The talk focusses on the histories human-animal and human-plant relations:

The origins of agriculture debates have produced some of the liveliest discussions in the field of archaeology over the past century. The questions of when, where, how, and why humans started engaging in cultivation behaviors and plants and animals evolved domestication traits feed directly into topics such as the origins of social complexity and the state. These big-history questions have lost popularity among archaeologists over the past few decades, but they remain core to what the archaeological agenda is. In this way, research into the origins of agriculture is not just of interest to archaeology, but speaks directly to what made humanity culturally modern. Further, understanding how domestication unfolded in the past directly informs conservation initiatives and breeding programs today. Over the past decade there has been a shift away from models for early domestication that focus on active and intentional human engagement in the process, as most of the scholars in the field now accept that the earliest domestication traits evolved through unconscious processes. There remains no consensus regarding what those processes were. In this talk, I will discuss some of the history of the study of ancient domestication and present three new theories regarding how early domestication unfolded.