just see it!
A 40 minutes video installation about environmental humanities, with James Fleming, Ursula Heise, Greg Garrard, Sarah Elkind, David Nye, Donald Worster e Hannes Bergthaller.
quinta-feira, 12 de abril de 2012
quinta-feira, 1 de março de 2012
quinta-feira, 26 de janeiro de 2012
Abstracts IV - Human response to weather: building and praying
The shield protectors for rain, cold, heat and dry: shelters for
people, cattle and food in 19th century
Cristina
Joanaz de Melo, IHC-FCSH, Universidade Nova de Lisboa
Drought as floods disables animals and human survival.
The burning sun elevates shadow and covering to precious resources. Hailstorms
and the roar of thunders suggestively make one desire for protection. Thus,
extreme weather conditions call for sheltering.
Hardly fitting in our pattern of annual seasons, weather is
unpredictable.
So far, literature attributes shepherds sheltering in
the lowlands as in the uplands to the tradition of transhumance from winter to
summer pastures. However in Serra do
Gerês in the north of Portugal, many of this shelters have only
500m of difference in altitude.
However in nowadays, in the Portuguese province of
Beira Baixa, in the area of the International Tagus, Vilha Velha do Ródão we
can find a track of shelters made of
stones, similar to igloos made with rocks, in
. They are known in the region as
“shepherds shelters”. Both in the valleys, as at 650meters of altitude, and higher up towards
the direction of Guarda, between 1000meters and 1500 meters of altitude. Those
igloos and other constructions made of
stones, timber or mud, inside of
which fire can be lighted on in
areas had been built in areas always
with fewer vegetation and more windy.
Considering that life conditions would be easier in
lower altitudes, one might wonder, why have these shelters been built so high?
The intriguing question was about knowing what had motivated constructions in
the high as well as their ulterior abandonment. In summer that location would
not bring much shadow or water for the flocks, and over winter, weather
conditions would be too sharp. Therefore, those structures might have been
built under specific conditions, namely in the period of rain fall increase in
the 19th century.
Throughout the 1800s, there was a profound increase of
rain values for all over Europe. In Portugal as in France or Switzerland the
decade of 1850s was known by the occurrence of the biggest torrential floods of
the century. Thus, it might have happened some correspondence between the time
of sheltering constructions higher in the slopes, rainfall increase and the
need to avoid the altitude in the mountains, were steams were becoming dragging
waters.
In order to overcome weather conditions and not being
able to run their flocks in the occupied lowlands, shepherds had to develop
some kind of strategy to survive in the highlands. Going up was the
alternative. That would require probably more sophisticated logistics both for
protection as for pastures survival.
In this paper it will be observed how the communities
of the mountains took advantage of very hard natural conditions, to live in. In
order to develop this theme it will be observed how the populations of the mountains - Serra da Estrela, Marão e Gerês reacted to
weather behaviour and developed their own strategies for protection using “wasted resources” like rocks, mud, dells, peat or still timber.
In order to analyze this case study several kind of
sources, historical, ethnographical and archaeological it will be crossed. The first ones will comprise geographical
data describing the landscape, scientific reports and parliamentary debates
produced in the 19th century. Secondly, it will be consulted
secondary bibliography on archaeological and ethnographic aspects to
contextualize the trails and material proofs of the igloos made of rocks and
perhaps of timber.
Houses of God: supernatural
protection against natural threats in the south of Portugal in the Middle and
Modern Ages
Pedro
Picoito, Instituto Superior de Investigação e Ciência
In the western, pre-contemporary period was characterized by the influence of
religion as well as of the dependence of nature behaviour in the
collective live. In order to tame the strength of the elements the
supernatural was constantly evoked. In
such a dimension that many contemporary historiographically paradigms relate
the technical and scientific progress to the decline of religious practices and
believes such as the Max Weber Work the “Disenchantment of the World”
The appeal to the supernatural against the inclemency
of the weather, epidemics or the risks that put in danger agriculture, fishing,
travelling or other daily life issues, ahs been drawn in the Christian
tradition to specializes saints as: saint Barbara (lightning and fire)); Saint Nicolas (sailing and maritime trips); saint
Christopher St. Nicholas
(seafaring), St. Christopher (land travel), San Isidro (crops), St. Peter
(fishing), St. Anthony (livestock), St. Margaret (births), San Sebastian
(plague ), Lazarus (leprosy), San Roque (skin diseases), San Blas (diseases of
the throat), Santa Luzia (eye diseases), Santa Apollonia (toothache), etc..
