Selective reburial: a potential approach for the in situ preservation of waterlogged archaeological wood in wetland excavations

Excavations at Dispilio, a prehistoric lakeside settlement in northern Greece, have revealed a significant number of vertical wooden piles that need to be protected during and after excavation. Lifting of the piles is not possible and approaches such as reburial, cannot currently be implemented as excavation is still in progress. In 2005, several posts were “selectively buried” on an experimental basis, by encasing them in PVC pipes and backfilling with the surrounding sediment. This approach appeared to be capable of protecting the piles during excavation and be a potential solution for their post-excavation preservation. This preliminary study sets out to asses if this alternative approach to reburial could be an effective in situ preservation method.     

Historical geography and the society/nature “problematic”: the perspective of J. F. Schouw,G. P. Marsh and E. Reclus

The “retreat” of the recent past within geography to a conception of the discipline as an ahistoric science which is either spatial or ecological is seen to be an atavism—a throwback to a disciplinary framework or “problematic” which dichotomizes human society and nature into fixed exclusive categories. This essay explores an alternative “problematic” which integrates society's spatial and ecological dimensions in a study of the historical process of “dialectical” interaction between society and its geographic environment, and the political and economic consequences of this interaction. The significance of this alternative approach is elucidated through an examination of its emergence, at the time of the origins of modern geography in the early nineteenth century. Its developing importance for the present-day position of the discipline is exemplified in the work of three prominent, socially engaged, nineteenth-century geographers. Although these geographers have tended to be either ignored or misunderstood in the recent literature, their approach has much to offer the field at a time when its division into ahistoric spatial and ecological disciplines is being questioned.