Special Volume 6 (2016): Space and Knowledge. Topoi Research Group Articles,
ed. by Gerd Graßhof and Michael Meyer, pp. 45–73.
Reinhard Bernbeck – Ulrich Cubasch – Anton Gass – Elke
Kaiser – Hermann Parzinger – Susan Pollock – Joanne
Rowland – Emmanuele Russo – Wolfram Schier – Geoffrey Tassie
Notes for a Political Ecology of
Non-Sedentary People
Edited by Gerd Graßhof and Michael Meyer,
Excellence Cluster Topoi, Berlin
eTopoi ISSN 2192-2608
http://journal.topoi.org
Except where otherwise noted,
content is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution 3.0 License:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0
Reinhard Bernbeck – Ulrich Cubasch – Anton Gass – Elke Kaiser –
Hermann Parzinger – Susan Pollock – Joanne Rowland – Emmanuele
Russo – Wolfram Schier – Geofrey Tassie
Notes for a Political Ecology of Non-Sedentary
People
The research group Political Ecology of Non-Sedentary Communities encompasses three research projects examining archaeological remains from various time periods in the Nile
Delta, the foothills of the Kopet Dag and in the steppe region of western Eurasia; a fourth
project in the group consists of climate and ecological modeling for Europe over the past
6000 years. The researchers in this group are investigating processes and dynamics which
played out in diferent geographic spaces and diferent chronological periods between
9000 and 300 BCE. We propose a triad of three terms, Umgebung, Umwelt, and Mitwelt
to serve as a conceptual basis for all of these projects, which vary greatly in terms of
the chronological period, location and the way of life of the populations under study,
as well as with respect to the archaeological database. The projects can be described on
the basis of evidence of multifaceted practical actions. These actions on the part of the
populations under study, revealed only fragmentarily in the archaeological record, are
being investigated using the research strategies presented here. The strategies have been
developed from the discussion on political ecology associated with discourses in the social
sciences and humanities.
Political ecology; mobility; environment; climate; landscape; hunter-gatherers.
Our research group Political Ecology of Non-Sedentary Communities1 investigates the relationships between ancient cultures and nature(s) and changes in those relationships that
can be ascertained through historical and archaeological research. Rather than limiting
ourselves to the adoption of established concepts, we engage with ideas that have emerged
in discussions in recent years in the social sciences and geosciences and adapt them so as to
render them productive for the two main interests of the Excellence Cluster Topoi, ‘space’
and ‘knowledge’. The fundamental methodological and theoretical question explored by
our research group is a challenging one, especially for the prehistoric and early historic
periods that are at the center of most of the individual projects combined here.
We ask, what were ecological concepts that were linked to practices in the past? Practices can be reconstructed, if only rudimentarily, by examining the traces let in burials,
semi-sedentary life in villages and mobility patterns. But what about ideas associated with
such practices? In methodological terms, the question becomes how can the reconstruction of everyday as well as unusual activities be used to arrive at an understanding of the
ecological knowledge of ancient times, perhaps even of an ‘environmental awareness’?
We acknowledge – unapologetically – that concerns about the systematic destruction of
resources on a global scale in the post-industrial age underlie this research problem. Any
meaningful attempt to address these issues necessarily entails theoretical groundwork
consisting of a critical analysis of our own theoretical standpoint, which, of course, is
historically and epistemologically speciic.
1
Individual projects are pursued within the framework of the Excellence Cluster 264 Topoi, Berlin.
46
Reinhard Bernbeck et al.
Far-reaching questions demand broad contexts, and the research on political ecology
and mobility conducted by the members of our research group is explicitly wide-ranging
spatially and chronologically. Geographically, the region under study stretches from Egypt
in the south to the Eurasian steppe in the north, from Ukraine in the west to Turkmenistan
in the east. Chronologically, the projects span a period from the Epipalaeolithic to the Iron
Age, 9000–300 BCE.
This paper irst discusses the history of political ecology and our conceptual approach
to it. In a second part, we present three research strategies and concrete examples that
explore the nexus of mobility and political ecoology.
1 Political ecology: an overview
Promoted by scholars representing a wide range of interests and academic disciplines,
political ecology is a form of research that has evolved into an ever more diverse scientiic
ield. Geography and cultural anthropology have made major contributions to political
ecology: we touch briely on them below. To understand how creative impulses for research on prehistoric times can be derived from a branch of scholarship that emerged
in the context of an occasionally severe criticism of capitalist ideologies of growth, one
must irst make a brief detour through the intellectual and conceptual history of political
ecology.
The ield of political ecology irst took shape in the 1980s, led by scholars in geography
whose interests centered around questions of ecosystems and the adaptive capacities of
cultures and societies. Underlying these issues was work in cybernetics, systems theory,
questions of homeostasis and the notion that relationships between people and their environment (Umgebung ) can be depicted in terms of lows of energy, information and materials. The ‘reduction of complexity’ to measurable parameters oten led to the construction
of lowcharts. A penchant for quantiication, and later also for simulating processes in
nature, can still be found in some areas such as meteorology, and these approaches play a
role in this research group as well. A typical example of this school of thought today can
be found in the Santa Fe Institute, the declared aim of which is to “discover, comprehend
and communicate the common fundamental principles in complex physical, computational, biological, and social systems…”. This notion positions itself within a paradigm in
which human beings and nature are viewed as being bound up within a single system,
implying that the complexity of that system can be grasped through ever more complex
quantiication techniques.2
The development of political ecology was also inluenced to a degree by cultural
ecology as formulated by Julian Steward,3 a ield which had one of its main academic bases
at the University of Michigan. Roy Rappaport,4 a Michigan proponent of cultural ecology,
distinguished between “cognized models” of the environment and “operational models”
thereof, with the former referring to the “emic”, non-scientiic understanding that human
societies have of their natural environment and the latter to ethnographically observed
connections of system and practice in the nature–culture relationship. As a result of the
collaboration between Rappaport and Kent Flannery, but also due to Lewis Binford’s5
adoption of the main theses of Leslie White,6 cultural ecology gained a irm foothold in
2
3
4
5
6
http://www.santafe.edu/about/mission-and-vision/, (visited on 18/02/2016).
Steward 1972.
Major work: Rappaport 1978. For a critique of Rappaport’s approach see Wolf 1999.
Binford deines culture as humans’ “extrasomatic means of adaptation”: Binford 1962, 217–218.
All at the time from the University of Michigan.
Notes for a Political Ecology of Non-Sedentary People
47
processual archaeology and became a dominant paradigm in archaeology in the United
States for several decades.7
Cultural ecology gave way to political ecology when people began investigating the
reasons for inequality and hierarchization – found in a great many societies – in the
relationships of people to the natural environment. Behind this shit in research questions
was the inluence of the Marxist version of political economy, as articulated in the works
of Eric Wolf and Sidney Mintz. Essential to this newer approach is the understanding that
today’s societies, wherever they may be located, are part and parcel of a capitalist world
system entailing radically diferent levels of access to natural resources. The inclusion and
the focus on the unequal distribution of natural resources appears primarily in the later
works of Eric Wolf, but the approach has continued to be developed and now inds its
most distinct expression in the Journal of Political Ecology.8
In this context, forms of the appropriation of nature are usually conceptualized as
maladaptations, as processes associated with the industrial use of natural resources that are
capable of rendering whole swathes of land uninhabitable, thereby triggering migration
and severe economic and social hardship. Humans’ problems with nature take center
stage. One can distinguish two variants of this approach in political ecology. One analyzes
disasters brought about by humans, such as in Bhopal, through fracking or the salinization
of whole landscapes; the other focuses on natural catastrophes, e.g., tsunamis, and their
consequences. To take a concrete example, it may be impossible to determine to which
category Hurricane Katrina belongs, but the question itself falls within the domain of
political ecology.A review of the literature in the ield of political ecology reveals an overall
trend toward concentration on anthropogenic catastrophes and processes, with the aim
of drawing conclusions from such experiences that might be of value in the future. Most
sustainability studies and environmental anthropology fall within this branch of the ield
that researches the causes of environmental problems.
