The Long Making of the Anthropocene: Antiquity, Middle Ages, Modernity

Join Professor Amanda Power for a talk in the Oxford Lifelong Learning seminar series on 'Medieval Society and Landscape', convened by Professor David Griffiths and Dr Stephen Mileson.

Event details:

You can choose to join us in Oxford or watch the session online. If you are joining us in person, this talk will take place in the Rewley House Lecture Theatre.

About the talk:

The Anthropocene is formally diagnosed through physical markers of human transformations of the earth. This materiality asks ‘when’ before ‘how’ and ‘why’. Yet ‘Anthropocene’ values were central to ancient and medieval states, and thus foundational for modern states. Across the globe, early expansionist polities envisaged ‘civilization’ as the successful exploitation by elites of landscapes, ecologies, and human and non-human life. Ceasing to dominate the earth was an illegitimate choice. Our present is best understood as a terrible acceleration of established practices through colonial theft, slavery, harnessing of fossil fuel energy, and the remorseless eradication of alternatives and those who lived them. A better understanding of this history enables us to chart new directions.

About the seminar series:

This series will be a fascinating showcase of the history and archaeology of the medieval period, with a focus on societies, economies and landscapes. It brings together current research and fresh perspectives to explore how people shaped their lives and environments across the Middle Ages.

The programme offers a friendly, collaborative space for discussion, featuring research in progress, approaches to sources and methodologies, and an interface between academic research and local and community history and archaeology. Drawing on a rich heritage of documents, material culture and landscape evidence, the series highlights the breadth and continued relevance of medieval studies.

Open to staff, students and anyone with an interest in medieval history and archaeology, locally and globally, the series includes contributions from established scholars and practitioners.

Each session lasts 1 hour, and drinks will be available for purchase in the common room afterwards.

To view the full series of talks, please visit our website.

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Host or Publisher Oxford University, Department for Continuing Education