What can archaeology say about ‘rewilding’?
Posted on Monday 8 June 2026
Crucially, the network meeting focussed on how we might think about futures that conserve biodiversity whilst not endangering our archaeology, and that acknowledge the long-term interconnections between humans and ‘nature’.
The meeting was a combination of talks and discussion sessions. Environmental archaeologist Peter Rowley-Conwy argued that humans have actively shaped and managed ecosystems for over 100,000 years; long before the advent of agriculture. He argued that rewilding approaches that yearn for the wilderness of the past ignore the millennia of human-ecosystem co-evolution. Instead of aiming for static, nostalgic historical targets, researchers like Alejo Ordonez suggested that we can use the past to help us think about a range of options for a future planet that will be dominated by ‘novel’ ecosystems. Kim Ward explored whose versions of ‘wild’ are embodied in rewilding projects (and whose are not), exposing the political and gendered construction of the (heroic, frontier, masculine) ‘wilderness’, and thus of rewilding.
The link between historic human landscape management practices and biodiversity formed the core of my presentation, which explored the results from our recent Ecology Letters paper: Black Death land abandonment drove European diversity declines. When the 14th-century pandemic wiped out 30 - 50% of Europe's population, large tracts of agricultural land were abruptly abandoned. Whilst many might expect nature to flourish given this rapid reduction in human pressure, our study reveals the opposite: land abandonment actually drove widespread losses in plant diversity. Up to the time of the Black Death, thousands of years of traditional land management practices had turned Europe’s landscapes into a ‘patchwork’ of habitats that supported high biodiversity levels. After the Black Death, this heterogenous mosaic was eroded and biodiversity levels declined. As human populations recovered after 150 years, and as these mosaics reappeared, biodiversity increased once again (read the associated article in The Conversation).
Understandings such as these are useful when considering rewilding as a method for effective biodiversity conservation. As Richard Wheeldon (upland farmer and National Trust farming consultant) argued during the meeting, landscapes across the UK (and indeed the planet) are socio-ecological systems, representing both human and non-human elements, and their histories. Talks highlighted that integration of palaeoecology, archaeology, historical cartography and knowledge of historical place-names can help connect local people to the land and foster collaborative visions of and for the future.
The Glasgow meeting underlined that archaeology has a lot to offer in the context of the growing rewilding movement, helping to position conservation decision making in a deeper understanding of the long-term relationships between humans and the non-human world.