For nearly three hundred years before the American Revolution, the colonial South was a kaleidoscope of different people and cultures. Yet all residents of the region shared two important traits. First, they lived and worked in a natural environment unlike any other in the American colonies. Second, like humans everywhere, their presence on the landscape … Continued
Civil War scholars and environmental historians have not so much debated as ignored each other. Environmental works on the South are few and fewer still directly address the war. A consciously ecological view of the Civil War is actually required for two compelling reasons. First, the environmental movement itself. Since World War II and especially … Continued
For tens of millions of years the dominant pattern of biological evolution on this planet has been one of geographical divergence dictated by the simple fact of the separateness of the continents. However, in the last few thousand years there has been a countervailing force. Homo sapiens have gone everywhere, taking with us, intentionally, our … Continued
19th century Americans generally ate locally. While luxuries like coffee, tea, and sugar connected them to the global economy, refrigeration, transportation, and income forced most people to eat seasonal and regional foods. Farmers recycled human and animal waste. The rise of the industrial city, with its immigrant populations, networked economies, and steam-powered workplaces, profoundly challenged … Continued
When Europeans first arrived in the new world, their horses were coming home. Horses had evolved on the American Great Plains, but as they migrated into Siberia and spread across much of the old world, they became extinct in their American cradle until, ten thousand years later, the Spanish returned them to their birthplace. Now, … Continued
Caitlin Patton discusses how the work of Ted Fischer, an anthropologist focused on food culture, specifically the cultivation of broccoli in Guatemala, inspired her choice to study at Vanderbilt University. Fischer’s book, Broccoli and Desire, spotlights an anthropological case study of food culture: the surprising webs of connection between American consumer culture and the traditions … Continued