Chris Hunt

Fieldwork in geography teaching: A critical review of the literature and approaches

Abstract Virtually all lecturers in geography recognise the importance of fieldwork as a vital mode of teaching in the subject. This paper draws on material produced as part of a HEFCE review of teaching and learning in the field and assesses the implications of recent changes in higher education for field studies in geography. The literature on the development of, and recent changes in, fieldwork practice is reviewed and assumptions about appropriate forms of teaching and assessment are challenged. The need for carefully integrated preparation of project‐orientated fieldwork is stressed and the importance of debriefing and feedback after field visits is emphasised. Various suggestions for guidelines on good practice are presented. Finally, a range of future issues and problems in fieldwork is identified and discussed.

Purbeck–Wealden (early Cretaceous) climates

A multidisciplinary colligation including new data and analysis of the evidence for the climates of southern Britain during c. 140 Ma. to c. 120 Ma BP (Berriasian-Barremian — ? earliest Aptian). The climate was at first hot, semi-arid and ‘Mediterranean’ (rather than ‘monsoonal’) in type, probably with seasonally opposed winds (E/W). An irregular long-term trend of increasing rainfall in the moister seasons is evident. This was probably associated with establishment of predominant westerlies during the Jurassic-Cretaceous transition and slightly lower average annual temperatures thereafter until Barremian times. Causes proposed are frequent changes in the regional climatic system due to technically induced adjustments of relief under the special conditions of the semi-enclosed Purbeck–Wealden archipelago and increasing proximity of the widening Protoatlantic sea.

Early-Holocene environments in the Wadi Faynan, Jordan

Evidence for early-Holocene environments in the Wadi Faynan in the rift-margin in souther Jordan is described. The early Holocene of Jordan is not well known and palynology, plant macrofossils and molluscs from Wadi Faynan provide evidence for a much more humid-forest-steppe and steppe-environment than the present stony desert and highly degraded steppe. The early-Holocene fluvial sediments in the Faynan catchment are predominantly fine-grained, epsilon crossbedded and highly fossiliferous. They provide convincing evidence for meandering perennial rivers before 6000 cal. BP. It is probable that this early-Holocene landscape was disrupted by the impact of early farmers and by climate change-the 8.1 ka event appears to be marked by desiccation. By the Chalcolithic, environmental degradation was well advanced.

Environment and land use in the Wadi Faynan, southern Jordan : The second season of geoarchaeology and landscape archaeology (1997)

AbstractThis report describes the third season of fieldwork by an interdisciplinary team of archaeologists and geographers working to reconstrnct the landscape history of the Wadi Faynan in southern Jordan over the past 200,000 years. The particular focus of the project is the long-term history of inter-relationships between landscape and people, as a contribution to the study of processes of desertification and environmental degradation. The geomorphological and palaeoecological studies have now established the outline sequence of landform changes and climatic fluctuations in the late Pleistocene and Holocene. The complex field system WF4 has now been recorded in its entirety in terms of wall construction, suiface artefacts, and hydrological features, as well as most of the outlying field systems. From these studies, in combination with the analysis of the suiface artefacts, an outline sequence of the water utilization and management strategies they represent can now be discerned. Ethnoarchaeology is als...

The Cyrenaican Prehistory Project 2012: the fifth season of investigations of the Haua Fteah cave

AbstractThe paper reports on the fifth (2012) season of fieldwork of the Cyrenaican Prehistory Project. The primary focus of the season was the continuation of the excavation of the prehistoric occupation layers in the Haua Fteah cave. A small trench (Trench U) was cut into Holocene (Neolithic) sediments exposed on the south wall of Charles McBurneys Upper Trench. Below this, the excavation of Trench M was continued, on the southern side of McBurneys Middle Trench. In previous seasons we had excavated Oranian ‘Epipalaeolithic’ layers dating toc.18,000–10,000 BP (years before the present). In 2012 the excavation continued downwards through Dabban ‘Upper Palaeolithic’ occupation layers, one of which was associated with a post-built structure and likely hearths. There are indications of an occupational hiatus separating the oldest Dabban from the youngest Levallois-Mousterian (Middle Palaeolithic or Middle Stone Age) lithic material. The Deep Sounding excavated by Charles McBurney in 1955 was cleared of backfill to its base, and its south-facing wall was recorded in detail and sampled extensively for materials for dating and palaeoenvironmental reconstruction. McBurney believed that he had reached bedrock at the base of the Deep Sounding, but a small sounding (Trench S) cut into the sediments below this level found further, albeit sparse, evidence for human occupation. Whilst the antiquity of ‘Pre-Aurignacian’ human occupation at the site still needs to be resolved, it seems likely to reach back at least to Marine Isotope Stage 5e, the beginning of the last interglacial (c.130,000–115,000 BP). Important finds from the 2012 excavations in terms of the behavioural complexity of the human groups using the cave include a possible worked bone point from a Pre-Aurignacian layer and a granite rubbing stone in a Dabban layer from a source over 600 km from the cave.