Other political ecological studies, e.g., the early geographic ones, take a somewhat
diferent position, among which the work of Piers Blaikie deserves mention.9 Blaikie
focuses on the political evaluation of mid- to long-term processes of geomorphology as
detected by the methods of physical geography. The destructive consequences of such
processes afect subalterns directly and existentially, while the same does not apply to the
elite in capitalist societies, nor, in most cases, to the population in the former colonial
centers. A second focus of Blaikie’s work is the political nature of the ostensibly neutral knowledge associated with physical geography. For instance, Blaikie and Brookield
write of the necessity “to examine critically the political, social and economic content of
seemingly physical and ‘apolitical’ measures such as the Universal Soil Loss Equation, the
‘T’ factor and erodibility”.10 These remarks it with science studies, an area of research that
coalesced around the same time as political ecology, and related ields in the anthropology
of science.11
The 1990s saw a signiicant shit in the ield of political ecology, one that was branded
by many as the politicization and de-greening of political ecology.12 A brief foray into
the work of two authors can help elucidate this shit. In her book What is Nature?13 ,
Kate Soper criticized the “ecological naturalism” of green movements, which, she argues,
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
See Bernbeck 1997, 130–152.
Each year the journal publishes the winning article of the ‘Eric Wolf Prize’ awarded by the Political Ecology
Society.
Blaikie 1985; see also Forsythe 2008.
Blaikie and Brookield 1987, XIX.
An illustrative example of research that is related to political ecology is Bruno Latour’s chapter on
sampling soil in the Amazon forest. Latour 1999, 24–79.
Vayda and Walters 1999.
Soper 1995.
48
Reinhard Bernbeck et al.
construe nature as external to and separate from humans who overexploit its resources.
However, the critique expressed by the green movements remains within a framework
that objectiies nature in the modern capitalist sense; it does not undercut the assumed
hierarchy of humans in relation to the nature they appropriate. According to Soper, we
need a critique of the discursive construct of ‘nature’ as a coherent, external given. The
logical consequence would be a complete abolition of the concept of ‘nature’.
The works of Arturo Escobar lead in a similar direction.14 Escobar, a cultural anthropologist, was originally interested in the ield of development anthropology and engaged
in a critique of both development policy and sustainable development.Escobar,like Soper,
could be described as a post-structuralist and discourse theorist who engages principally
in the critical analysis of concepts and their political efects. Escobar has a diferent set
of foci, however. He criticizes ‘environment’ as a concept that evokes something passive
that can be used and appropriated, while the word ‘nature’ denotes an entity endowed
with uncontrollable, unpredictable agency. He sees the adoption of certain elements of
discourse as a strategy framing ecological phenomena as instrumentalizable, bringing
them into the domain of potential capitalist utilization in order to subsequently exploit
them in practice. Escobar argues that eforts to preserve biodiversity – the exertion of
political pressure in the Amazon region, and in many other places throughout the world
– are motivated by an interest in the future commodiication and marketing of genetic
resources rather than a desire to conserve diversity for its own sake.15
Observers of the history of political ecology vary in their assessments of the ield.16
At least since the widely accepted proposal of the Geological Society of London to name
our epoch the Anthropocene17 , one thing has been clear: the relationship of humans to
their environments (whether they are perceived as nature or in some other way) is now a
fundamentally political one. The ecological is nowadays always political.
Yet before we decide for a political ecology with a decidedly deconstructive bent
à la Soper and Escobar, it is necessary to take into account another direction in which
the stream of discourse has moved: the deconstruction of ‘nature’. But what should take
its place? The ‘ontological turn’ heralded in anthropology in the autumn of 201318 and
increasingly inluential in the social sciences, ofers important approaches with ramiications for political ecology. Central to these discussions are the writings of Philippe Descola
and Viveiros de Castro, both philosophically inclined cultural anthropologists who have
worked in the Amazon region.19 Their works revolve primarily around the categorical
distinction of nature and culture or rather its non-existence in other systems of thought.20
Latour has also addressed this issue:21 Western thought has assumed that there are many
cultures and ‘one nature’, but might there be approaches to understanding the world for
which this relationship is inverted, in the sense of “one culture – many natures”?
14
15
16
17
18
Escobar 1995; Escobar 1999 and others.
Escobar 1998.
Walker 2005; Davis 2003.
Crutzen and Stoermer 2000; see also Zalasiewicz et al. 2008.
The phrase used to describe the Executive Session of the 132nd Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association in Chicago in November 2013 on “The ontological turn in French philosophical
anthropology”, with Bruno Latour, Philippe Descola, Kim Fortun, Michael Fischer and Marshall Sahlins.
19 Descola 2013; Viveiros de Castro 1992.
20 The discussion about multiple, culturally speciic ontologies produces a break with earlier constructivist
paradigms that is seldom treated as problematic or even mentioned. It hinges on the diference between
epistemologies and ontologies. In a radical constructivist approach, the distinction would not even be
perceived, since it would reject the existence of a reality prior to (construed) knowledge or declare
it to be irrelevant. In contrast, a world view designated as ‘realist’ would ind the diference between
epistemology (the study of types of knowledge) and ontology (the study of possibilities of being) useful,
since knowledge would not be equated with the recognizably existent.
21 Latour 2013.
Notes for a Political Ecology of Non-Sedentary People
49
2 Concepts of a political ecology
Descola has developed a classiication system that addresses these kinds of questions. He
speaks of four types of ontologies, describing them as animistic, totemist, naturalist and
analogist. It is probably rarely the case that such ontologies can be identiied empirically
on the basis of archaeological research, as can be seen in a recent article that adopts
Descola’s approach to infer ontological elements with respect to features of the imagery
from early Neolithic Göbekli Tepe.22 For sites with a less spectacular state of preservation,
the potential for interpretation is far more restricted. Nonetheless, the insistence on the
potential multiplicity of ontologies is of fundamental importance for any political ecology. The environment, which we nowadays usually objectivize as nature, used to be envisioned, at least in many ancient western Asian societies, as heterogeneous forces with the
ability to inluence people in ways both malevolent and beneicent. Along with animals,
storms, thunder and celestial bodies, there were also hybrid creatures, some known to us
by their names23 and others that have been transmitted to us through images. Descola
raises the fundamental question of the extent to which we are entitled to consider our
Western ontology, which he categorizes as “naturalist” and which is ruled by scientiic
thought, as ‘more rational’ or even ‘better’ than other ontologies – particularly given that
ours is distinguished by the fact that we may well completely destroy our conditions of
existence.24
2.1 Concepts and terms
Just how do these issues inluence our research group in a systematic way? First, we believe that it would be inappropriate to adopt a purely idealist/metaphysical approach to
political ecology, oriented towards the bridging of ontological diferences. With such an
approach we would be likely to lose track of both the political and the ecological. The
recent fascination with multiple ontologies speaks at least as much to our times as it does
to how other societies understand the world. We adhere to the original materialism of
the schools of political ecology and retain their “shiting dialectics”,25 but not, as in the
work of Blaikie and Brookield, dialectics that shit between social groups and terrestrial
resources.The ield under study is far more complex than that of the early political ecology.
First, societies not only have variable ontologies, they also inluence the world through
their actions. In certain circles, it would seem that scholars have nearly lost sight of the material basis of existence in the heat of discussions surrounding the ‘ontological turn’. This
tendency can also be observed in the ield of Human-Animal Studies, which is gradually
gaining ground in archaeozoology.26 To make clear the diference between ontologies and
spheres of action, we begin with a triad of concepts. Following Jakob von Uexküll, we draw
a distinction between Umgebung and Umwelt.27 Umgebung refers in general to everything
belonging to a past society that can be identiied through historical research and might
have been in that society’s surroundings, irrespective of whether or not humans had an
impact on it or thought about it.
22 Boric 2013.
23 Referred to by German scholars of the ancient Middle East as Mischwesen, see for example Wiggermann
and Maria 1994.
24 For instance, in his lecture at the Humboldt-Universität Berlin on May 13, 2014 entitled “Pluralisme
anthropologique et pluralisme philosophique”.
25 Blaikie and Brookield 1987, 17, cited in Walker 2005, 74.
26 An excellent paper from this perspective is Overton and Hamilakis 2013; see also Lau and Gamerschlag
2015 for an assessment in the ield of Near Eastern archaeology.
27 Uexküll 1909; Agamben 2003, 49–53.
50
Reinhard Bernbeck et al.
