Past Human-Environment Interactions

ABSTRACT: Power point lecture-4 introduces the geography of Ancient Egypt (in a summary form with text and pertinent illustrations), following the broad themes covered by chapter 3 in R. David (2007), Handbook to Life in Ancient Egypt (revised edition). Many of the power point slides/pages were extracted from my pre-existing and on-going, more detailed lectures on Egypt in the Age of the Pyramids (Anth.309), and Imperial and Post-Imperial Egypt (Anth.310), which in-turn represent an expansion and modification of varied past lectures (at WLU; UCLA; UT; UWS; UAB).  In some areas, I follow more closely the data presented by R. David (e.g., the history of Egyptology; past-present research on mummification), while for other chapters I have edited and re-arranged my existing power points to fit the textbook and this course’s thematic approach.  This course actually began as Anth.207 (Introduction to Egyptian Archaeology), but after I expanded this material into two more detailed, and more chronological courses (Anth.309; 310), I realized a need for an additional course that incorporated (1) a brief thematic overview of Ancient Egypt (e.g., geography; history; social organization; architecture & art; cultic & mortuary religion; language & literature; military; trade; economy & industry; daily life), (2) some featured documentaries and response sheets on early to recent explorers and Egyptologists (e.g., Belzoni; Champollion; Budge; Petrie; Carter; others), and (3) a brief introduction to Egyptian hieroglyphs (Collier & Manley, How to Read Egyptian Hieroglyphs).  Hence, the development of the current course, which received very good reviews in Fall 2012 and will be offered again in Spring 2015.  In addition to these lectures, I have uploaded copies of my in-class power points following Collier & Manley’s chapters 1-8, and extracted exercise worksheets from their chapters for use in-class, while requiring my students to work through Collier and Manley’s chapters at home and pre-prepare the exercise for in-class sessions.  Collier and Manley’s excellent, introductory text, other textbook choices (see the separate syllabus), the aforementioned documentaries, and other Egyptological materials have sufficed to enthuse a few undergraduate students from UAB to pursue more detailed graduate training in Egyptian archaeology and languages.  Hopefully, these lectures may be of assistance to others in looking at various aspects of Ancient Egypt, in designing and improving upon such a thematic approach, or in providing any feedback regarding any omissions or errors that may have crept into the course materials.  I try to revise this material each time I teach the course (usually in alternate years), and remain indebted to my initial teachers, diverse Egyptological sources, online materials (mainly used for illustrative and educational purposes), and other dialogue with my students and colleagues for feedback and ideas incorporated into the course’s design and revision.  UPDATED: Dec. 2021.: reformatted, new text, and selected sources.

The Early Medieval stronghold that existed in Pszczew (western Poland) from the 8th to 12th century was located on the shore of Lake Pszczewskie. During archaeological excavations conducted in 2010, systematic sediment samples were taken for malacological analysis to enhance our understanding of the environment in the vicinity of the site during its occupation.

This interdisciplinary study presents synthesis of analyses of entheseal changes and aerospace imagery of regions of two Migration Period (5th-6th century AD) Lombard populations from Gáň and Šamorín (Slovakia). For the first time in scientific research, historical and 3D maps, optical satellite and lidar imagery were used to reconstruct physical activities of past human populations. This approach allowed to reasonably correlate detected enthesopathies with manual reclamation activity for one population and rowing, net fishing for another. The proposed method can be considered effective and is recommended for further verifications, as well as for prediction of types of physical activity of past populations.