New publication of the Cluster of Excellence ROOTS presents the basic concept of social, environmental and cultural connectivity in past societies.

Tackling social inequality, climate change, or fighting infectious diseases and resolving identity conflicts—major challenges can only be mastered if a large number of actors work together. This is true at the individual level as well as at the level of societies and the global humankind. And it applies not just to the 21st century, but to every era back to the Stone Age.

Working together requires connection and interaction. And as we learn from challenges of our time, not only the connections between people, societies and global institutions are important, but also the connections between the natural and the cultural environment.

Such human-environmental ‘connectivities’ have always existed in many aspects of human life. The question of how they shaped fundamental processes in past societies from the Stone Age to historical epochs is the focus of research conducted within the Cluster of Excellence ROOTS. Now, a new book titled "Connectivity Matters!" has been published in ROOTS Studies, the Cluster of Excellence's scholarly publication series. This volume fundamentally addresses the new concept of connectivities in the human past, but also the importance of this concept for research on the human past.

On 210 pages, researchers of the Cluster of Excellence deal with the concept of connectivity and with various examples and case studies in which the concept is applied - among others, the hitherto rarely considered interdependencies between nomadic and urban lifestyles, water supply and disposal in ancient and medieval cities, as well as the role of connectivities in the development of social inequality, the use of fortifications, or even waste behavior and the emergence of linguistic features in written media. This allows readers to penetrate the perspectives that emerge from the novel interdisciplinary interplay. In keeping with the broad range of disciplines covered by ROOTS, the book includes contributions from the archaeological disciplines, history, linguistics, philosophy, as well as the natural sciences.

The book, "Connectivity Matters! Social, Environmental and Cultural Connectivity in Past Societies," edited by Johannes Müller, is published by SidestonePress. Following the open-access principle, the e-paper version of the book is freely available on the publisher's website.

Link to Sidestone Press here