Secondly, people have always created conceptualizations that allow them to envision
their Umgebung in terms of powers that act with varying degrees of agency. Ontologies
comprehend portions of an ininite, real Umgebung. Mountains appear in the role of potential avengers, hunted animals take on a highly ambivalent dimension of both submission
and menace,28 severe storms are interpreted as punishment. We use the word Mitwelt,
borrowed with intentional imprecision from the philosopher of nature Meyer-Abich,29
to refer to that part of the Umgebung envisioned as having some speciic degree of agency.
Thirdly, to paraphrase Marx and refer back to Soper and Escobar, people make their
own nature but they do not make it as they please. Humans inluence a part of their Umgebung, whether they envisage that Umgebung as active, passive or completely objectiied. We
call the portion of the Umgebung that is subject to practical action the Umwelt.
Thus the concept of the Umgebung encompasses both Mitwelt and Umwelt, and the
latter two are not necessarily mutually exclusive (Fig. 1). In some societies the overlap
between Mitwelt and Umwelt may be (or have been) very large, in others minimal. This is
a question to be clariied as far as possible through empirical research. The industrial and
post-industrial societies of the West are characterized by an almost complete exclusion
of Mitwelt and Umwelt. This is primarily due to the dominance of natural sciences and
their fundamentally objectifying ontology. Science is not understood as one of many
ontologies and severely restricts the scope of the Mitwelt, at the same time coming to
dominate everyday life.
For sciences with a historical orientation, the conceptual classiication and operationalization of such terms is not enough. There are dynamic relationships between
Umwelt, Mitwelt and Umgebung that are constantly shiting. Both the relationships and
their changes are subjects under study in our research projects.
Fig. 1 | Diagram depicting
Mitwelt, Umwelt and Umgebung
relationship.
As we noted above, one important ield concerns the relations between Mitwelt und
Umwelt. That which is perceived as an entity with the power of agency in a society’s
Umgebung need not constitute part of the society’s practical,instrumental actions.Thunder
and lightning, the cold, individual plants, etc. might function as agents but have no ramiications for the practical world. However, every sacriice to a weather god, for instance,
involves an intertwining of Mitwelt and Umwelt : the semiotic engagement with ‘nature’
and the bestowing of power and agency on transcendental entities results in a practical
engagement with one world. Mitwelten have a relation to practice, just as Umwelten have a
relation to interpretation.
28 Ingold 2000.
29 Meyer-Abich 1990.
Notes for a Political Ecology of Non-Sedentary People
51
Ontologies and actions in an Umgebung are related to one another dialectically, in a
way that need not have been unfamiliar to those living in such a world. Another level of
dialectic relations is opened by their scholarly study. What we designate as Umgebung is a
phenomenon that depends on our own ontological premises. The inclusion of palaeoclimate simulations, for instance, is a procedure that appears to objectively frame the
conditions in which members of ancient societies lived. However, climate simulations
ultimately represent a Mitwelt grounded in present-day concepts.
3 Political ecology and non-sedentary ways of life
In the present day mobility represents a way of life that has been marginalized for reasons
of political control, one that necessarily brings with it a fundamentally diferent relation
to the Umgebung than that associated with medium- to long-term sedentariness. In our
research we are attempting to investigate approaches to the Umgebung in a diferentiated
manner, by comparing prehistoric societies with their own distinct degrees and patterns
of mobility. The relative scantiness of material remains associated with such lifestyles and
the methodological problems that this entails make the archaeological investigation of
these ways of life challenging.
We must irst consider the question of whether non-sedentariness and sedentariness
are actually opposites (the words themselves certainly suggest that they are) or whether
this might be another instance, like the concepts of culture and nature discussed above,
of the construction of an exaggerated dichotomy that is not particularly helpful as an
analytical approach to the study of prehistoric societies. As Reinhard Bernbeck30 and
Steven A. Rosen31 have shown, fragmentary archaeological records, historical documents
written by sedentary peoples about mobile societies and analogies based on ethnographic
and ethnoarchaeological studies have strongly colored the (one-sided) perspective on nonsedentary existence. But we need to reconsider any suggestion implying mutual exclusivity
between the sedentary and non-sedentary.
Hunter-gatherer groups and nomadic cattle breeders are seen as leading essentially
mobile lives. Both ways of life are characterized by a multiplicity of individual aspects
through which they can be described. Robert L. Kelly’s statement applies to all forms
of non-sedentary existence: “…because we do not understand the relationships between
movement and material culture, archaeologists have had diiculty identifying diferent
forms and levels of mobility”.32 Seeking a better understanding of these relationships,
scholars have proposed various deinitions for mobility. These deinitions have usually
been based on only one non-sedentary way of life, such as that of the hunter-gather
communities or nomadic cattle breeders. Both of these tend to be contrasted to sedentary
communities, or, in the case of hunter-gatherer groups, as the opposite side of becoming
sedentary.33 When nomadic groups are discussed in the context of contemporaneous
sedentary societies, sedentism implies, in the frequently expressed view of many researchers, the end of societies with an appropriative mode of subsistence, regardless of
whether this might have been a more diicult option. Kelly describes this notion of a unidimensional development as inadequate and deconstructs the opposition between mobile
and sedentary life.34 In his view we must understand mobility as multi-dimensional, with
there being various forms and degrees of mobility.People do not live completely immobile
lives in any human society: it is the ways in which they move that vary. The belief that
30
31
32
33
34
Bernbeck 2008, 45–49.
Rosen 2008, 117–119.
Kelley 1992, 60.
Khazanov 1984; Raferty 1985.
Kelley 1992, 43.
52
Reinhard Bernbeck et al.
mobility emerges only through external compulsion, usually attributed to a scarcity of
resources such as land (for pastoral groups) or game (for groups specializing in hunting),35
is out of touch with both historical and present-day reality. We therefore begin from the
position that mobility should not be viewed as a form of adaptation to an Umgebung that
is necessitated by scarcity. To phrase it in political ecological terms, mobility should not
be understood a priori as driven by the search for food or other resources born out of
externally induced situations of necessity. Rather, the ‘social self-embeddedness’ in large
regions can be a condition produced by spatiotemporal rhythms of movement, the causes
of which lie primarily in the connections with a Mitwelt. In such cases, a mobile way of
life is frequently preferable to a fully sedentary existence.36
Archaeologically, the remains associated with a mobile lifestyle can be expected to be
relatively ephemeral. Sedentism and mobility should be investigated in terms of distinctions of degree and form, although the fragmentary record usually evokes a much more
static image of what was actually a dynamic past.37 However, advances in investigative
methods based in the natural sciences have opened up the possibility of an approach
that is independent of both the “tyranny of ethnography”38 and ethnoarchaeological and
‘common sense’ approaches. We are gradually reaching a point at which it will be possible
to use a well balanced set of analytical methods to conduct detailed empirical analyses
of rhythms of seasonal migrations and periodically visited sites. We will draw on such
methods as far as possible in order to examine the multi-dimensionality of mobile life
and to address adequately the diverse categories of non-sedentism that are represented in
the various regions of our research projects.
For the time being, we resort to a modiied deinition proposed by Hans Barnard and
Willeke Wendrich as a characterization appropriate for all of the projects: “… ‘mobility’
[is] the capacity and/or need for movement from place to place”.39
4 Brief description of the research projects
Our research group encompasses three regionally diverse projects investigating diferent
times and places in the arid belt of the ancient world (see map, Fig. 2). A complementary
fourth project is concerned with climate and ecological modeling.
Forms of pastoralism are at the heart of one project researching the Eurasian steppe
and forest-steppe zone. The region contains thousands of burial mounds which were
erected and extended in prehistoric and early historic times. It is primarily these burial
mounds that provide the basis for the reconstruction of a pastoral economy, two periods of
which are under investigation (4th to 3rd millennium BCE and 1st millennium BCE).This
region is usually thought to be predestined for early forms of cyclical, seasonal mobility,
although there is evidence of multiple diferent uses of the steppe vegetation zone for
both of the periods in question.
