This thesis explore the effects of China's Grassland Contract policy on sedentary and mobile Inner Mongolian pastoralists' attitudes towards cooperation, current grassland management practices, and the future viability of livestock herding in New Barag Right Banner, Inner Mongolia. Semi-structured interviews, a scaled survey instrument, and participant observation were carried out in three case-study villages in New Barag Right Banner. The author hypothesized that because they maintain a livestock management strategy more closely related to the nomadic grazing traditionally practiced in the region, mobile pastoralists would have significantly more positive attitudes than their sedentary counterparts. Results show that herders representing both sedentary and mobile livestock management strategies share the same attitudes towards cooperation, grassland management, and the future viability of pastoralism in Inner Mongolia. Thus, the study results suggest that recent grassland policy may be affecting Inner Mongolian pastoralists representing different settlement categories in uniform ways.

"Presenting a new perspective on human-animal relations in the ancient Near East, this volume considers how we should understand equids (horses, donkeys, onagers and various hybrids) as animals that are social actors. Recht brings together a wealth of new data, including Bronze Age Near Eastern material culture from a range of archaeological contexts with equid remains as well as iconography and texts. She looks in particular at finds of equids themselves from burials, sacred space and settlements alongside associated artefacts such as chariots and harnesses. This is the first time the agency of animals is recognised. The study is essential reading for prehistorians, archaeologists and those studying early animal domestication, showcasing how humans encounter and interact with other animals, and how those animals in turn interact with humans. Recht outlines the broader implications for human involvement with their environment, both today and in the past, and points to further study in a number of focused appendices"--

Transhumance is a form of pastoralism that has been practised around the world since animals were first domesticated. Such seasonal movements have formed an important aspect of many European farming systems for several thousand years, although they have declined markedly since the nineteenth century. Ethnographers and geographers have long been involved in recording transhumant practices, and in the last two decades archaeologists have started to add a new material dimension to the subject. This volume brings together recent advances in the study of European transhumance during historical times, from Sweden to Spain, Romania to Ireland, and beyond that even Newfoundland. While the focus is on the archaeology of seasonal sites used by shepherds and cowherds, the contributions exhibit a high degree of interdisciplinarity. Documentary, cartographic, ethnographic and palaeoecological evidence all play a part in the examination of seasonal movement and settlement in medieval and post-medieval landscapes. Notwithstanding the obvious diversity across Europe in terms of livestock, distances travelled and socio-economic context, an extended introduction to the volume shows that cross-cutting themes are now emerging, including mobility, gendered herding, collective land-use, the agency of non-elite people and competition for grazing and markets. The book will appeal not only to archaeologists, but to historians, geographers, ethnographers, palaeoecologists and anyone interested in rural lifeways across Europe.

This monograph uses the latest archaeological results from Mongolia and the surrounding areas of Inner Asia to propose a novel understanding of nomadic statehood, political economy, and the nature of interaction with ancient China. In contrast to the common view of the Eurasian steppe as a dependent periphery of Old World centers, this work views Inner Asia as a locus of enormous influence on neighboring civilizations, primarily through the development and transmission of diverse organizational models, technologies, and socio-political traditions. This work explores the spatial management of political relationships within the pastoral nomadic setting during the first millennium BCE and argues that a culture of mobility, horse-based transport, and long-distance networking promoted a unique variant of statehood. Although states of the eastern steppe were geographically large and hierarchical, these polities also relied on techniques of distributed authority, multiple centers, flexible structures, and ceremonialism to accommodate a largely mobile and dispersed populace. This expertise in “spatial politics” set the stage early on for the expansionistic success of later Asian empires under the Mongols and Manchus. Inner Asia and the Spatial Politics of Empire brings a distinctly anthropological treatment to the prehistory of Mongolia and is the first major work to explore key issues in the archaeology of eastern Eurasia using a comparative framework. The monograph adds significantly to anthropological theory on interaction between states and outlying regions, the emergence of secondary complexity, and the growth of imperial traditions. Based on this approach, the window of Inner Asian prehistory offers a novel opportunity to investigate the varied ways that complex societies grow and the processes articulating adjacent societies in networks of mutual transformation.

Winner of the International Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction Animal tracks, word magic, the speech of stones, the power of letters, and the taste of the wind all figure prominently in this intellectual tour de force that returns us to our senses and to the sensuous terrain that sustains us. This major work of ecological philosophy startles the senses out of habitual ways of perception. For a thousand generations, human beings viewed themselves as part of the wider community of nature, and they carried on active relationships not only with other people with other animals, plants, and natural objects (including mountains, rivers, winds, and weather patters) that we have only lately come to think of as "inanimate." How, then, did humans come to sever their ancient reciprocity with the natural world? What will it take for us to recover a sustaining relation with the breathing earth? In The Spell of the Sensuous David Abram draws on sources as diverse as the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty, Balinese shamanism, Apache storytelling, and his own experience as an accomplished sleight-of-hand of magician to reveal the subtle dependence of human cognition on the natural environment. He explores the character of perception and excavates the sensual foundations of language, which--even at its most abstract--echoes the calls and cries of the earth. On every page of this lyrical work, Abram weaves his arguments with a passion, a precision, and an intellectual daring that recall such writers as Loren Eisleley, Annie Dillard, and Barry Lopez.

Throughout history, climate change has been an important driving force behind human behaviour. This archaeological study seeks to understand the complex interrelations between that behaviour and climatic fluctuations, focussing on how climate affected the social relations between neighbouring communities of occasionally differing nature. It is argued that developments in these relations will fall within a continuum between competition on one end and cooperation on the other. The adoption of a particular strategy depends on whether that strategy is advantageous to a community in terms of the maintenance of its well-being when faced with adverse climate change. This model will be applied to northern Mesopotamia between 3000 and 1600 BC. Local palaeoclimate proxy records demonstrate that aridity increased significantly during this period. Within this geographical, chronological, and climatic framework, this study looks at changes in settlement patterns as an indication of competition among sedentary agriculturalist communities, and the development of the Amorite ethnic identity as reflecting cooperation among sedentary and more mobile pastoralist communities.

Continued population growth, rapidly changing consumption patterns and the impacts of climate change and environmental degradation are driving limited resources of food, energy, water and materials towards critical thresholds worldwide. These pressures are likely to be substantial across Africa, where countries will have to find innovative ways to boost crop and livestock production to avoid becoming more reliant on imports and food aid. Sustainable agricultural intensification - producing more output from the same area of land while reducing the negative environmental impacts - represents a solution for millions of African farmers. This volume presents the lessons learned from 40 sustainable agricultural intensification programmes in 20 countries across Africa, commissioned as part of the UK Government's Foresight project. Through detailed case studies, the authors of each chapter examine how to develop productive and sustainable agricultural systems and how to scale up these systems to reach many more millions of people in the future. Themes covered include crop improvements, agroforestry and soil conservation, conservation agriculture, integrated pest management, horticulture, livestock and fodder crops, aquaculture, and novel policies and partnerships.

This book explores a relatively small, but interesting and anomalous, region of Alberta between the North Saskatchewan and the Battle Rivers. Ecological themes, such as climatic cycles, ground water availability, vegetation succession and the response of wildlife, and the impact of fires, shape the possibilities and provide the challenges to those who have called the region home or used its varied resources: Indians, Metis, and European immigrants.