Document Type
Article
Publication Date
7-20-2021
Publication Title
Current Anthropology
Publisher
University of Chicago Press
First page number:
1
Last page number:
14
Abstract
Cultural ecological theory is applied to a spatially and temporally bounded archaeological data set to document long-term paleoeco-logical processes and associated sociopolitical behaviors. Volumetric excavations, treating the material culture of an archaeological matrix similar to an ecological core, can yield quantifiable frequencies of surplus goods that provide a multiproxy empirical lens into incremental changes in land use practices, natural resource consumption, and, in this case, likely overexploitation. Archaeological methods are employed to quantify cultural ecological processes of natural resource exploitation, industrial intensification, sustainability and scarcity, and settlement collapse during the colonial transition between Carthaginian and Roman North Africa. The data indicate that overexploitation of olive timber for metallurgical fuel taxed the ecological metabolism of the Zita resource base, likely contributing to a collapse of the entire local economic system.
Keywords
Archaeological record; Carthaginian-Roman urban mound; Zita resource base
Disciplines
Anthropology | Archaeological Anthropology | Social and Behavioral Sciences
File Format
File Size
37508 KB
Language
English
Rights
IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
Repository Citation
Kaufman, B.,
Barnard, H.,
Drine, A.,
Khedher, R.,
Farahani, A.,
Tahar, S.,
Jerray, E.,
Damiata, B. N.,
Daniels, M.,
Cerezo-Román, J.,
Fenn, T.,
Moses, V.
(2021).
Quantifying Surplus and Sustainability in the Archaeological Record at the Carthaginian-Roman Urban Mound of Zita, Tripolitania.
Current Anthropology
1-14.
University of Chicago Press.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/715275