The second project based on archaeological ield research focuses on semi-mobile
villages in the foothills of the Kopet Dag in southern Turkmenistan (Fig. 2). This project
is investigating complex local relationships in the early prehistoric periods (c. 6000–4000
BCE) within a small settlement area deined by the Meana stream, now a wadi, next to
which the eponymous village of Meana is located. Excavations in Monjukli Depe as well
as a regional survey and geographic analysis have revealed that the foothills of the Kopet
35 See contributions in Kennett and Winterhalder 2006, for example.
36 Barth 1962.
37 On the juxtaposition of sedentism and nomadism, cf. the discussions and chart in Cribb 1991, 15–20; see
also Barnard and Wendrich 2008.
38 Wobst 1978.
39 Barnard and Wendrich 2008, 9.
Notes for a Political Ecology of Non-Sedentary People
53
Dag were a highly dynamic environment, with frequent abandonment and resettlement
of sites. The aim of this project is to explore the complementarity and/or contemporaneity
of abandonment and resettlement processes at sites in the region.
Fig. 2 | Areas under study in the three archeological projects in the research group on Political ecology of
non-sedentary communities. A-2-1 North Pontic region and Pre-Caucasus; A-2-2 Monjukli Depe in the foothills
of the Kopet Dag; A-2-4 Merimde Beni Selam in the Western Nile Delta.
The third project is concerned with how, exactly when, and why settled farming began
in the western Nile Delta at c. 5000 BCE, and is also particularly concerned with the
relationship with the hunter-gatherer groups of the preceding Epipalaeolithic, who had
already been active close to the Neolithic settlement. There are sparse remains along
the fringes of the western Nile Delta attesting to human presence already during the
Middle Palaeolithic, which is lesser known than, but complementary to, the existing
evidence from the Egyptian Nile Valley and western Deserts. However, it is the transition
54
Reinhard Bernbeck et al.
from fully mobile to sedentary/semi-sedentary groups and the adoption of domesticated
species which are at the centre of enquiry. The Epipalaeolithic is very poorly attested
in the immediate vicinity of Merimde, although there is evidence further to the south
at Abu Ghalib and ongoing survey will be re-visiting the desert fringes speciically to
re-investigate remains pre-dating the Neolithic. A closer examination of the lithic tool
types and consumption practices of Epipalaeolithic groups in comparison with the lithic
packages associated with the settled populations, within the framework of an absolute
chronology including new dates, will enable us to have a fresh approach to the questions
of: 1) the nature of connections between settled and mobile groups, 2) the timespan
over which the transition from mobility to semi-sedentary/primarily sedentary occured,
3) diferences in food preparation and consumption practices of the Epipalaeolithic and
Neolithic groups, and 4) the extent to which the ‘arrival’of domesticated species genuinely
constitutes an adoption of technological and economic strategies from outside of the
region, or rather represents a degree of integration with and adaption of pre-existing
lifeways. The ive phases of the Merimde settlement show much diference between the
earlier and later phases and a re-assessment of the transitional nature of the settlement
will also be investigated.
Climate and ecological modeling will be performed for the Middle and Late Holocene
periods in order to place the social, economic and cultural developments of non-sedentary
communities in relation to their natural surroundings.
5 Research strategies
One question emerging from the previous discussion of concepts of political ecology
is how one can subject these complex sets of relationships to comparative study. Given
the considerable chronological and geographical diversity of the individual projects, we
identiied overarching criteria that allow us to study mobility and the nexus of politics and
ecology in ways that will ultimately permit the evaluation of similarities and diferences
among the individual cases. To that end, we have agreed on three research strategies and
have developed correlates for each of them.
Fundamental questions that belong in a political ecology framework are related to the
terminologically complex ield described in common parlance as ‘nature’. This ield must
be examined with respect to hierarchization. Unlike in a political ecology anchored in the
present, these processes of hierarchization do not necessarily involve the exploitation of
natural resources and thus the historically speciic manifestation of dominance relationships of culture(s) over nature(s). Nor are they necessarily anthropocentric, i.e. directed
toward the political order within a society that results from the attitudes and modes of
action associated with the Umgebung.
It would seem, at irst glance, that the existence of such complex starting requirements,
involving questions about Mitwelten as part of ancient ontologies, would preclude the
possibility of empirical investigation in societies that had no writing, let alone in those
that were also mobile. However, the sphere of images, which includes hybrid entities, the
attributes of gods, the depictions of animals and human beings together, etc., can make
elements of ancient ontologies accessible. It should also be safe to assume that a portion
of the animal world was subjectivized (totemistically or analogistically) to such a degree
that the hierarchies characteristic of human society were extended into the Umgebung.
An analysis of the various practical ways of dealing with nature makes use of standard natural science procedures (zooarchaeology, palaeobotany, palaeoclimate research,
geomorphology, etc.). However the goal of such analyses must not be conceived as a
static, systematic reconstruction of the ‘natural conditions’, providing a framework within
which adaptations took place. Rather, such analyses will be used as an entry point to
Notes for a Political Ecology of Non-Sedentary People
55
interpret the practices of mobile societies as active interventions in their Umgebung that
were generally situated at the level of ‘practical consciousness’. This awareness emerged
from the transitional forms of interactions with the Umgebung in those societies, and
thus transformed a sector of the Umwelt that did not overlap with the Mitwelt into an
unquestioned and unquestionable sphere that was nonetheless actively manipulated. The
ultimate goal is to answer the following questions for speciic cases:
• Which aspects of the Umgebung are/were included in the Mitwelt ?
• Which elements constituted the Umwelt ?
Answers to those questions, however tentative they may be, ofer the potential to pursue
a third question:
• What were the relationships between Umwelt and Mitwelt ?
We have already noted that the relationship between Umwelt and Mitwelt, as these categories are distinguished here, is a political one to the extent that the cases under study
examine not only the overlap between the two but also the reach of each: a small Umwelt
together with a large Mitwelt have ramiications for a society’s way of life that clearly
difer from those associated with the combination of a large Umwelt and a small Mitwelt.
The extent to which the individual projects will be able investigate Mitwelt and Umwelt
depends to a great degree on the data available.
Identifying which portion of the Umgebung functions as Umwelt and which as Mitwelt
will be an even more challenging task. The question of access to an exploitable sector
within the entire Umgebung of a society is traditionally closely linked to the technologies
mobilized for the purpose, but it is also at least as dependent on rhythms of mobility.
Comparisons must rely on terminologies that implicitly address commonalities.
The commonalities of the three archaeological projects and the meteorological modeling are drawn together in three ields we refer to as ‘research strategies’. These research
strategies augment goals that are speciic to the individual projects but that are not relevant
to our comparative analysis. For the study of the political ecology of non-sedentary
societies, questions about rhythms of mobility, human-animal relations and landscape
construction emerged as central. In the following sections, we describe the signiicance of
these three issues in more detail.
5.1 Rhythms of mobility
Since our research projects are investigating diferent forms of what are for the most
part periodically recurring population movements, we are attempting to ind a comprehensive way to reconstruct diverse aspects of spatial mobility, including their temporal
dimensions. To this end, we use the following comparative parameters: reach, which refers
both to purely geographic extent and to the reach into the assemblage of Umgebungen that
are potentially available; and rhythm, which is linked with both the temporal measure of
movements and embedding in the realm of culture. The frequency of relocation can be
determined up to a point using ethnoarchaeological analyses. Relations between mobility
and technological diversity, measured in terms of “the number of distinct tool types or
classes, T, in the technology”,40 are signiicant primarily for their comparative potential.
40 Shott 1986, 19. The correlation obtained by Shott (Shott 1986, 24) from an ethnographic sample yields
the following equation: D = 19.11 - ln(MF)4.42, where D denotes diversity, MF , “mobility frequency”,
i.e. the number of relocations to new camps and dwelling sites per year. The technological diversity (in
calculations expressed in terms of ‘richness’) can be determined archaeologically, and theoretically it
56
Reinhard Bernbeck et al.
