The Archaeosphere

Abstract

The archaeosphere is the totality of human-modified ground considered as a composite entity of global scale – a rapidly expanding growth-form and force of planetary transformation. It started forming thousands of years ago and never stopped, growing faster than ever today.  The first part of the seminar gives a general overview of this substantial body of material and its role in Earth system change. But for all its global scale and vast extent, the archaeosphere is not a distant object. As residue and stratigraphic trace of human activity, it can usually be found within touching distance of ourselves, wherever we happen to be. To illustrate this, the second part of the talk zooms in to look at the accumulation and continuing expansion of the archaeosphere under the cityscape of London itself.

UCL Institute of Archaeology Thematic Research Seminars Programme | Term I, 2024-25

The Term I seminar series will highlight thematic research looking at ‘Life Histories’ and ‘Human Planetary Transformations’. These are scheduled to be in-person events.

Seminars on ‘Life Histories’ will explore research related to areas including transition from hunting to herding; demographic instabilities in early farming societies; diet; health and variation in past populations; death and burial.

Those seminars on ‘Human Planetary Transformations’ will highlight research related to environmental transformations and sustainability; early human archaeology and evolution; domestication of animals and plants, human demography and migration. 

Wednesdays, doors open 4pm for a 4.10pm start

• 9 October: Reassessing Kura-Araxes pastoral practices and mobility in the Caucasus & Levant using zooarchaeology, ZooMS and stable isotope analysis - Gwen Maurer (Cardiff University)
• 16 October: Combining Bioarchaeology and Immunology to explore the disease burden of past populations - Katie Hemer & Thomas McDonnell (UCL)
• 23 October:  Death and burial in ancient Egypt: the role of black goo - Kate Fulcher (UCL)
• 30 October: What’s theoretical/ ethical/ political about writing people’s life stories archaeologically?  - John Robb (University of Cambridge) 

[6 November: Reading Week - no seminar]

• 13 November: Who’s transforming who? Nomads and metals at the dawn of the Silk Roads trade - Miljana Radivojevic (UCL)
• 20 November: Monumentality and Landscape: Case Studies in the Creation of Lineage and Genealogy from Early Medieval England - Andrew Reynolds (UCL)
• 27 November: The Archaeosphere - Matt Edgeworth (University of Leicester)
• 4 December: Low-density urbanism in Amazonia - Carla Jaimes Betancourt (Bonn University)

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