Some of the first human beings to arrive in Tasmania, over 41,000 years ago, used fire to shape and manage the landscape, about 2,000 years earlier than previously thought.
Cambridge researchers will tackle environmental threats that could affect a third of England’s home-grown vegetables and more than a quarter of the UK's rare and endangered wild animals. Eco-friendly farming in the Fens, pine martens in the Cairngorms, and disappearing woodlands in the Lake District will all benefit from a £10 million countryside regeneration programme to safeguard the country’s most important agricultural land and beloved rural idylls.
What was life in the fens like in the period known as the dark ages? Archaeologist Susan Oosthuizen revisits the history of an iconic wetland in the light of fresh evidence and paints a compelling portrait of communities in tune with their changeable environment. In doing so, she makes an important contribution to a wider understanding of early medieval landscapes.
‘Dumberdash’ is an old Cheshire term for a short but violent storm. A ‘lumpenhole’ is a deep trench for fluid farmyard waste. The man who remembers these words is among the scores of people who have written to Dr Robert Macfarlane in response to his latest book, Landmarks.
Recent finds at Willendorf in Austria reveal that modern humans were living in cool steppe-like conditions some 43,500 years ago – and that their presence overlapped with that of Neanderthals for far longer than we thought.
For those who live in the shadow of the world’s highest mountain range, the snow-capped peaks have long been an indicator of the ‘health’ of their community. Now researchers are raising awareness of the value of local knowledge as a proxy for gauging environmental change.
In a talk on Monday (20 May 2013) Dr Simon Nightingale will explore how painterly interpretations of the countryside were embedded into the literature of agricultural improvement in a way that might surprise modern readers.
On the 60th Anniversary of the ‘big flood’ that devastated the coastline of eastern England, new research shows that integrating ‘natural’ sea defences such as salt marshes with sea walls is a more sustainable and effective method of flood prevention.
It’s not a nice cup of tea, an insistence on orderly queuing, or even losing bravely. Cambridge archaeologist Dr Susan Oosthuizen will argue at a conference this Thursday that the essence of Britishness is embedded in the sharing of common land between early communities.
A new exhibition unveils the work of a unique study into some of the most bitterly divided cities in the world, such as Jerusalem and Belfast, showing how daily life adapts to, defines and defies boundaries in spaces of urban conflict.
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