The project in the Eurasian steppe is characterized in diachronic comparison by three
diferent types of mobility. Studies of 4th millennium BCE assemblages of faunal remains
from settlements north of the Black Sea in the Eurasian steppe zone reveal highly variable
ratios of domesticated and wild animals.41 This might be an indication that use of these
food sources was speciic to particular regions. In the 4th millennium BCE hunting
appears to have been an important factor in many settlements while domesticated animals were kept in various proportions in others. At around 3100 BCE there occurred a
transition to specialized cattle breeding, and cattle remained a substantial component of
the subsistence economy for the following centuries. For a variety of reasons, which will be
examined in the project Pastoralism on the Eurasian Steppes, scholars have held that this form
of livestock breeding specialized in horned cattle could be eicient in the arid vegetation
zone of the steppe only when combined with an extensive use of pasturelands.42 The
interpretations range from fully nomadic to semi-nomadic or transhumant practices43
and take, at least implicitly, historically known societies as a model, for instance, the
mounted nomadic Scythians (1st millennium BCE) or the Kalmyk people of the18th/19th
century who lived in various regions of the Eurasian steppe belt. Stepping back from
conceptual distinctions like nomadism and transhumance, we examine the movements
of humans in the steppe zone in terms of an analysis of rhythms of mobility, an approach
better suited for the investigation of these populations, who used the resource of animals
in varied ways, and one which makes comparison with other cases, including projects
in our group, possible. In the 1st millennium BCE, the appearance of a new element
signiicantly changes the pattern of mobility: horses and the possibility of riding expand
the geographic reach of steppe populations considerably.
With respect to mobility, therefore, one can make the following assumptions for the
Eurasian steppes. (a) There was an abrupt decrease in interactions with the Umwelt, as the
Umwelt shrank as a result of the concentration on cattle breeding at the turn of the 4th
to the 3rd millennium BCE. (b) This decrease, however, was not necessarily accompanied
by a decrease in geographic reach; in the 1st millennium BCE, geographic reach actually
expands substantially as a result of the introduction of another domesticated animal, the
horse, and through the speciic relation to it as a saddle horse.
Local climates and cultural traditions are not the only factors determining the
rhythms of migration; animal mobility also plays a role. Animals have their own abilities and preferences with respect to movements in space and they are adapted to life
in diferent landscapes. A highly variable subsistence economy such as that of the 4th
millennium BCE in the steppe region north of the Black Sea would certainly have given
rise to greater diferences in mobility behavior than would the later, more uniform cattle
breeding, which in all probability caused an increasing predictability of migrations and
thus easier contact to adjacent groups. In the 1st millennium BCE, the organized use
of horses as riding animals results in a completely new component of mobility which
researchers have thus far tended to interpret from a social perspective or in terms of its
relevance for combat and seldom, if ever, with regard to the daily management of herds.
The situation in the project in south Turkmenistan is very diferent. There, mobility
occurs over much longer spans of time, with residential structures of entire villages being
abandoned or resettled. If traditional archaeological criteria were applied, one would
describe such settlements as village-like and embedded locally, with an assumption of
should be possible to generate at least minimax values for residential movements for our comparative
cases. Whether this can actually be valid for groups closely tied to urban societies is a question that would
have to be examined.
41 Kaiser 2010, 26 Fig. 1b.
42 Merpert 1974, 11–12; Shilov 1975, 14.
43 Bunyatyan 2003, with an overview of the history of discourse in the ield.
Notes for a Political Ecology of Non-Sedentary People
57
long-term sedentism. Yet the site of Monjukli Depe was frequently abandoned, from the
Neolithic onward, and judging by preliminary reports from other excavations in the
region,44 this was not an isolated case. The reasons for such medium-term settlement
mobility may well lie in crises in the Umgebung, anything from the failure of water to
appear in a nearby wadi45 to dune formation. The moves appear to have been so integral
to the forms of subsistence and social life that a crisis and subsequent departure were not
necessarily experienced as a major problem.
Subsistence was based primarily on barley and wheat cultivation46 and the raising of
medium-size livestock (sheep and goats).47 The reach, in the sense of the appropriation of
the potential of the Umgebung, is considerably more limited than in the case of the three
sets of relationships under investigation for the forest steppe in the Black Sea region: more
than 80% of the animals identiied in the archaeological material are sheep or goat. The
sphere of domesticated plants reveals similar concentrations on wheat and barley. Isotope
analyses are planned to ascertain the geographic extent of herd mobility: They should
potentially yield information relating to whether herds were kept only in the foothill
zone or whether the geographic reach stretched into the Kopet Dag valleys with a form
of ‘Yayla farming’.48
Rhythms and scales of migration are determined by multiple factors, including what
could be termed society-speciic ‘dwelling practices’. There is a correlation between the
length of occupancy of a dwelling and the efort involved in its construction, between
the efort required to erect a tent vs. a house. However, it would be incorrect to suppose
that the correlation is simply a linear one. The population in Monjukli Depe lived in
quite substantial houses built, at least in the 5th millennium BCE, out of regularly shaped
mudbricks. Houses had a use-life of at least a couple of decades, if not more.
Overall, the rhythms of migration in the Kopet Dag area were far slower, and the
geographic as well as the resource reach were smaller than those associated with the steppe
regions. However, this does not point to a completely sedentary existence, nor does it
imply a rigidity of life bordering on the typically assumed peasant inlexibility.
Between c. 6000 and 5000 BCE a change occurred in the economy of the groups
living in the desert fringes of the western Nile Delta, transforming from a mobile huntergathering Epipalaeolithic lifestyle, with the use of a speciic tool-kit of very characteristic
lithic types to the irst sedentary Neolithic communities to farm domesticated species.
Here, the possibility of a transition can be considered, although in other areas of the
Nile Valley a hiatus lasting from c. 6000–5500 BCE has been suggested. Re-examining
the available data and chronology, Shirai has explored the possibility of a transition in the
Fayum depression southwest of modern Cairo, where a closer examination of tool types
and new AMS radiocarbon measurements are beginning to suggest that alternatives to a
hiatus are worthy of serious consideration.49 The question then becomes one of potential
continuity between the mobile hunter-gatherer human groups of the Epipalaeolithic and
the settled Neolithic communities and of the degree to which we are dealing with at least
two distinct groups, or whether there might have been a more gradual development or
even sharing and development of ideas than had previously been considered. The extent
to which the settled group(s) remained partially mobile, or the degree to which they kept
exploiting the surrounding landscape is also at the forefront.
44
45
46
47
48
Berdiev 1966; Berdiev 1972.
Jonas Berking and Brian Beckers in Pollock, Bernbeck, et al. in press.
Naomi Miller and Philippa Ryan in Pollock and Bernbeck 2011.
See Norbert Benecke in Pollock and Bernbeck 2011.
For more on Yayla farming, see Hütteroth 1959. Unfortunately, these valleys lie in the Turkmeno-Iranian
border zone and are presently inaccessible.
49 Shirai 2010.
58
Reinhard Bernbeck et al.
The case study area of Merimde Beni Salama ofers a rare opportunity to further
investigate this issue. An expanding set of evidence was revealed during archaeological
investigations in 2013 and 201450 as well as by colleagues from the Ministry of Antiquities
in 2014. Examination of the material remains, including grinding stones,51 and palettes
will allow for a clearer understanding of the changing subsistence strategies and the degree
to which climatic changes can be understood as enhancing the possibility for the move
to new lifeways. These climatic and environmental changes may have acted as the catalyst
necessitating – or enabling – human groups to settle, with a segment of the community
continuing to remain mobile not only for additional nutrition, but possibly also to scope
the wider area for people, animals and other resources and environments to manipulate
and exploit.
5.2 Human–animal relations
The discussion of mobility rhythms shows that some spatial movements are closely
related to human-animal relationships. These relationships are central to our focus on
the concepts of Mitwelt and Umwelt.
Particularly for prehistoric communities in the western Eurasian steppe region, research on human-animal interactions has thus far been conined to the use of animals as
a food resource. In our investigations of the changing engagement with animals within the
framework of subsistence strategies, we intend to investigate the reciprocal relationship
of humans and animals rather than limit ourselves to the narrow standpoint of animals
as suppliers of primary (meat, hide) and secondary (milk, wool, traction) products.52
The faunal assemblages for the 4th millennium BCE in the northern Black Sea region
suggest quite heterogeneous approaches to working and game animals. The settlements
from which the osteological materials were collected were inhabited in diferent periods.
