Human-environment Interactions in the Neolithic Northern Taiwan

Principle Investigator：Chih-Hua Chiang

Chiang’s research focuses on the human-environment interactions between human and the environment in the Lanyang Plain in the Neolithic period. Her research is influenced by the new materialism, which reconsiders how "things" demonstrate their agency in the process of interaction with humans and other non-human organisms. Whether viewing human culture as a product of adaptation to the environment or emphasizing the exploration of long-term interactions between humans and the environment, traditional archaeology has regarded the environment and human society as two separate, objectively existing categories with distinct boundaries. It overlooks the diverse, complex, and fragmented co-construction and entanglements of the environment, material objects, and human communities in a long-term context.

More importantly, the contemporary understanding of "environment" is itself one facet that emerges from the processes of constructing these diverse relationships and is difficult to divide into separate parts. Under this perspective, Chiang attempts to reanalyze the changes in the human-environment interactions during the Neolithic period in the Yilan region, with a particular emphasis on the agency exhibited by material objects in these relational constructions. This agency influenced the interactions between the Neolithic populations and the environment they inhabited, even providing possible approaches to explain the migration of Late Neolithic populations. When contemplating the impact of climate change on human society in contemporary times, this perspective avoids oversimplifying our relationship with the environment. It allows us to see that the so-called "environment" is actually constructed through long-term interactions among humans, non-human entities, and material objects. Therefore, the notion of “environmental change” is not a “natural” phenomenon nor solely caused by human behavior.