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Archaeology’s Deep Time Perspective on Environment and Social Sustainability
March 11, 2015 @ 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
“Archaeology’s Deep Time Perspective on Environment and Social Sustainability” free presentation by archaeologist Allen Dart for Arizona Archaeological Society, San Tan Chapter, at San Tan Historical Society Museum, 20435 S. Old Ellsworth Road (southeast corner of Ellsworth and Queen Creek Roads), Queen Creek Arizona; cosponsored by Arizona Humanities* PLEASE NOTE TIME CHANGE: 7-8:30 p.m. Free

Photo of centuries-old Hohokam Indian checkdams on Tumamoc Hill, Tucson, Arizona
The deep time perspective that archaeology and related disciplines provide about natural hazards, environmental change, and human adaptation not only is a valuable supplement to historical records, it sometimes contradicts historical data used by modern societies to make decisions affecting social sustainability and human safety. What can be learned from scientific evidence that virtually all prehistoric farming cultures in Arizona and the Southwest eventually surpassed their thresholds of sustainability, leading to collapse or reorganization of their societies? Could the disastrous damages to nuclear power plants damaged by the Japanese tsunami of 2011 have been avoided if the engineers who decided where to build those plants had not ignored evidence of prehistoric tsunamis? This presentation looks at archaeological, geological, and sustainable-agricultural evidence on environmental changes and how human cultures have adapted to those changes, and discusses the value of a “beyond history” perspective for modern society. This program was made possible by Arizona Humanities.
* This is not an Old Pueblo Archaeology Center event. For more information contact Marie Britton at 480-390-3491 or mbrit@cox.net; for information about the presentation subject matter contact Allen Dart at Tucson telephone 520-798-1201 or adart@oldpueblo.org.