Publisher's Synopsis
Two principal ways of relating people to nature, namely both environmental determinism and 'man's role in charging the face of the earth', have deep roots in the practice of history, geography, anthropology, archaeology, economics, engineering, technology, and agronomy on both sides of the Atlantic. And yet, medieval and environmental scholars have heard little from one another. This volume aims to present the wide variety of methods and approaches (historical, archaeological, and natural scientific) now available to researchers studying the relationship between people and nature throughout history. The book first presents broader frameworks of understanding in this field. The second section contains works representing individual examples of methods and analytical case studies. The emphasis is on the Middle Ages, however, case studies range from the Neolithic to the present day. A speciality of the book is that it also focuses on Central and Eastern Europe, a hitherto neglected region in environmental history.
