumptions about how socio-ecological systems really work in the twenty-first century.' Roy Ellen, Centre for Biocultural Diversity, University of Kent