As a result, a relatively long period of time can be studied, at least for some of the
regions north of the Black Sea. This long-term perspective shows that the specialized cattle
breeding which subsequently appeared was in no way the result of a linear evolution, as
scholars have frequently suggested.53 On the contrary, one can detect numerous individual
developments that did not exclude the possibility of reverting to more traditional practices
in animal breeding, as Victor A. Shnirelman has pointed out.54 Using isotope studies
on human and animal bones55 and the analysis of organic residues in pottery from the
settlements of the north Pontic region, we attempt to enlarge the available corpus of data
in order to permit a better understanding of the multifaceted processes for this part of
eastern European prehistory.
The difering use of animals is part of a complex structure that also comprises a range
of other components, from the socio-economic, to the ritual, right up to aspects of a
community’s worldview. In the 3rd and 2nd millennia BCE, a form of cattle-based animal
breeding was established; this subsistence certainly entailed, both as a prerequisite and as
a result, very close mutual relations between humans and bovids rather than merely an
objectifying familiarity with the animals as resources.
We encounter a markedly diferent situation in the Precaucasian region in the 1st
millennium BCE, where the signiicance of horses increases, especially in their use as
mounts for riding. The horse was both a symbol of power and wealth, as well as a part
50
51
52
53
54
55
Rowland and Tassie 2015.
See Lucarini 2006 for exploitation of wild grasses in Farafra Oasis.
Sherratt 1983; Sherratt 2006.
Merpert 1978, 57–59.
Shnirelman 1980, 241–243.
Gerling 2015.
Notes for a Political Ecology of Non-Sedentary People
59
of a combat alliance or a family member, as both mythic traditions, such as the Nart
Sagas,56 and historical sources57 testify. Such a situation could not have failed to have
deep ramiications for interpersonal relationships as well.
Here, we are investigating the consequences that human-animal relationships had for
society as a whole, rather than looking only for new forms of mobility. The specialization
in bovid husbandry presumes a particular kind of herd management that may have
resulted in speciic forms of human-animal relations. The questions we will investigate are
(a) how intensive was the use of ‘primary and secondary’products and (b) what indications
are there for the symbolic value of speciic types of animals? Speciic relations between
humans and animals result in a diferent perception and valuation of animals. The example of horse sacriices in elite burials of the Scythians indicates that they construed an
imagined ethical relationship, in which horses had developed an individuality that evoked
an allegiance that did not end at death.58
A wide variety of diferent human-animal relations can be detected in the case of far
less mobile societies such as those of Monjukli Depe in prehistoric Turkmenistan, despite
the fact that the irst impression might be one of monotony. The zooarchaeologically
documented species can be assigned to at least three major categories: wild animals,
livestock and pets.59 As indicated above, domesticated herd animals primarily included
sheep and goats, with cattle taking a secondary position. Dogs constitute the other species
of domesticated animal. They were not, however, purely guards of the herds. Paw prints
let by at least three dogs in the mud plaster of two diferent houses reveal that dogs had
direct access to the housing area and that their treatment was probably similar to that of
pets today. It is also striking that dog bones make up only a very small proportion of the
archaeozoological assemblage from Monjukli Depe.
Cattle had a special status among the herd animals. As Jana Eger was able to show
through a detailed contextual analysis, articulated remains of cattle bones – primarily
vertebrae and a set of nearly complete skulls – were deposited in an open area in the
settlement in a way that suggests sacriices or the holding of public feasts. Finds of horn
cores in the corners of houses indicate that they may have been used as wall decorations.
It is probable that, as was the case in many other regions of Western Asia, these tame
but very large animals had an ambivalent status, representing a danger and a provider of
food at the same time. Whether cattle were also used to pull or carry loads is a question
that cannot be answered without additional analysis. It appears that cattle are the most
frequently represented animals among the collection of small clay animal igurines.
In both Neolithic and Aeneolithic layers, Monjukli Depe features a group of wild
animals that, although small in terms of percentage, is highly diverse. It is beyond the
scope of this paper to discuss their relations to humans in detail. However, one can deine
this relationship for the Meana region in prehistoric times in the way that Overton and
Hamilakis60 did in a European context: as the concentration on one or two domesticated
animal species increases, the frequency of encounters between humans and certain other
species decreases sharply. This must also have resulted in a change, diicult to ascertain
in concrete terms, in interspecies relations (with humans on the one side). It emerges
from these few remarks that archaeologically detectable changes occurred even in the
56
57
58
59
Dumézil 1976; Dumézil 1978; Abaev 1989.
Haenisch 1948.
Samašev 2007; Čugunov, Parzinger, and Nagler 2010 96–11; 310–311.
The following depiction is based on information provided by Norbert Benecke in Pollock and Bernbeck
2011 and Jana Eger (personal communication, see also Eger 2013).
60 Overton and Hamilakis 2013.
60
Reinhard Bernbeck et al.
settlements that Redield61 mischaracterized as “little communities” devoid of historical
change.
The transition to settled life in the western Delta and the adoption and adaption of
domesticated species has oten been seen as the result of the introduction of a Neolithic
package coming from the Near East. The evidence from past investigations at Merimde
shows that the Neolithic community practiced a mixed farming economy, tending wheat,
barley, lax and other plants along with cattle, sheep, goats and pigs. Pigs prefer a wooded
environment, whereas cattle require open pastureland. Goats are browsers, whereas sheep
and cattle are grazers. It is possible to run all three of these species together in arid or
semi-arid environments with a high proportion of scrub and tree vegetation, particularly
in cases where there are mixed plant communities. In these environments there would be
diferent herbage utilization by the grazing species, with goats browsing more of the scrub
and tree components than sheep and cattle, and sheep utilizing more scrub than cattle.
As noted earlier for Monjukli Depe, cattle seem to have attained special importance, for
along with the anthropomorphic igurines, the highest proportion of the zoomorphic
igurines were of cattle.62
Another major research focus has been the issue of why Egypt was so late to adopt this
package in comparison with groups in the Levant and other regions. Taking the politicalecological approach, however, a more productive line of questioning with which to engage
might be: a) what were the environmental conditions in Egypt at the end of the 6th
millennium BCE, b) when and where is there the irst evidence for settled farmers using
domesticated species in the Nile Delta, c) in what way had the local conditions changed to
become suitable for sustaining this new way of life and d) were there any environmental,
geographical and economical reasons to delay the introduction of the various elements
of the Neolithic package to Egypt. It is important, in order to address this inal point, to
consider the variable temporal scales of the introduction of various elements associated
with the Neolithic package and not necessarily the adoption of the package in any one
time.
5.3 Construction of landscapes
Landscape is oten reduced to the level of ‘natural space’, which we include within the
more extensive concept of Umgebung. Our initial aim is to independently describe the
Umgebung along with the conditions for human perception and intervention. A climate
simulation covering the past 6000 years will be developed for large parts of Europe
(22–42◦ east and 42–51◦ north). In order to approach this issue, a multidisciplinary
approach has been adopted in order to record, model and assess climatic and ecological
changes in the case study areas from the mid- to late Holocene.
This part of the research addresses the entire Umgebung of ancient societies. It is, in
the traditional sense, a slice of the ecology that one could refer to as ‘natural processes’.63
However in our research, we intend to take an approach that difers from the notion that
climate changes are a neutral exterior framework that lend themselves to description in
universalistic terms.Rather,the potential political dimension of climate changes lies in the
fact that they did not necessarily afect all members of a society equally, whether in ancient
or in modern times. Given a mixed subsistence economy, in which not all households
or communities pursue the same strategies, climate change of whatever type will afect
61 Redield 1953.
62 Tassie 2014.
63 As Descola demonstrates, these are objective processes within the framework of scientiic epistemology,
and their research contrasts “the dualities of nature and culture... one way among others of tracing the
continuities and discontinuities in the fabric of the world” (Descola 2013, 30).
Notes for a Political Ecology of Non-Sedentary People
61
households or communities to a variable extent. Our research on this issue involves the
investigation of the degree to which environmental changes might have been connected
with the shit from mobile herding to more sedentary lifestyles and back. Therefore, rather
than studying global environmental change, we investigate regional socio-environmental
changes. Using a transdisciplinary approach, various models of climate changes will be
examined and an attempt made to determine how those changes might have inluenced
choices of subsistence strategies.
