Format: Paper presentations with discussion
Convenors:
José Alberto Delgado Arcos, University of Oviedo, Spain, delgadojose@uniovi.es
Pablo López Gómez, Independent researcher, Spain, pirilpez@gmail.com
Patricia Aparicio Martínez, University of Toronto, Canada, sanchezpaloma@uniovi.es
Paloma Sánchez-Broch, University of Oviedo, Spain, sanchezpaloma@uniovi.es
Elías Carballido González, University of Oviedo, Spain, carballidoelias@uniovi.es
Margarita Fernández Mier, University of Oviedo, Spain, margarita.mier@uniovi.es
In the context of global capitalism, rural communities are forced towards models of hyper-productivity—extractivism, monocultures, agribusiness—or tourism-gentrification, land speculation and landscape commercialisation. Both cases create unsustainable systems that exacerbate current demographic and climatic challenges. But is there an alternative? Is a ‘return to the land’ based on principles of sustainability and resilience viable?
The study of local communities throughout history provides a very interesting research framework in terms of self-sufficient economies, bidirectional relationships with the environment and sustainability. But is this a common feature of all past societies? Have we idealised the rural world? Do these communities serve as a model to apply to the present world?
Archaeology emerges as a useful tool to provide scientific knowledge in this regard, which highlights past resilience experiences of rural socio-ecological models. From the perspective of the ‘Western world’ rural areas have been interpreted as an extinct or exotic reality. However, research in this region demonstrates that these territories provide relevant knowledge with real implications for the present, knowledge that has often been silenced. Our experience has shown that these spaces function as living laboratories. They allow us to understand both their historical characteristics and contemporary issues.
This session welcomes theoretical and methodological approaches to agro-pastoral practices, adaptation strategies to political, social or climatic changes, collective resource management models, agro-biological knowledge systems or spaces of significance for local communities. Additionally, we encourage case studies where archaeology has served as evidence in rural communities’ struggles for land rights, territorial claims or identity.
In short, we seek to create a space for dialogue on the role of archaeology in the co-construction of knowledge with rural communities from a comparative and transdisciplinary perspective. We aim to challenge hegemonic narratives about rurality and reaffirm its relevance in shaping sustainable and equitable futures from ‘below’.
Papers:
Papas, Simientes y Cosechas de Pasados Continuos: Saberes Ancestrales y Resiliencias en la Comunidad de Canta (Perú)
Potatoes, Seeds and Crops of Continuous Pasts: Ancestral Knowledge and Resilience in the Community of Canta (Peru)
Hernán Iván Hurtado Castro, Programa de Posgrado de Antropología, Universidad Federal de Minas Gerais, Brasil; Departamento de Etnobotánica y Botánica Económica, Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Perú
En un mundo globalizado contemporáneo de cambios acelerados en los paisajes agrorurales andinos, esta ponencia indaga sobre los saberes ancestrales en la construcción histórica de modos de vida resilientes como sostenibles. A través del estudio etnoarqueológico de la Comunidad Campesina de Canta, dedicada históricamente al cultivo de papas y a la gestión tradicional del territorio, se analizan prácticas agrícolas y formas de organización comunal que han permitido una relación llevadera con el entorno. Se discute cómo estos conocimientos han hecho frente a transformaciones económicas y sociales, como los procesos de extractivismo, la agroindustria y los conflictos por despojo y control de tierras como fuentes de agua, y cómo hoy se reactivan en clave de defensa territorial, soberanía alimentaria y patrimonio cultural. La ponencia propone a la comunidad campesina de Canta como agentes activos en el tejido de futuros alternativos, teniendo consideración del potencial de la resiliencia cultural para articular diálogos entre memorias sociales locales y discusiones contemporáneas sobre factibilidad y sostenibilidad.
In a contemporary globalised world of accelerated changes in Andean agro-rural landscapes, this paper investigates ancestral knowledge in the historical construction of resilient and sustainable ways of life. Through the ethnoarchaeological study of the peasant community of Canta, historically dedicated to the cultivation of potatoes and the traditional management of the territory, agricultural practices and forms of communal organisation that have allowed a bearable relationship with the environment are analysed. It discusses how this knowledge has faced economic and social transformations, such as extractivism processes, agribusiness and conflicts over the dispossession and control of lands as sources of water, and how today it is reactivated in terms of territorial defense, food sovereignty and cultural heritage. This paper proposes the peasant community of Canta as active agents in the fabric of alternative futures, taking into account the potential of cultural resilience to articulate dialogues between local social memories and contemporary discussions on feasibility and sustainability.
Between Memory and Materiality: Archaeological Readings of Rural Change in the Ligurian Hinterland (Italy)
Anna Maria Stagno, Laura Gago-Chorèn, Laura Moro, Caterina Piu, University of Genoa, Italy
In the context of environmental crisis and rural depopulation in southwestern Europe’s mountainous areas, archaeological research offers tools for understanding historical territorial transformations.
