Environmental History

Time: Thursdays 12:30-14:00, unless otherwise stated

Meeting Location: Room 20.421, History Hub, Schwarzman Centre, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6GG, unless otherwise stated

Week 1 (16 October)
Stephanie Holt (DPhil History)
Curious Minds: Gilbert White and Thomas Pennant

This talk builds on an exhibition of the same name held earlier this year by the AHRC funded Curious Travellers Project (curioustravellers.ac.uk/en), of which I am a part, and hosted at the Gilbert White Museum in Hampshire. While the project as a whole considers Thomas Pennants entire body of work, my focus, and that of this talk, centres on the conversations between the two naturalists, Rev. Gilbert White (1720-1793) and Thomas Pennant (FRS 1727-1798), and how that developed their work and legacy..

Week 3 (30 October)
Madeleine Fyles (PhD Anthropology, University of Toronto)
More than Kindling: Algarrobo Posts and Social Memory on the Peruvian North Coast

Wooden posts have been a critical element of Andean architecture within the Jequetepeque valley on the North Coast of Peru, particularly in the Moche site of Huaca Colorada (650-850 CE). However, wooden posts have frequently been interpreted in the archaeological canon as architectural features with little connection to ritual procedures except in their inclusion as an inert element of ritual architecture. Utilizing new analyses of wooden posts made from the algarrobo tree (Neltuma pallida), this paper identifies trends in the use and recycling of wooden posts at Huaca Colorada during the Middle Horizon, shedding light on the role of the algarrobo tree as more than a simple resource by examining how the algarrobo tree may have participated in the ritual, political, and social structures at Huaca Colorada as revered ancestor within the local ontology. This research explores the use and perception of algarrobo trees within the complex of Huaca Colorada and the role of trees in establishing or promoting culturally specific perceptions of place, ancestry, and memory.

Week 5 (13 November)
Ryan Mealiffe (DPhil History)
What are White Storks (Ciconia ciconica) Doing in High and Late Medieval Calendars?

Each year, White Storks (Ciconia ciconia) migrate north to breeding grounds in Europe and back south to their wintering grounds, as far afield as sub-Saharan Africa. These long-distance migrants are large, unmistakable in plumage and behavior, and synanthropic, living near humans and benefitting from anthropogenic environments. How did medieval communities in proximity to stork breeding colonies interpret the comings and goings of these birds? This talk presents preliminary findings on the development of interspecies, place-based temporalities between people and storks in northern France and the Low Countries. This region was a growing population center for the species and produced some of the liveliest renderings of storks in manuscripts c. 1250 to 1515. Focusing on depictions of storks in calendars and psalters produced around the Upper Rhine and drawing upon both zooarchaeological and written records of White Storks, I examine the possibility that depictions of storks’ arrival, departure, breeding, and behavioral choices may have acted as pictorial gauges for a combination of environmental, temporal, and climatic variables, calibrating formulaic occupational and liturgical schedules for seasonal variability by synchronizing them with the rhythm of the avian annual cycle.

Week 7 (27 November) - Room 20.513
Speaker to be announced
Title forthcoming