Past human activity and geomorphological change in a guano-rich tropical cave mouth: initial interpretations of the Late Quaternary Succession in the Great Cave of Niah, Sarawak

This paper presents initial interpretations of the processes and events responsible for the late Quaternary sequence in the West Mouth of the Great Cave of Niah, in the hot and humid lowland rainforest and swamp forest of Sarawak in Malaysian Borneo. It evaluates the geomorphological context of the site within the known pattern of rapid late Quaternary climate change. Attention is given to the proximity to the sea and the likelihood of humid tropical or cooler drier conditions. The stratigraphic succession is described and four units or lithofacies (2C, 2, 3 and 4) are recognized as being of particular geomorphological and archaeological importance. The key processes operating within the site are the accumulation and subsequent failure and flow of bat and bird guano, hillslope colluviation, and ephemeral stream flow and pond development. Units 2C and 2 contain the critical archaeology, including the Deep Skull from an anatomically modern human, discovered by Tom Harrisson. These were formed by colluviation from a complex cave-mouth rampart and stream flow from within the cave. The stream transported fine-grained sediment to a shallow pond, and both the stream and pond deposits show evidence for prolonged desiccation. Human activity is associated with these surfaces. The human remains and related archaeology are preserved because a mudflow (Unit 3) plowed into and overrode the land surface upon which the humans had lived, resulting in the deformation and burial of the surface and the preservation of the archaeological material. Provisional radiocarbon dates indicate that Units 2C and 2 accumulated from before ca. 45,000 B.P. until ca. 38,000 B.P. Dates bracketing the Deep Skull give this an age of ca. 45,000 B.P. to ca. 43,000 B.P. Overlying the mudflow, Unit 4, a silty diamicton with a relatively high carbonate and organic content, appears to have formed by a mix of natural colluvial and human transport processes, and is associated with human cultural material. Unpublished radiocarbon dates indicate that this deposit formed from before ca. 19,500 B.P. to ca. 8500 B.P. (uncalibrated).This interpretation of the site and its finds has required detailed reconstruction of the changing palaeogeography within and beyond the cave entrance and the nature and rate of geomorphological processes operating within the region, which have been placed within models for rapid Quaternary environmental change. The results suggest that during the earlier period of human presence in the Great Cave of Niah(earlier than ca. 45,000 B.P. until ca. 38,000 B.P.), the climate was episodically wet with much longer periods of relative dryness. During the later period of human occupancy (ca. 19,500 B.P. to ca. 8500 B.P. [uncalibrated]), the evidence is less secure and a slightly moister climate is suggested.

The Portland-Purbeck junction (Portlandian-Berriasian) in the Weald, and correlation of latest Jurassic-early Cretaceous rocks in southern England

Ammonites and palynology are described at the Portland-Purbeck junction in the Weald. A major disconformity exists between glaucolithus Zone Portland Beds and the overlying basal Purbeck facies, the basal Purbeck Beds of the Weald are correlated with the Middle Purbeck strata of Dorset. The Cinder Bed of Dorset and Wiltshire is described as one of several marine incursions entering Wessex from further south in the Anglo-Paris basin, not from the Spilsby basin. The use of Cinder Bed as a convenient Jurassic-Cretaceous (Portlandian-Ryazanian) boundary is critically reviewed, as is the placing of the base of the Berriasian Stage in the type Purbeck section. The rival biostratigrahic schemes based on ostracods and palynology are discussed and the discrepancies between the two schemes in southern England are examined.