These devotions are widespread throughout Christendom, but there are also
particularly venerated intercessors regional or local level who can play the
role usually assigned to the saints experts. This is the case in Portugal, the
popular St. Anthony, whose cult sometimes replaces that of St. Peter among the
fishermen, or Our Lady, universal intercessor in different situation.
Thus, the invocation of God, Santa Maria and other
patron saints against natural hazards is clothed in medieval and Modern Europe
of three frequent public forms. Firstly, the dedication of churches or chapels,
which means that a historical survey of the temples of the onomastic one region
may indicate the most feared natural phenomena by its inhabitants in the past.
Secondly was the cyclical cult of a saint through pilgrimages or processions,
usually annual, that when (s) (s) to the party (s) in the calendar to move the
faithful to make a shrine to pray, make offerings, to meet votes or simply
participate in camp or at the fair. Thirdly, the rites of a request for
extraordinary aid a saint, image or relics, known in the Mediterranean area by
rogation, a special kind of procession or pilgrimage designed to placate
unexpected natural disasters such as droughts, floods, epidemics, earthquakes,
etc.
Thus, this presentation proposes to study these three
forms of invocation of the saints against the threats of the environment in the
regional Mediterranean Portugal, as defined by the geographer Orlando Ribeiro,
and throughout the medieval and modern. Unable to thoroughly analyze a
geographical area and chronological period so extensive, try several
comparative case studies of some sites for which there is already a significant
number of sources and studies, to obtain a global perspective as possible on
the issue question.
Abstracts III - Space and climate: adaptations of animals and humans
Climate
change and responses of biological diversity: using amphibians as a
model system
James Harris
CIBIO/UP,
Centro de Investigação em Biodiversidade e Recursos Genéticos da Universidade
do Porto, Campus Agrário de Vairão, Rua Padre Armando Quintas, 4485-661 Vairão,
Portugal
Since the origin of life on earth, organisms have
adapted to a constantly changing environment. Long before humans developed the
idea that they are modifying climate due to their activities on the planet,
climate change was the rule and not the exception. In particular, the Quaternary,
a period that started about two million years ago, was characterized by regular
and profound climatic changes due to the occurrence of glaciations which shaped
patterns of biological diversity on Earth. For example, as recently as 20,000
years ago, the last glacial maximum resulted in the near absence of life in
what we know today as Central and Northern Europe, whereas many organisms survived
in the so-called southern refugia (the peninsulas of Iberia, Italy and the
Balkans). Amphibians and reptiles are extremely suitable species to study the
impact of climate change on biological diversity, both past and present, partly
because they have a low dispersal rate, making them useful for tracking records
of past and on-going climate modifications. In this presentation we describe
our current knowledge on how past climate change shaped the distribution and
genetic diversity of amphibian and reptile species with a special emphasis on
the Iberian Peninsula . We show that Iberia Peninsula
and went extinct elsewhere. It is a melting pot because extreme oscillations
resulted in fragmented populations that diverged and later contacted again.
Today, central and southeastern Iberia are submitted to extreme arid conditions
and offer a stressful environment to amphibians that should be monitored in
order to investigate the impact of current climate and environmental change on
biological diversity. This talk will be illustrated with our own on-going
research work on Iberian herpetofauna.
Prehistoric
and medieval mobile pastoral strategies: an archaeozoological perspective
Marta Moreno-García, Centro de Ciências Humanas y Sociales, Madrid
Carlos M. Pimenta, Instituto de Gestão do Património Arquitectónico e Arqueológico, Lisboa
Seasonal
pastoral systems as transhumance have traditionally been interpreted as the
‘natural’ husbandry strategy to be followed in the Mediterranean world.
Underlying this situation was the assumption that topographical relief and
season were, if not totally determinant, primary factors in the emergence and
development of mobile pastoral strategies. However with the increase in
palaeoenvironmental studies, particularly pollen and charcoal analyses, this
statement has become questionable. Since mountains in the Mediterranean are too
low to grow alpine meadows, open summer grazing areas would not be a ‘natural’
feature of this landscape. Upland pastures can be considered mainly the product
of human interference, either by fire and axe or through grazing (Mellars,
1976; Forbes & Koster,1976). Before extensive clearance took place,
accessibility to and herding in woodland pastures during the summers may be
assumed to have been difficult and given the fact that there existed wooded
zones in the lowlands, may be unnecessary. Thus, it appears that the role
played by environmental conditions in the emergence of seasonal mobile pastoral
systems in this geographical area could have been more secondary than initially
thought.
