Moriah McKenna

Erosion and desertification are global problems threatening the viability of life on Earth. Past human-influenced erosion has been treated as a totalizing event leading to societal collapse. However, humans creatively respond to soil movement, contribute to soil development, and live on in areas where erosion occurs. Erosional deposits at archaeological sites offer high resolution, terrestrial records of human-soil interactions throughout time. In the hill-strewn landscape of semi-arid Karnataka, India, archaeologists found that prehistorically occupied hills strongly correlate with erosion. Building from this, I will compare erosion at three hillsites – two occupied since 3000 BCE, the other prehistorically unoccupied. I will compare erosion sequences to plant remains and changing settlement patterns to understand relationships between erosion, land use, and social response. This work takes a different perspective from collapse narratives by recognizing past human-soil relationships contributed to the current populated landscape where hills are recognized as biodiversity hotspots and resource rich and the surrounding plains are cultivated. As desertification is invoked as a threat to human survival exacerbated by climate change, research on past human strategies in arid lands is essential for understanding how past decisions led to current affordances and how landscapes can be sustainably managed for the future.