No conclusions for the action reached yet due to the Early Termination of the Grant Agreement. The overall objective of project “Human Landscapes: agricultural intensification and peasant resilience in medieval Southern Greater Syria” (HumanLand) was to offer a longue durée perspective on issues of intensified agricultural and pastoral methods practiced in medieval Eastern Mediterranean region. Particularly, this project aimed to identify whether medieval empires intensified agro-pastoral pursuits despite negative environmental impacts on the semi-arid regions of Southern Greater Syria and whether traditional agro-pastoral systems worked towards peasant and environmental resilience. Specifically, HumanLand has three research objectives (ROs):
•RO1: To identify changes in agricultural intensification in relation to climatic, political and economic shifts that took place in the late 14th and much of the 15th centuries.
•RO2: To investigate the use of sustainable strategies and impact of imperial regimes on medieval communities.
•RO3: To investigate the impact of political structures on the ecology in semi-arid regions.
To pursue this, HumanLand uses botanical micro-remains (phytolith, starches and spherulites) and stable isotope data from crop remains derived from on- and off- site contexts of medieval Jordan and Israel that, combined, provide evidence for intensified agriculture. This evidence will be evaluated with information on land-use in medieval texts. Using a geodatabase in a GIS environment, the quantitative and qualitative data on medieval land-use will be evaluated against the backdrop of the settlement history of each site up until the 1870s and the history of local and regional politics and economy. This project approach to environmental history is important for the society, as it initiates awareness to some of these issues and letting us all think of who we are as species and how we dominate and alter our environments from the medieval Period through the current day.