Studies
among traditional Mediterranean pastoral communities (i.e.: Lewthwaite, 1983;
Barker & Grant, 1991) have shown that periodical movements of livestock
offer the possibility of maintaining larger populations during those seasons
when local grazing resources are scarce. Consequently, physical conditions of a
geographical area regarding grazing availability must be considered together
with the scale at which livestock might have been kept. Both variables are
linked. Equally valuable and closely related to them is the question of the
extension of the territory exploited. Intra- or extra-regional movements could
distinguish transhumance from other mobile pastoral systems. Finally, it cannot
be forgotten that all these issues are associated with the level of
productivity pursued by the shepherds.
The
aim of this paper is to discuss the possibilities offered by the analysis and
study of domestic faunal remains from archaeological sites to explore some of
the issues just mentioned. Two case studies are presented. Firstly, the faunal
sample recovered from the cave of Els Trocs dated to the Neolithic and located
in the Spanish Pyrenees. Secondly, the faunal assemblage from Albarracín Castle
(Teruel) dated to the medieval period. The estimation of kill-off patterns
noting the absence or presence of particular age groups and the recognition of
lambing and killing seasons are data analysed which may help to recognise the
pastoral systems followed by these two upland human communities.
References:
Barker, G. & Grant, A. (eds.) (1991). Ancient and modern pastoralism in Central
Italy: an interdisciplinary study in the Cicolano Mountains. Papers of the British School at Rome 59, 15-88.
Forbes, H.A. & Koster, H.A. (1976). Fire, axe, and plow: human influence on local plant
communities in the Southern Argolid. In (M. Dimen & E. Friedl, eds.) Regional variation in modern Greece
and Cyprus: toward a perspective on the ethnography of Greece. Annals of the New York Academy of
Sciences 268, 109-126.
Lewthwaite, J. (1983). The art of coarse herding:
archaeological insights from recent pastoral practices on west Mediterranean
islands. In (J. Clutton-Brock & C. Grigson, eds.) Animals and Archaeology 3. Early
herders and their flocks. Oxford: BAR International Series 202, pp. 25-37.
Mellars, P. (1976). Fire ecology, animal populations
and man: a study of some ecological relationships in prehistory. Proceedings of the Prehistoric
Society 42, 15-45.
Abstracts II - Imagined landscapes
A Fear of Nature - Images & Perceptions of Heath, Moor, Bog
& Fen in England
Ian D. Rotherham, Sheffield Hallam University
Macbeth - Scene 1. - A desert
Heath
‘When shall we
three meet again
In thunder lightning, or in rain?
When the hurlyburly’s done,
When the battle’s lost and won,
That will be ere the set of sun,
Where the place?
Upon the heath ………………. Fair is foul and foul is fair,
Hover through the fog and filthy air’
William Shakespeare 1600’s
Today, fashions, art, science, transport and
communications all play significant roles in the emerging sense of place and
culture that now translate into the tourist landscape. These places are fearful
as waste and wilderness. Yet being far from the madding crowd these wild areas
draw the visitor to escape from the modern world to rejoin nature and the
cultural past. The reality may owe as much to fiction and careful packaging as
it does to nature and history. Hollywood and the Victorian writers for example,
draw visitors to the ancient heathland and Royal Forest of Sherwood as much as
by any real understanding of the nature and history of the area. The accounts
of travellers and commentators in Great Britain from the medieval to modern
times help set the scene for contemporary images and associations. Recent
research on the North Yorkshire Moors and Dales for the Yorkshire Tourist Board
showed how visitors were still adversely affected by images of the ‘Moors Murders’ (from the 1960s and a
totally different geographical location),
and even of the 1980s classic film ‘American
Werewolf in London’ , the opening scenes of which are set in a bleak North
Yorkshire moorland. However, visitors are also drawn to a place by fear and
association. So the late Victorian ‘Hound
of the Baskervilles’ by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, created both fear of the
place but also an irresistible attraction for future visitors to experience the
bleak and horrific scene of the book, Dartmoor.
Sherlock Holmes states that ‘………….. there rose out to the vast gloom of the moor
that strange cry which I had already heard upon the borders of the great
Grimpen Mire. It came with the wind through the silence of the night, a long,
deep mutter, then a rising howl, and then a sad moan in which it died away.’
