Plant macrofossil analyses of 5 peat cores obtained from undisturbed (i.e. not cut for peat) flood-plain mires situated in the Ant Valley in the Norfolk Broads have indicated the successional development of the vegetation over approximately the last 2000 years. These have been supplemented by analysis of diatom and foraminiferal content of some of the deposits together with the application of radiocarbon dating to give an approximate chronological framework within which to place macrofossil zones. Macrofossil assemblages have been grouped into 5 major zones. These are interpreted as representing: A: Carr woodland communities (pre-Roman) B: Salt marsh communities formed during a marine transgressive phase (Romano-British). C: Fen tussock/carr communities indicative of drier conditions (Early Medieval). D: Aquatic communities indicative of wetter conditions (late/post Medieval). E: Communities suggestive of present day vegetation influenced by human management (post Medieval-present day). The zones have been interpreted largely in terms of the response of the vegetation to changes in sea-level, climate and management over the last two millenia. Macrofossil analyses were also carried out on samples collected from a variety of former peat cuttings in the Catfield and Irstead Fens. Successional changes were deduced and compared with previous investigations. Historical studies of archival documentary material has suggested that the post-Medieval use of peat as a fuel in Norfolk was largely a feature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and that it was a commodity of major importance amongst the poor during this time. Study of archive material specifically relevant to the Catfield and Irstead Fens has suggested that at least some of the former turf cuttings may have been dug in the first half of the nineteenth century but many may also date from the second half.

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This dissertation considers the exchanges between national parks along the North American borderlands that defined the contours of development and wilderness and created a brand new category of protected space -- the transboundary park. The National Park Systems of Canada, Mexico, and the United States did not develop and grow in isolation. "Bordering North America" examines four different parks in two regions: Waterton Lakes and Glacier in the northern Rocky Mountains of Alberta and Montana and Big Bend and the Maderas del Carmen in the Chihuahuan Desert of Texas and Coahuila. In 1932, Glacier and Waterton Lakes were combined to form the first transboundary park. In the 1930s and 1940s, using the Waterton-Glacier model as precedent, the U.S. and Mexican governments undertook a major effort, ultimately unsuccessful, to designate a sister park in Mexico and combine the two areas into another international space. Finally, in 1994, Mexico established two protected areas, including the Maderas del Carmen, adjacent to the Big Bend. Ideas about parks and wilderness migrated across borders just as freely as the flora and fauna these spaces sought to protect. Moreover, a multiplicity of views and forces, from three different Park Services, the visiting public, private enterprise, local landholders, competing government agencies and international NGOs, and even the elements of nature itself, all combined to shape the trajectory of park development. / text

Includes bibliography. / This dissertation has two components, one History and one Education, and the central unifying theme is Environmental History. The History component examines the historiography of this sub-discipline, and then applies an environmental analysis as an example of its use in historical research. The second component explores the use of Environmental History in the teaching of school history, and presents a curriculum model which uses this approach. Both components use the Liesbeek River valley in the Cape Peninsula as a case-study.

Whales are an enigma. It is difficult to pin them down because they straddle categories. Whales were difficult not just because of their extraordinary size, but rather because they were peculiar sorts of fish, with meat more like wild boar than tuna. In the same way that they existed at the intersection of classifications, with features of land and sea creatures, whales also were a nexus in a web of linkages between the ocean and the shore. By focusing on whales and the boundaries they straddle, this dissertation highlights the often surprising interconnections between coastal activities and inland life in early modern Japan (1600-1900). / East Asian Languages and Civilizations

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No description available.

Humans form lasting and unique relationships with the natural world and, by extension, the organisms and animals who have for millennia carved out niche environments. Scholars and general observers agree—at least in principle—that human beings have actively shaped (for better and for worse) the habitats, behaviors, and population of the Earth’s creatures. In turn, those spaces and animals have influenced not only how humans think of the natural world, but also of humanity itself. Animals, in other words, help humans understand themselves.1 This dissertation is a history of the American Alligator. A study of human interactions with alligators can reveal not only how humans viewed the animal, but also how they created, recreated, and utilized those representations to meet their own ends. Much of what humans attached to alligators—either positive, negative, or oscillating between—were the results of an internal process of dialogue, culture, and human psychology. In simpler terms, this research investigates how human beings understand themselves and how a particular species fits within human understandings of the “natural” world.

While multiple questions drive this project, one fundamental query lays at its center. How did American approaches to mortality, their own and others, during the early national period (roughly 1770 to 1850) shape both their understanding of themselves and their environment? The answer to that question exposes a distinct set of values revolving around preparation for death, and acknowledgment and respect for their own (and others mortality), which Americans imbibed from various and disparate sources. More specifically, the first half of the project examines how the letters they wrote and read, the sermons they listened to, the mourning rituals they practiced, the burial grounds they utilized, and the novels and poetry they consumed all combined to create a shared knowledge base and approach to death during the early republic. Uniquely, these principles found strength through a conscious linking of mortality to the natural world. Americans understood their own death as part of a larger, both positive and negative, perfected natural system created and perpetuated by God. The American approach towards mortality, however, was not static and the nineteenth century bore witness to the emergence of a sentimentalized, sanitized, and less human inclusive vision of mortality during 1830s and beyond. Ironically, nature remained central to the way Americans experienced death, however, in a consciously aesthetic, romantic, controlled manner. It is written into the present where rolling and manicured lawns combine together with still ponds to create bucolic scenes of peaceful rest among scenes of beauty. The old, grim, but no less natural lessons of worms, dirt, decay, and dissolution no longer hold sway, ignoring the vital and humbling connection between human bodies and the natural world that was understood in the early republic. This shift (and the focus of the second half of the dissertation), was spurred on by numerous interrelated but distinct factors ranging from urban growth, disease, foreign immigration, and changing cultural sentiments. Americans during the 1830s, 40s, and 50s redefined their relationship to death and in doing so consciously turned away from a vibrant, dynamic, and humbling vision of mortality grounded in the natural world.

<p> “Perceiving Mindscapes: An Intellectual History of Transnational Development of Landscape Architecture in France and the United States, 1852-1894” traces the landscape architecture thought of several key individuals as their thoughts occurred in a network of park development between France and the United States. This study contributes to the history of parks, constructed or preserved, and their perceived impacts on humanity. Specifically, I examine the writings of Frederick Law Olmsted, Calvert Vaux, Adolphe Alphand, Édouard André, and Maurice de Vilmorin. All landscape architects and Vilmorin, a horticulturalist, wrote professing a proclivity to aiding city dwellers (directly or indirectly) by designing urban parks for recreational use. I contend that these landscape architects designed urban parks with their perceived notions of what city dwellers may have needed or wanted, without the ability of knowing or addressing these needs or wants. By tracking these designs internationally, I note how French and American landscape architects enabled one another to rapidly develop landscape architecture around the concepts of internal ailments, aesthetics, pragmatism, and longevity.  </p>