Why to study history of agriculture and human nutrition, what we can learn from the past?
Although the arable agriculture and livestock herding is the main way of human subsistence since the Neolithic in many regions of the world, knowledge about farming practices and their effects on the landscape, food production, and human nutrition is still limited. Food production is more and more industrialised in developed countries today and employment in the agriculture gradually decrease worldwide year by year. As the employment in agriculture decrease and urban population overnumbered rural population, common knowledge about agricultural practices and food production is lower and lower in common European population.
The aim of this conference is therefore (1) to increase general knowledge about agricultural practices, food production and human nutrition in the past and disseminate this knowledge to public. (2) To discuss how the ancient agriculture and pastoralism changed the landscape in different regions of the world. Human populations in all parts of the world passed many crop failures and famines in the past. Although crop failures and famines are less and less common today, we can not fully avoid them in the future especially in the case of large scale environmental disasters. The next aim of this conference is therefore (2) to discuss how different civilisations overcame crop failures and famines and can we use the knowledge from the past for our future survival? (3) Although hunters and gatherers are first hunters and then gatherers, they collected many plants in the landscape and their nutrition could be based more on plant than on animal products in many regions. Can we learn from hunters and gatherers what to eat in the case of crop failure and famine?
Invited are all contributions connected with agriculture and human nutrition in the past from different fields of environmental archaeology, anthropology, agronomy, agrarian economy and history, geography, archaeobotany, archaeozoology, ecology, and many others.