From a landscape archaeology perspective: All our projects are necessarily multi-disciplinary. Anthropology in many forms is always a critically important component (e.g., local knowledge of ecology and landscape; traditional resource management/manipulation strategies [to include agriculture; land/water management and control systems such as canals, dams, paddy systems, terracing...; landscape modifications; relevant place names and histories; concerns about planning an development; tourism; ethnoarchaeology - traditional industries; ethno-linguistics; ethno-botany...). We look at histories of cultural landscapes. Agricultural landscapes are an important aspect. I’m also interested in specie-genera ratio changes of plants and animals vis-a-vis changes in resource targeting and food production/extraction systems over time. Though “systems” as in ecosystems comes up a lot, it’s a very evolutionary and economic approach. Mostly Southeast Asia (and a little work in Afghanistan). Let me know if you’re interested. We’re still working on analysis and major publications (only started these projects in 2015). As per multi-disciplinary teams, we range from medical experts, materials scientists, biologists, botanists, historians, linguists and a whole spectrum of social scientists. It really depends on the nature of the questions we ask. However, the multidisciplinary approach ensures we all learn something new and the more holistic understanding of the phenomena we’re researching is truly greater than the sum of its parts. Not everyone always agrees, but in my experiences... always rewarding.

Thanks for the interest Letizia. I have worked with anthropologists in the past, but the scales we typically work on are not the scales that anthropologists work. But, yes, the work is multi and trans disciplinary and indeed many different strands of knowledge are required, including physical, biological and social sciences. My personal take on that is that you need someone that can understand and ideally he/she already is familiar with different strands of knowledge, someone like a geographer, who can bring together the different disciplines, but at the same time being able to understand the different languages that these disciplines use, which are not always compatible. Hope this helps, would be happy to answer more specific questions. 

Thanks, Thanasis, for your answer. Nonetheless, I think that landscape and bio-cultural heritage studies can benefit of a contamination with anthropological insights. When you spoke about different scales, do you mean ethnographic/micro scale vs general/macro ones? I think that this is exactly the intertwin that anthropology works on since this foundation, specifically in interactions between nature and culture. This is, anyway, a good point to discuss in this kind of topic. Best, letizia

Hi Letizia,

I was following the Hercules project because it intersects with my own research. While I am a landscape planner, I currently work in VGIscience / Geography department on Social Media data analysis; I understand a bit of the interdisciplinary challenges involved. My phd thesis was about identifying cultural landscape values & attribution of meaning from social media - if this aspect is of interest to you, have a look at the pdf available on alexanderdunkel.com. I built my theoretic base / stance from a social science / anthropology perspective.

If you find something interesting, let me know! The tools I developed are available as Open Source, see blog.alexanderdunkel.com

 Hi Letizia,

This is a period where my own projects and researches concentrate. I do not have much time in the process of collaborative work. I hope to see you later in common projects and projects.

Best Regards.

Hi Letizia. Indeed they can, although I would not use the word "contaminate" but rather "graft". The problem with landscape studies today is that it means and is used way too differently by many people and disciplines. In HERCULES it took us more than 6 months to agree what landscape would be for our project and in the end the agreement was that it will have to be different things. Its output (papers mostly) reflect exactly this: from the EU scale for policy analysis and/or cultural landscape identification, to social media and online - real time use of geographical data and work with stakeholders for landscape stewardship. Far too wide for a singly discipline. We welcomed this diversity and got the best for it it seems, but this is not always easy. So, agreed, we need anthropologists and they need other disciplines and I am happy that I see anthropologists adopting a more spatial and scalar approach in their methods (which is what landscape is all about I guess). Cheers from Lesvos

Dear All,

many thanks for your reply and interest.

Yes, I agree with Thanasis that there are different scales to which comparing and through which approaching landscape. I belong theoretically and methodologically to the line of study that in Italy is identified with 'scuola territorialista' which bring together architects, landscape planners, historians, anthropologists, agrarian studies in order to think about cultural landscapes as 'commons', conservation and valorization of territories and communities, participation from below to the land planning and usages. Moreover I work on processes of 'heritagization' (both on tangible and intangible and bio-cultural heritage) and what I found extremely interesting on 'landscape discourse' is the efficacy it has on sensitizing and mobilizing people to preservation, activism, new attention to the local, revitalization or  invention of traditions. I think that this kind of processes of construction of a co-produced 'sense of place' is the real contribution anthropology can give to a contemporary cluster of research on landscape. Good work and best to all, Letizia

Hola Letizia: 

Por supuesto que es necesario trabajar de manera interdisciplinaria  con las comunidades para desarrollar respuestas adecuadas a las necesidades vitales e intereses de los grupos sociales. El posicionamiento de la antropología y de nosostros/as los/las antropólogas en proyectos de desarrollo es mostrarles a los otros colegas de trabajo de diversa disciplinas  que se deben de respetar las practicas culturales de las sociedades en estudio y/o generar cambios en sus prácticas  socioculturales de manera  sustitutiva, como también  realizando ajustes de carácter sincréetico o híbrido articulando lo ´propio con lo ajeno . En términos del paisaje , hay que estudiar como es el territorio y la territorialidad construida por las comunidades y como van las identidades correlacionadas con el espacio que habitan . Cuales son las practicas económicas que sustentan o no su territorio, si hay impactos ambientales  y como orientarlos a economías mas amigables  con el ambiente y su entorno. Yo he trabajado desde la perspectiva socioantropologica en proyectos de innovación tecnológica  agrícola, manejos del paisaje, ordenamientos de cuencas hidrográficas, ordenamiento territorial y ambiental de la costa pacifica vallecaucana ,  (Colombia) construcciones de variadas infraestructuras, todas con el debido proceso de consulta previa y luego con metodologias que van de la Investigación Participación, mapas mentales, cartografía  social  y talleres con perspectiva de género.

