Human Ecodynamics in the North Atlantic: A Collaborative Model of Humans and Nature Through Space and Time

In Human Ecodynamics in the North Atlantic: A Collaborative Model of Humans and Nature through Space and Time, Ramona Harrison and Ruth A. Maherhave compiled a series of separate research projects conducted across the North Atlantic region that each contribute greatly to anthropological archaeology. This book assembles a regional model through which the reader is presented with a vivid and detailed image of the climatic events and cultures which have occupied these seas and lands for roughly a 5000-year period. It provides a model of adaptability, resilience, and sustainability that can be applied globally.

First, visiting the Northern Isles of Scotland in the Orkney Islands, the reader is taken through the archaeology from the Neolithic Period through World War II in the face of sea-level rise and rapidly eroding coastlines. The Shetland Islands then reveal a deep-time study of one large-scale Iron Age excavation. On to the northern coasts of Norway, where information about late medieval maritime peoples is explained. Iceland explores human–environment interaction and implications of climate change presented from the Viking Age through the Early Modern Era. Rounding out the North Atlantic Region is Greenland, which sheds light on the Norse in the late Viking Age and the Middle Ages.

Ramona Harrison is associate professor at the University of Bergen, Norway and research associate at Hunter College, CUNY.

Ruth A. Maher is HSS research coordinator and adjunct professor of archaeology at William Paterson University.