Projects
Research in the Lowcountry and southern Mesopotamia
In South Carolina, former rice fields and abandoned river channels preserve different records of environmental change. In southern Mesopotamia, the sediments beneath ancient cities place urban history within a shifting delta. RICE, CORE, and EDEN develop these records to examine how people lived with, modified, and inherited changing waterscapes.
01
RICE · South Carolina Lowcountry
The afterlives of tidal rice landscapes
Dikes and canals built through enslaved labor still control water in many former rice fields. RICE examines how this infrastructure shapes present wetland conditions and what its history means for decisions about management and conservation.
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02
CORE · South Carolina Lowlands
Environmental history beneath the floodplain
After a river abandons a channel, sediment accumulating in the former channel may preserve evidence lost elsewhere on the floodplain. CORE investigates the age and continuity of these deposits before using them to reconstruct environmental and land-use change.
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03
EDEN · Southern Mesopotamia
Rivers, tides, and the making of urban Mesopotamia
As the Tigris–Euphrates–Karun delta developed, shifting channels and tidal reach changed the settings of agriculture and settlement. EDEN reconstructs those changes and tests their relationship to the growth and reorganization of early cities.
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Hobcaw Barony · RICE
Reading Between the Tides
Hobcaw Barony and the Historical Ecology of Estuarine Futures
At Hobcaw Barony on the South Carolina coast, sediment cores, tree rings, and environmental monitoring connect the history of land use with changing wetland conditions. The project asks how that longer record can inform the stewardship of an estuary that continues to change.
Across the projects
Relating environmental change to human history
The projects work with different archives, but each asks how a physical change can be dated and connected to the practices of people living in that landscape.
- The timing and duration of flooding help explain what conditions people encountered in fields, wetlands, and settlements.
- Sediment records show where material accumulated or was removed; dating is needed to relate those changes to cultivation or settlement.
- Canals and dikes preserve evidence of construction and maintenance that can be read alongside records of labor, property, and authority.
- These histories help distinguish inherited constraints from recent changes when considering the management of present-day wetlands.
Students and collaborators