Books by Kathleen Morrison
Special issue of PAGES (Past Global Changes) Magazine on Past Land Use and Land Cover.
The Social Lives of Forests: Past, Present, and Future of Woodland Expansion
Forests are in decline, and the threats these outposts of nature face—including deforestation, de... more Forests are in decline, and the threats these outposts of nature face—including deforestation, degradation, and fragmentation—are the result of human culture. Or are they? This volume calls these assumptions into question, revealing forests’ past, present, and future conditions to be the joint products of a host of natural and cultural forces. Moreover, in many cases the coalescence of these forces—from local ecologies to competing knowledge systems—has masked a significant contemporary trend of woodland resurgence, even in the forests of the tropics.
Focusing on the history and current use of woodlands from India to the Amazon, The Social Lives of Forests attempts to build a coherent view of forests sited at the nexus of nature, culture, and development. With chapters covering the effects of human activities on succession patterns in now-protected Costa Rican forests; the intersection of gender and knowledge in African shea nut tree markets; and even the unexpectedly rich urban woodlands of Chicago, this book explores forests as places of significant human action, with complex institutions, ecologies, and economies that have transformed these landscapes in the past and continue to shape them today. From rain forests to timber farms, the face of forests—how we define, understand, and maintain them—is changing.
Daroji Valley: Landscape History, Place, and the Making of a Dryland Reservoir System
Forager-Traders in South and Southeast Asia: Long-Term Histories
Empires: Perspectives from Archaeology and History
Fields of Victory: Vijayanagara and the Course of Intensification
Papers by Kathleen Morrison
At Nature's Edge: The Global Present and Long-term History, 2018
The proposal that we have entered a new geological period, the Anthropocene, has gained currency ... more The proposal that we have entered a new geological period, the Anthropocene, has gained currency both inside and outside of scienti c circles. It is, therefore, worth understanding where this idea comes from and how the science behind it has developed. This article discusses both the nature of empirical support for the Anthropocene proposal as well as the analytical apparatus supporting and surrounding it. To a surprising extent, the notion of an Anthropocene represents an e ort to expand homogenized European historical experiences, frameworks and chronologies onto the rest of the world. This focus
PAGES Magazine, 2025
The PAGES LandCover6k working group focused on the reconstruction of the absolute cover of land-u... more The PAGES LandCover6k working group focused on the reconstruction of the absolute cover of land-use categories and vegetation units over major regions of the globe and over the last 12,000 years, applicable to studies on land use as a climate forcing in the past.
American Anhtropologist, 2025
Understanding the past lies at the core of archaeological practice, as it does for all historical... more Understanding the past lies at the core of archaeological practice, as it does for all historical disciplines. The fact that such understanding is partial, mediated, and tied to the perspectives of scholars operating in the present does not fully mitigate against what we might call "genuine" understanding of past worlds. For all its limits and constraints, historical evidence provides us with glimpses of other worlds, times, and places both familiar and unfamiliar. There are many reasons why such research is valuable, including the fundamental insight of all of anthropology, that there were-and are-many ways of being in the world. Historical and anthropological insights show us that our world is not singular, making it clear that change is indeed possible. This "use" of anthropological evidence can be called inspirational, contextualizing our own time and space, showing us possibilities of what the world could be.
Sustainability
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative... more This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY
WIREs Climate Change, 2024
How is history relevant to the present, or indeed the future? Governments around the world have u... more How is history relevant to the present, or indeed the future? Governments around the world have used history to inform planning and decision-making in various fields for years, but more recently it has taken on a renewed importance as governments grapple with increasingly complex challenges arising from the impacts of climatic change. Yet identifying "lessons from the past" is not straightforward. Especially in the case of big questions about historical structures and social processes, establishing precise causal relationships is complex and interpretive, making consensus difficult among specialists. A second major challenge arises over the uses of history. Historical precedent can and does play a role in some contexts in helping formulate new strategies for addressing local environmental challenges. At the national level policy-makers and politicians often look to the past for inspiration, guidance, or justification. In both respects, the cases and examples chosen are often highly selective and tend to align with pre-existing assumptions. This article briefly reviews these challenges within the context of climate change and associated environmental and sustainability issues, comments on recent work in the field, and suggests some ways forward for historians.
It has been argued that we have now entered the Anthropocene, a proposed epoch in which humans ar... more It has been argued that we have now entered the Anthropocene, a proposed epoch in which humans are having a dominant impact on the Earth system. While some geologists have sought to formalize the Anthropocene as beginning in the mid-twentieth century, its social, geophysical, and environmental roots undoubtedly lie deeper in the past. In this review, we highlight the ways in which human activities across the major biomes of our planet significantly altered parts of the Earth system prior to the Industrial Age. We demonstrate ways in which novel, multidisciplinary approaches can provide detailed insights into long-term human-environment-Earth system interactions. We argue that there is clear evidence for lasting Earth system legacies of pre-Industrial human societies and that archaeology, paleoecology, and historical ecology can provide important, practical insights to help navigate current and future relationships with the planet in more equitable and sustainable ways. Contents
Land
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative... more This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY
Sustainability, 2022
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative... more This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY
South Asian Studies, 2012
The area around the city of Vijayanagara saw a large-scale expansion in irrigation works between ... more The area around the city of Vijayanagara saw a large-scale expansion in irrigation works between the mid-fourteenth and late sixteenth centuries. Of these, reservoirs or 'tanks' played an important role in extending farming into areas beyond the reach of perennial irrigation. Reservoirs were linked to Hindu temples, not only through networks of patronage, but also physically, in aspects of form and decoration. Indeed, reservoirs can be thought of as temples themselves, as well as statements of power and authority, functional objects, and tangible connections to larger social and conceptual worlds. This paper presents reservoirs in four ways: as agricultural features, as (political) monuments, as oceans, and as temples. This juxtaposition is made possible only because of the intersection of textual representation and material form, different modes of representation which may be critically evaluated and compared. Reservoirs formed one part of a complex rural landscape of devotion that included field shrines, hero stones, and even archaeological sites of earlier eras. Through the long-term use-lives of reservoirs, we can see the ways in which rural devotion and practice both responded to the specifics of local histories and, over time, reshaped regional landscapes.
Journal of Archaeological Science, 1994
Investigating regional land use patterns: Pollen, charcoal, and archaeological analyses in precolonial South India
South Asian Archaeology, 1993
... Page 8. 546 Kathleen D. Morrison <~°$x6 <13" 'F: Rzd Slll Bln... more ... Page 8. 546 Kathleen D. Morrison <~°$x6 <13" 'F: Rzd Slll Blnck & R!-I Sill Red Sill Daplh m an Bumm Smd Hmm Clay node :1: chln|: Fig. ... Map series on cultural remains of Vijayanagara. In: DV Devaraj & CS Patil (eds), ViJ'oyanagara: Progress of Research, 1983-84: 164-196. ...
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Books by Kathleen Morrison
Focusing on the history and current use of woodlands from India to the Amazon, The Social Lives of Forests attempts to build a coherent view of forests sited at the nexus of nature, culture, and development. With chapters covering the effects of human activities on succession patterns in now-protected Costa Rican forests; the intersection of gender and knowledge in African shea nut tree markets; and even the unexpectedly rich urban woodlands of Chicago, this book explores forests as places of significant human action, with complex institutions, ecologies, and economies that have transformed these landscapes in the past and continue to shape them today. From rain forests to timber farms, the face of forests—how we define, understand, and maintain them—is changing.
Papers by Kathleen Morrison