Many human activities have an impact on their immediate spatial surroundings and
can thereby result in the modiication of those surroundings. At the same time, perceptions of the Umgebung difer due to variations in people’s practices. Pastoral communities,
in which the breeding of bovids is dependent on the provision of suicient suitable
pastureland for the animals, will engender a diferent way of seeing the landscape than
communities that rely to a greater extent on hunting.
One aspect to be explored in the individual projects is whether the cases under study
show that the use of the resources available in the Umgebung gradually reshaped it or
whether changes in the Umgebung were the results of deliberate action. Burial mound
necropolises are of interest as ritually constructed landscapes in the projects based in
the northern Ciscaucasus. The results of geophysical prospection in the periphery of
the tumuli document complex ritual behaviors of bearers of the Scytho-Sakian cultural
tradition, including secondary burials, sacriicial sites and the remains of architectural
structures. The burial ields exhibit a topographically structured layout in which the larger
kurgans are oten located in the southeast of such ields. In six of the seven necropolises
from the earlier Iron Age studied so far, the use of the space – the construction of one largescale kurgan and the subsequent extension to a necropolis – is directly comparable. This is
evidence not only for the same principles of knowledge and space but also for a deliberate
modiication of the topography towards an anthropogenic landscape, a manifestation of
speciic cultic/ritual ideas and practices on the part of the Scythian mounted nomads
which can be understood as a ritual canon. The fact that similar practices have been
detected throughout the Eurasian steppe suggests the possibility of an extensive network
in which similar notions about the Umwelt and Mitwelt and related knowledge were passed
on among the Early Iron Age nomads.
One must ask to what extent this knowledge existed as a discursively anchored construction of space, or rather as a recursive practice which, because of its strong basis in
ritual, gave rise to mimetic practices that may not have permitted critical examination.
From a methodological perspective, this remains something that can only be investigated
in exceptional cases, namely when archaeological evidence points to a breach of the
unquestionable societal doxa. This occurs primarily in cases of intercultural contact;
which are far more common in mobile than in more sedentary societies.
The case being investigated in Turkmenistan is very diferent from the western
Eurasian examples, including in the construction of landscapes. These were settlements
inhabited over the medium-term by populations engaging to an equal degree in cultivation and animal breeding. They fundamentally reshaped their landscapes in at least two
respects. One of these was ‘living on a tell [depe]’, which refers to a practice that gradually
emerged in Western and Central Asia from the start of the Neolithic. Continuing to live on
the same site for as long as possible and building new houses on the ruins of older ones is
a speciic cultural practice that resulted in characteristic tell landscapes. These difer from
the regions shaped by kurgans only to the extent that the tell settlements are less regular
in form because there was no plan involved in their creation.64 As inhabited mounds
they had the added efect of changing a population’s visual and bodily perspective on
64 Hansen and Toderaş 2010, 90. – Geographic analyses around Monjukli Depe suggest that a tell landscape
existed by at least the 5th millennium BCE, which has since been covered by loess layers of great depth.
62
Reinhard Bernbeck et al.
the Umgebung. People would probably have associated the concept of ‘higher up’ (than
the surroundings) with their houses; this is unlikely to have been the case for mobile
groups whose dwellings were more ephemeral. Such a change of perspective would also
have afected classiicatory knowledge: it was possible to visually monitor the settlement’s
direct Umgebung, and this overview of approaching herds, wild animals or people from
nearby settlements could have translated into the development of a feeling of mastery over
an Umwelt.The idea of manageability of a visible and thus more approachable Umwelt could
have been the result. That, in turn, may have resulted in a more intensive contrast with
the unmastered Umgebung which, due to limited mobility, was less familiar or completely
unknown and as a consequence may have been perceived as increasingly dangerous.
The second way in which people in the Meana-Çaaça region constructed their landscapes hinges on the fact that, at least by the Aeneolithic but probably already in the
Neolithic, they no longer saw the course taken by a stream through a valley as a given: they
had become accustomed to seeing a water course as something that could be manipulated.
Palaeobotanical analyses indicate that people had started to construct small-scale irrigation systems.65 Although this may have been done solely for agricultural purposes, one
should consider that such systems required eforts at a scale beyond a single household,
meaning that agreement at the supra-household level would have been necessary. In
this respect, social relationships are a precondition and a result of a landscape-shaping
element of the Umwelt conditions, to the same extent as these conditions afected social
relationships.
The ‘constructed’ and used landscape was already extremely variable during the Middle Palaeolithic in Egypt due to the seasonal and longer-term variability of climatic and
local environmental conditions. This, in turn, afected which plant and animal species
suitable for exploitation were available. It also afected how people used the landscape and
the area suitable for stopping at speciic times of year, and over longer timescales subject to
climatic change. At the height of the last glacial maximum, c. 22 000 years ago, the Sahara
had a cold, arid environment devoid of human habitation. During this period human
habitation in Egypt was concentrated along the River Nile. As the world began to warm
up, the lora and fauna changed; c. 11 000 years ago the Western Desert of Egypt gradually
changed into a savannah full of human occupation. These communities still followed
a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, but developing technology, notably ceramics, enabled groups
to adopt to new processing and consumption practices. Major global climatic changes
occurred at 6200 and 5300 BCE, and the latter of these may well relate to the time of
settlement in the western Delta, although targeted climatic investigations are needed to
ascertain exactly what the local climate was like at this time, given that wider changes
would afect regions in very diferent ways to greater or lesser extents.The Neolithic groups
were increasingly settled, however, also making active use of the surrounding landscape,
a landscape that had been formed during and ater the Palaeolithic – for examples the
terraces that were cut during the Palaeolithic and descend into the modern cultivation
and Nile loodplain – even today. Merimde Beni Salama lies adjacent to the mouth of
the Wadi Gamal, and this surrounding hinterland would have been attractive to animals,
and a place where hunters, it seems, may have camped out in wait for these wild animals.
The Wadi el-Gamal is also a source of chert cobbles, cobbles used for production of lithics
from the Middle Palaeolithic and into the Neolithic. The nodular chert found on these
terraces also beneitted other communities further aield.66
The global climatic changes afecting the local environment mentioned above are
central to debates regarding changing lifeways during the Epipalaeolithic-Neolithic ‘transition’ in the Nile Delta. Recent investigations suggest that the irst farmers settling
65 Miller and Ryan, in Pollock and Bernbeck 2011.
66 E.g. Wilson, Gilbert, and Tassie 2014.
Notes for a Political Ecology of Non-Sedentary People
63
in the area may have lived on the fringes of a body of water northeast of the fan of
the Wadi Gamal terrace. The large amount of polished, partially polished and chipped
axeheads along with adzes indicate that these Neolithic people were modifying their
local environment, shaping it to the needs of a mixed farming economy. The ield project
funded by the Fritz Thyssen Stitung has taken environmental cores,and some preliminary
observations are possible, including Judith Bunbury’s preliminary interpretation that the
site was located on a Pleistocene terrace and that a channel running from the west –
possibly from the Wadi Gamal – originally cut right through the part of the site, which is
currently protected as antiquities land.67 It appears that the Neolithic settlement was set
on part of the fan of the Wadi Gamal,68 and that it occupied a site extending up to a body
of water suggested by a clay rich layer. Ater the end of the Neolithic occupation there
is a hiatus of a few hundred years before evidence of a Chalcolithic Maadian cemetery
(the settlement having not yet been located) dating to the 4th millennium BCE. The site
then seems to have been abandoned for several millennia. It the wider aridiication of the
Sahara at c. 2200 BCE that was the reason for the lack of communities living in the area,
with thick sands deposited across the thus-far investigated area of the Neolithic settlement,
and is also apparent in the drill cores.
6 Conclusion
This contribution has a programmatic character. Our aim here is to describe a conceptual
framework for a comparative approach to past societies that can be described as variably
mobile and closely concerned with issues that are best framed in terms of a political
ecology. From an overview of the development of the concept of political ecology in the
ields of geography and cultural anthropology and the current debates on the topic, we
have constructed a way to systematize present discussions with a view towards applying
them to the study of past mobile societies. The result is a concept that we express by means
of the triad of terms Umgebung, Umwelt and Mitwelt (Fig. 1). Essential for this concept
is the distinction between symbolic aspects of ecology and spheres of practice in the
populations attested in the archaeological record. Interrelationships among Umgebung,
Umwelt and Mitwelt are dynamic and in constant lux. To analyze these relationships we
have formulated multiple research strategies based on three issues: mobility rhythms,
human-animal relations and landscape construction.
