This forum explores the expanding field of Central Eurasian environmental history through new research emerging from fieldwork in Uzbekistan. Henry Misa will present findings from his 2025 fieldwork (funded by a Fulbright-Hays grant) and discuss four complementary approaches to reconstructing the environmental past: manuscript studies and local archival research; the development of datasets from archaeological excavations; applying optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating to paleohydrological research; and collaboration with local scholarly communities. Bringing together multilingual textual sources, archaeological evidence, and environmental data, these approaches offer new opportunities to investigate the relationships between societies and their environments in the premodern Persianate world.
This forum will also consider how fieldwork can expand the evidentiary archive of premodern Middle Eastern history by bringing textual, archaeological, and environmental evidence into conversation.
This event is part of the Middle East Studies Forum. We invite faculty, students, staff, and alumni to join. The Forum is an informal space to get together, share stories from fieldwork, talk about issues, learn about colleagues’ research, try out papers you’re working on, etc. Alumni, graduate students and advanced undergraduates are welcome to these activities. Events are oriented toward academic interests but many also target the general public.