Natalie Mueller, PhD - "Towards a historical ecology of North-Central Tanzinia"

North-central Tanzania is world-famous for its biodiversity, known for its iconic safaris through dramatic volcanic landscapes and sweeping grasslands. This region is also home to extreme diversity in human ecologies and cultures. It is one of the few places where foraging lifeways have persisted into the 21^st century, and these are practiced beside everything from mobile pastoralism to industrial agriculture. Communities speak languages from all four major African language families and have histories on the landscape that range from recent migration to persistence for millennia.  This biocultural diversity exists against a backdrop of rapid human population growth and mounting tension over land use and conservation. Historical ecology is a multidisciplinary research program that gives us the tools to read human histories inscribed on complex landscapes like those found in North-central Tanzania. I will present the results from recent ethnobotanical and archaeological field work in the Mbulu highlands. This research gives us a preliminary view of the development of complex forms of agropastoralism and complicates attempts to categorize communities, past and present, into simplistic subsistence types with predictable effects on ecosystems.