67 Rowland and Bunbury 2014.
68 Rowland and Bunbury 2014.
64
Reinhard Bernbeck et al.
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Illustration credits
1 Drawing by Reinhard Bernbeck and Susan Pollock.
GMTED2010 of Earth Explorer/USGS.
2 Map: Jan Krause, using
70
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Reinhard Bernbeck
is a professor at the Freie Universität Berlin whose previous positions include faculty
posts at Binghamton University and Bryn Mawr College. Research interests: late
Neolithic in the Near East, maintenance of social equality and formation of hierarchies, structural comparison of earlier and modern empires, connections between
ideology, politics and archaeology and archaeology of modern times. He has excavated
in Turkey, Iran, Turkmenistan, Jordan, Palestine and Syria.
Prof. Dr. Reinhard Bernbeck
Freie Universität Berlin
Institut für Vorderasiatische Archäologie
Fabeckstr. 23–25
14195 Berlin, Deutschland
E-Mail: rbernbec@zedat.fu-berlin.de
Ulrich Cubasch
Dr. rer. nat. (Hamburg 1984), Habilitation (Hamburg 1993), has held the chair in Interactions of Earth’s Climate Systems at the Institute of Meteorology of the Freie Universität
Berlin since 2002, serving as director since 2011. From 2007 to 2011 he served as dean
of the FU’s Department of Earth Sciences. He is the chair of DFG Research Commission 313 Atmosphäre, a member of the DFG Senate Commission Zukuntsaufgaben
der Geowissenschaten and a lead author for all reports of the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change. Current research interests: climate modeling, palaeoclimate, and
climate prediction.
Prof. Dr. Ulrich Cubasch
Freie Universität Berlin
Institut für Meteorologie
Carl-Heinrich-Becker-Weg 6–10
12165 Berlin, Germany
E-Mail: cubasch@zedat.fu-berlin.de
Anton Gass
Dr. phil. (Berlin 2012) is a doctoral fellow at the Freie Universität Berlin/Excellence
Cluster 264 Topoi/Stitung Preußischer Kulturbesitz (2008–2011), and has been a
member of the research staf at Stitung Preußischer Kulturbesitz since 2012. Research
interests: cultural development of early Bronze Age societies in southern Siberia,
cultural change from the Bronze to the Iron Age in Central Asia, and emergence and
societal structure early mounted nomads (Scythians) of the 1st millennium BCE in
the Eurasian steppe.
Dr. Anton Gass
Stitung Preußischer Kulturbesitz
Archäologisches Zentrum
Geschwister-Scholl-Str. 6
10117 Berlin, Germany
E-Mail: a.gass@smb.spk-berlin.de
Ilia Heid
M.A. (Mainz 2013), is currently a PhD student and PhD fellow of the Excellencecluster
Topoi at the Freie Universität Berlin. Current research interests: early village societies
Notes for a Political Ecology of Non-Sedentary People
71
in the Circum-Caspian region and Central Asia, Soviet archaeology, time concepts and
Bayesian chronological models in archaeology.
Ilia Heid
Freie Universität Berlin
Institut für Vorderasiatische Archäologie
Fabeckstr. 23–25
14195 Berlin, Germany
E-Mail: iliaheit@zedat.fu-berlin.de
Elke Kaiser
Dr. phil. (Berlin 2000), Habilitation (Berlin 2013), is a professor at the Institute of
Prehistoric Archaeology at the Freie Universität Berlin. Research interests: western
Eurasia, southeast Europe, the Neolithic, the Bronze Age, settlement archaeology and
bioarchaeology.
Prof. Dr. Elke Kaiser
Freie Universität Berlin
Institut für Prähistorische Archäologie
Fabeckstr. 23–25
14195 Berlin, Germany
E-Mail: elke.kaiser@topoi.org
Simona Mileto
holds a master degree on Science and Technology for the Conservation and Restoration of Historical and Artistic Heritage. University of Perugia, Italy. Since 2012 she was
a PhD student and fellow in the Excellencecluster Topoi. She recently inished her
project of organic residue analysis of ancient ceramics that have come from several
prehistoric settlements in the Dnieper region, Ukraine.
Simona Mileto
Institut für Prähistorische Archäologie
Fabeckstraße 23–25
14195 Berlin, Germany
E-Mail: simona.mileto@gmail.com
Hermann Parzinger
Dr. phil. (Munich 1985), Habilitation (Munich 1991), has served as honorary professor
for prehistoric archaeology at the Freie Universität Berlin since 1996, and served as
the President of the German Archaeological Institute in Berlin (2003–2008); since
2008 has been the president of Stitung Preußischer Kulturbesitz. Current research
interests: origins and societal structure of early mounted nomads (Scythians) of the 1st
millennium BCE in the Eurasian steppe, emergence of elites in societies in prehistory
and early history and the loss of cultural property of German and Russian Museums
in World War II.
Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. Hermann Parzinger
Stitung Preußischer Kulturbesitz
Präsident
Von-der-Heydt-Str. 16–18
72
Reinhard Bernbeck et al.
10785 Berlin, Germany
E-Mail: parzinger@hv.spk-berlin.de
Susan Pollock
PhD (University of Michigan, 1983), is a professor at the Freie Universität Berlin, having previously served as professor at Binghamton University. Current research interests: studies of commensality in early state and urban societies in Mesopotamia; politics, archaeological praxis, and knowledge production and the development and transmission of Kulturtechniken in early village societies. Field research in Turkmenistan,
Iran, Iraq, Palestine and Turkey.
Prof. Dr. Susan Pollock
Freie Universität Berlin
Institut für Vorderasiatische Archäologie
Fabeckstr. 23–25
14195 Berlin, Germany
E-Mail: spollock@zedat.fu-berlin.de
Joanne Rowland
PhD (London 2004) conducted Egyptological postdoctoral research from 2006 to
2009 at the Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, University of
Oxford; 2009–2010 she served as a scientiic collaborator in the Egyptian Department,
Royal Museums of Art and History, Brussels and as co-director of the excavations in
Elkab in Upper Egypt (southern). She has lead the Minuiyeh Archaeological Survey
in the Nile Delta since 2005 and the Imbaba Prehistoric Survey since 2013 – both in
collaboration with the Egypt Exploration Society in GB. She has also been a junior
professor in Egyptian archaeology at the Freie Universität Berlin since 2010.
Jun.-Prof. Dr. Joanne Rowland
Freie Universität Berlin
Ägyptologisches Seminar
Fabeckstr. 23–25
14195 Berlin, Germany
E-Mail: joanne.rowland@fu-berlin.de
Emmanuele Russo
holds a master degree in physics (Universitá degli Studi di Catania, 2012) and is
a PhD student at the Freie Universität Berlin. Current research interests: mid-tolate Holocene climate and ecological changes and regional climate and ecological
modeling.
Emmanuele Russo
Institut für Meteorologie
Carl-Heinrich-Becker-Weg 6–10
12165 Berlin, Germany
E-Mail: emmanuele.russo@met.fu-berlin.de
Geofrey J. Tassie
PhD (Institute of Archaeology,University College London,2009),was a research fellow
in the Topoi Excellence Cluster at the Freie Universität Berlin. He previously served
Notes for a Political Ecology of Non-Sedentary People
73
as a fractional lecturer in the Arts and Humanities Department, School of Oriental
and African Studies (SOAS), University of London and an associate lecturer and
honorary research fellow at the University of Winchester. Current research interests:
movement of peoples and the transition to a food producing economy in the western
Nile Delta (with a special focus on Merimde Beni Salame), (re)evaluating the data
within its wider socioeconomic, geographic, environmental and modern research
contexts; social dynamics in the Predynastic to early Dynastic periods at Kafr Hassan
Dawood, Egypt and socioeconomic transformations in North-east Africa. He has
conducted ield research in Imbaba, West Nile Delta; Minuiyeh, Central Nile Delta
and Cornwall, UK.
Dr. G. J. Tassie
Topoi-Haus Dahlem
Hittorfstraße 18
14195 Berlin, Germany
E-Mail: geofrey.tassie@topoi.org