The Archive of Place weaves together a series of narratives about environmental history in a particular location -- British Columbia's Chilcotin Plateau. In the mid-1990s, the Chilcotin was at the centre of three territorial conflicts. Opposing groups, in their struggle to control the fate of the region and its resources, invoked different understandings of its past -- and different types of evidence -- to justify their actions. These controversies serve as case studies, as William Turkel examines how people interpret material traces to reconstruct past events, the conditions under...

The Bering Strait Crossing is the epic story of the Intercontinental Divide. The ancient waterway - when the fog clears over the Diomede Islands - is among the world's most stunning vistas. This is where the 53-mile wide strait, named for Danish explorer Vitus Bering (1681-1741), separates four continents across the Europe-Asia landmass and the Americas. Extremes of climate, isolation, and geopolitical tension have interfaced to create the perception of a frozen limbo at the edge of the world. Yet the Bering Strait is the world's geographical crossroads - linking East with West - for...

• Selections are influential in the development of the discipline or relevant to contemporary policy debates
  
• Includes a general introduction and helpful individual section introductions
  
• Systematically organized into eight sections: introductory readings; population and migration; environment, agriculture and society; cultural geography and place; urban geography; economic geography; development geography; and political geography
  
• Features...

Howard Mansfield explores the loss of cultural memory, asking: What is the past? How do we construct that past? Is it possible to preserve the past as a vital force for the future? He writes eloquently on the land and...

Throughout history, human societies have been organized preeminently as territories--politically bounded regions whose borders define the jurisdiction of laws and the movement of peoples. At a time when the technologies of globalization are eroding barriers to communication, transportation, and trade, Once Within Borders explores the fitful evolution of territorial organization as a worldwide practice of human societies. Master historian Charles S. Maier tracks the epochal changes that have defined territories over five centuries and draws attention to ideas and technologies that...

How much has human history been influenced by the earth and its processes? This volume in the "Science 101" series describes how both slow changes and rapid, violent, ones have impacted the development of civilizations throughout history. Slow changes include variations in climate, progressive development of types of tools and sources of energy, and changes in the types of food that people consume. Violent changes include volcanic eruptions such as the one at Toba 75,000 years ago, which may have caused diversification of people into different races, and the eruption of Santorini in 1640...