This paper presents a comparative analysis of two rural communities in the Ligurian hinterland (Italy)—Velva and Rovegno—through the study of historical practices to activate and manage environmental resources. Both territories have been historically built through agro-silvo-pastoral systems that ensured long-term environmental sustainability, supported by local knowledge and central to social organization and relationships. The evidence of these systems and their complex networks, now largely abandoned, are still materialised in the landscapes as ecofacts, artefacts, historical terrestrial and hydraulic paths. Starting from their identification, this paper aims to reconstruct the changes in the historical management practices of environmental resources and to contextualise their economic and social aspects. The approach is multidisciplinary, integrating landscape and rural archaeology, historical ecology, cartographic analysis and oral history. The study also examines how local communities are creating new interpretations of their rural heritage. An active demand for historical knowledge arises from a search for belonging and future-making. In this context, archaeological research can contribute to documentation and also to mediating between a disrupted past, a fragile present, and sustainable futures.
Contested Spaces: Social History and Rural Reappropriation Through Archaeology
Arturo García-López , Daniel Moreno Rodríguez , Pablo González Zambrano , Araceli Cristo Ropero , Manuel Abelleira Durán , Andrés María Adroher Auroux, University of Granada, Granada, Spain
This paper offers a socio-ecological interpretation of rural settlement in the Guadalquivir Valley (southern Iberian Peninsula) from the Late Bronze Age to the Roman conquest, based on archaeological research conducted by the PROMETEO Research Group at the University of Granada. The analysis focuses on sites where social organisation was structured around systems of environmental exploitation adapted to diverse ecological conditions, and articulated through historically specific and unequal social relations.
In contrast to narratives that have portrayed these areas as peripheral or subordinate, we argue for their role as active centres of production, social reproduction, and community identity for over a millennium. The mountain is not understood here as a boundary, but as a socially constructed space shaped by practices of occupation, subsistence and territorial control.
The paper also presents recent initiatives linking archaeological research with local communities, conceived not merely as heritage management strategies, but as frameworks for recovering social memory and reclaiming the territory. From this perspective, the study of rural pasts not only illuminates long-term processes of inequality and resistance, but also contributes to reimagining alternative ways of inhabiting, producing, and sustaining life in contemporary rural contexts.
Past Environmental Management and Adaptation Practices in West Africa: Insights from the Sukur Cultural Landscape for Sustainability
Mustakim Habibu Sulaiman, Centre for Dryland Agriculture, Bayero University, Kano, Nigeria
The West African subcontinent’s diverse geographic and cultural regions are homes to various environmental management and adaptation practices that are rooted in the age long experiences of the Indigenous populations. This study explores the past environmental management and adaptation practices in the Sukur Cultural landscapes, a UNESCO world heritage site that is located in the Mandara Mountains of northeastern Nigeria as a case study. The aim of the research is to bring to the fore those practices and analyse them to inform contemporary environmental management and adaptation practices as well as understand the sectors of those practices that needs overhauling to conform to the ever-evolving global social and environmental challenges. The study employs a multidisciplinary research design that incorporates archaeological and ethnographic fieldworks, ecological assessment and consultation of secondary sources of data in order to have a comprehensive understanding of the human-environmental dynamics in the region both in the past and present. The findings exemplifies the nature of human-environmental interactions in the area in terms of resource use, management practices and adaptation strategies to overcome myriad of harsh environmental realities. The study has a bearing to inform contemporary policy frameworks on environmental management and adaptation practices to facilitates and enhance sustainable livelihood, and strengthen community adaptive capabilities across the vast West African Sub-region.
Landscapes in Action: Historical Strategies of Social Resilience in Mountain Territories
José Alberto Delgado Arcos, University of Oviedo, Spain
Pablo López Gómez, independent researcher, Spain
Patricia Aparicio Martínez, University of Toronto, Canada
Paloma Sánchez-Broch, University of Oviedo, Spain
Elías Carballido González, University of Oviedo, Spain
Margarita Fernández Mier, University of Oviedo, Spain
This paper offers a comparative reflection on the social resilience strategies developed by rural communities in socio-ecological mountain contexts. The experience of the LLABOR-LANDS research group in regions with diverse historical trajectories—northern and southern Iberian Peninsula (Spain) and the Central Andes (Peru)—within the framework of an archaeology engaged with contemporary rural challenges, enables the correlation of landscapes historically shaped by complex agro-pastoral practices, collective management systems, and adaptive local knowledge.
Through integrated methodologies —archaeological survey, excavation, GIS-based territorial analysis, paleoenvironmental studies, and participatory approaches— we document long-term processes that reveal sustainability models grounded in dynamic relationships between communities and their environment. These projects, carried out in collaboration with local actors and within frameworks of knowledge transfer and social innovation, allow us to rethink mountain landscapes as active spaces of knowledge, practice, and transformation.
Far from being relics of the past, these territories function as living laboratories from which to address current challenges such as climate change, depopulation, and the loss of territorial sovereignty. The dialogue of knowledge between academia and communities fosters the co-construction of alternative, sustainable, and equitable models, and reaffirms the value of agrarian and communal heritage in shaping possible rural futures.