Dear Nancy,

It is an approach very similar to which we adopted in our centre of research to study transhumance and old/new form of sustainable pastoralism,particopatory processes of heritagization of landscapes and rurality.

Thanks for your comment/answer.

Please visit www.demogr.mpg.de/papers/working/wp-2007-031.pdf, thankyou

I'm also interested on collaborating multidisciplinary experiences of research and  cluster about this kind of topic of research - in relation to relational ethics and psychoanalytical processes.

Siddique, S., 2015. Bhaji on the Beach: Teaching Relational Ethics in India. Man in India: an international journal of anthropology.

From a landscape archaeology perspective: All our projects are necessarily multi-disciplinary. Anthropology in many forms is always a critically important component (e.g., local knowledge of ecology and landscape; traditional resource management/manipulation strategies [to include agriculture; land/water management and control systems such as canals, dams, paddy systems, terracing...; landscape modifications; relevant place names and histories; concerns about planning an development; tourism; ethnoarchaeology - traditional industries; ethno-linguistics; ethno-botany...). We look at histories of cultural landscapes. Agricultural landscapes are an important aspect. I’m also interested in specie-genera ratio changes of plants and animals vis-a-vis changes in resource targeting and food production/extraction systems over time. Though “systems” as in ecosystems comes up a lot, it’s a very evolutionary and economic approach. Mostly Southeast Asia (and a little work in Afghanistan). Let me know if you’re interested. We’re still working on analysis and major publications (only started these projects in 2015). As per multi-disciplinary teams, we range from medical experts, materials scientists, biologists, botanists, historians, linguists and a whole spectrum of social scientists. It really depends on the nature of the questions we ask. However, the multidisciplinary approach ensures we all learn something new and the more holistic understanding of the phenomena we’re researching is truly greater than the sum of its parts. Not everyone always agrees, but in my experiences... always rewarding.

I work on social, cultural and political issues mainly in Ukraine at the moment. Identity formation in various contexts an abiding interest

another current interest is the impact of Western theory on the scholarly and community at large in a formerly Soviet republic--Ukraine

No, I worked pretty much alone.  I was never much for long distance relationships and the Loyola University Chicago department of anthropology is on another campus, one distant enough that it might as well be another university.  That is, long distance relationships. 

At the moment I am  working  at Universidad Nacional de Colombia as professour in Colombia with nursing students and my research is the care of the families with kangaroo babies.

Currently, for our Cambodia projects, we actually work with all East Asia Summit countries as the Field School research project trains young professionals from all these countries. They have to develop mini-research projects and papers from the experiences (anthropological) and/or the assemblages (archaeological) and/or surveys with locals (e.g., heritage involvement and management) and so forth. Our lead research team mentors who develop the overarching research questions and design are an international team: Cambodian, Singaporean, American, Hungarian, Australian, Canadian, French, English ... and others. Some, of course, do lab work rather than the actual excavations. We also train young archaeologist in project management. We generally run three operations simultaneously to answer different sets of research questions. Each of the junior site-operations managers develops her/his own questions and methodologies. The senior people advise and mentor. Then the site-operations managers get a small budget and subsequently organize and run their own project. Each operations links to the other for a more holistic approach. We run our training program through the research operations. It's not always easy (multiple cultures, languages, skill sets, etc.), but it's highly successful. We've been running this rather innovative approach for three years. Our results are just emerging and several peer review articles will start emerging. It's a relatively low-budget endeavour, but were able to maximize our resources and assets with assistance from partners and host countries. Many of our senior people even volunteer their services.

The Straits Times, 1 August 2017: Cambodia and Singapore archaeologists unearth ancient statue at Angkor complex; Still beautiful after all these centuries: Statue found at Angkor Wat

http://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/ancient-statue-unearthed-at-cambodias-angkor-complex?utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&xtor=CS1-10#link_time=1501577247 

National Geographic, 1 August 2017: Ancient, Six-Foot Statue Found Near Angkor Wat;

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/08/angkor-wat-archaeological-park-statue-khmer-empire-spd/

The Guardian, 1 August 2017: Ancient statue unearthed at Cambodia's Angkor temple complex

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/01/ancient-statue-unearthed-at-cambodias-angkor-temple-complex

We also have historians, art historians, geologists, anthropologists, medical doctors (studying the traditional medicine of the 12th century hospital we just excavated at Angkor), and many others who all have a certain research interest in the overall project which may be a focused project in itself, or, contribute to something else they are working on.

At the moment I am working at the University of Ruse, Bulgaria.

I have a certain research interest in the overall project.