The Haua Fteah, Cyrenaica (Northeast Libya): renewed investigations of the cave and its landscape, 2007

The 1950s excavations by Charles McBurney in the great Haua Fteah cave in northeast Libya revealed a deep (14 m) sequence of human occupation going back at least 100,000 years, with evidence for the presence of both Neanderthals and Modern Humans in the Pleistocene, and for Neolithic farmers in the Holocene. In 2007 a renewed programme of archaeological and geomorphological investigation began with the objective of improving understanding of the caves occupation sequence and, combined with fieldwork in the landscape, of the history of landscape change and human responses to it. The initial season of fieldwork removed the upper c. 4.5 m of backfill in the McBurney trench; established the robustness of the original faces and their suitability for analytical interventions; recorded detailed running sections spanning from the present day to (at least) the Last Glacial Maximum c. 20,000 years ago; and indicated the potential of the surviving archaeology to reveal not just sequence but also activities or ‘taskscapes’ at the site. The geomorphological fieldwork identified rich sequences of later Quaternary deposits (marine, colluvial, alluvial, aeolian) with the potential to provide significant results regarding the history of climate and environment in the region. Archaeological survey around the cave indicates that the variability of the surface lithic evidence appears to reflect real differences in past human behaviour and use of the landscape and not just post-depositional taphonomic processes. Fifty years after the extraordinary pioneering work of McBurney and his colleagues, the new work demonstrates the continued potential of the Haua Fteahs unique occupation sequence and the multi-period ‘human landscapes’ around it to transform understanding of early human societies in North Africa.

The UNESCO Libyan Valleys Survey VII: An Interim Classification and Functional Analysis of Ancient Wall Technology and Land Use

Interpretations of ancient wall-technologies in the Libyan pre-desert are briefly reviewed. The forms, patterns, distributions and geological/geomorphic/hydrologic relationships of walls in a series of study areas are described and interpreted with the aid of a new, non-genetic, ‘wall-technology’ classification. The remarkable hydrological and geomorphic insights of their constructors are clear. Several wall types are shown to have been primarily concerned with functions other than water control, although this aspect is usually dominant. In some cases the location of the walls appears to have been likely to exacerbate the perennial problems of soil erosion and gullying, in others walls appear to have been constructed specifically to control soil erosion. These data have implications for reconstructing past land use and evaluating the degree of success or failure experienced in particular situations.

The deep human prehistory of global tropical forests and its relevance for modern conservation

Significant human impacts on tropical forests have been considered the preserve of recent societies, linked to large-scale deforestation, extensive and intensive agriculture, resource mining, livestock grazing and urban settlement. Cumulative archaeological evidence now demonstrates, however, that Homo sapiens has actively manipulated tropical forest ecologies for at least 45,000 years. It is clear that these millennia of impacts need to be taken into account when studying and conserving tropical forest ecosystems today. Nevertheless, archaeology has so far provided only limited practical insight into contemporary human-tropical forest interactions. Here, we review significant archaeological evidence for the impacts of past hunter-gatherers, agriculturalists and urban settlements on global tropical forests. We compare the challenges faced, as well as the solutions adopted, by these groups with those confronting present-day societies, which also rely on tropical forests for a variety of ecosystem services. We emphasize archaeologys importance not only in promoting natural and cultural heritage in tropical forests, but also in taking an active role to inform modern conservation and policy-making.Significant human impacts on tropical forests have been considered the preserve of recent societies, linked to large-scale deforestation, extensive and intensive agriculture, resource mining, livestock grazing and urban settlement. Cumulative archaeological evidence now demonstrates, however, that Homo sapiens has actively manipulated tropical forest ecologies for at least 45,000 years. It is clear that these millennia of impacts need to be taken into account when studying and conserving tropical forest ecosystems today. Nevertheless, archaeology has so far provided only limited practical insight into contemporary human–tropical forest interactions. Here, we review significant archaeological evidence for the impacts of past hunter-gatherers, agriculturalists and urban settlements on global tropical forests. We compare the challenges faced, as well as the solutions adopted, by these groups with those confronting present-day societies, which also rely on tropical forests for a variety of ecosystem services. We emphasize archaeologys importance not only in promoting natural and cultural heritage in tropical forests, but also in taking an active role to inform modern conservation and policy-making.