In his diary Watson describes the ‘……. Bleak, cold, and shelterless moor’, and
states that ‘No one could find his way
into the Grimpen Mire tonight.’ Then he describes their way through the
bog: ‘……... green-scummed pits and foul
quagmires which barred the way to the stranger. Rank reeds and lush, slimy
water-plants sent an odour of decay and heavy miasmatic vapour into our faces,
whilst a false step plunged us more than once into the dark, quivering mire,
which shook for yards in soft undulations around our feet. Its tenacious grip
plucked at our heels as we walked, and when we sank into it, it was as if some
malignant hand was tugging us down into those obscene depths, so grim and
purposeful was the clutch in which it held us.’
Another Conan Doyle hero Brigadier Gerard describes
the landscape as: ‘It is a bleak place
this Dartmoor, wild and rocky - a country of wind and mist. I felt as I walked
that it is no wonder Englishmen should suffer from the spleen.’
Today, the scene is the Dartmoor National Park with
around ten million tourism visitors a year.
Wintering
in the mountains: how difficulties became economical opportunities
This paper examines how snow
and wind in the mountains of northern Portugal have been differently perceived along
the 20th century. The analysis integrates literary readings on exposure
to extreme weather (ca. 1940) with
other sources to follow the transformation of harsh weather conditions into development
opportunities for mountain tourism and wind farms.
Abstracts I - Erosion and population
Watershed management and
afforestation between the 19th and 20th century in Italy
Mauro Agnoletti, Universitá di Firenze
In the second half of the 19th century many European
countries having parts of their territory included in the Alpine regions
developed polices for afforestation and watershed management. The need to
improve the environmental conditions of the mountain regions reducing
landslides on the mountains and floods in the plains, required the development
of a body of techniques adapted to steep mountain slopes, but also to deal with
the socioeconomic problems of the mountain populations, not always ready to
accept large afforestation programs. In the case of Italy, where mountains
cover more than 35% of the territory, the social problems and the technical
problems that the forest administration encountered required more than 100
years to be solved in favor of large
afforestation projects. The “migration” of more than 3.500.000 people from the
hills and the plains to the mountain areas, between 1861 and 1951, almost
doubled the number of people living in the mountain, making about 25% of the
total Italian population. In the Apennine range the mountain population almost
doubled in 50 years time. On one hand
this demographic growth brought to the need to expand cultivated land and
pasture on mountain slopes, reducing the extension of forest cover. On the
other, the need to protect the mountains and the valley from landslides and
floods had to take into account that farmers and shepherds needed land to
survive, rather than forests. Initially the attention of authorities was mostly
concentrated on strategies based on the experience of French engineers, which
preferred to build dams rather than afforest the land. At the turn of the
century however, the bad results of that choice convinced the Italian
government to undertake more afforestation. The shift from a policy based on
reduced state subsidies to a robust
increase of state intervention, as well as the strong will of the fascist
regime to increase afforestation and watershed management, produced the most
important Italian laws for environmental
protection, and helped to extend forest
cover, of about 200.000.
However, the
real increase of forest cover as well as the success of afforestation polices,
occurred only after 1960, when the industrial development of the country
favored the abandon of mountain areas,
bringing back the demographic situation to the one of 1861. Recent research
findings shows that the socioeconomic and geological conditions of the Italian
peninsula not always suggest that forests and woodlands are the best solution
to fight hydrogeological risk, but rather a careful management of the
territory.
Erosion processes and past
climate condition in the South Alentejo
Maria José Roxo, FCSH –
Universidade Nova de Lisboa
The research on information regarding extreme weather
phenomena that occurred in the past in the Southern Alentejo region, along the
analysis on soil use and occupation cartography, were key elements to
understand the current state of decay of the ecosystems.
The used methodology was to collect qualitative
information on the weather conditions and extreme phenomena (droughts, flood,
storms, snowing) in regional newspapers (Bejense, Mertolense), published since
mid-19th century, and in obtaining quantitative data since the time that
weather stations were installed in that region of Portugal (Beja, S. Domingos
Mine). Particular emphasis was given to the information regarding the
municipalities of Mertola and Serpa, as they are municipalities that show vast
areas with a high degree of soil degradation and loss of biodiversity
(desertification).
The climatic information associated to land use
changes on different soil types and propriety dimensions, allows illations to
be taken regarding the dynamics of hydric erosion process and to establish
phases during which the ecosystems suffered greater pressure. This knowledge
facilitates the validation of future scenarios regarding current climatic
changes.
Subscrever:
Mensagens (Atom)