Hidden for centuries in the false floor of an old wardrobe, documents have come to light that reveal five hundred years of social and economic activity on a French farmstead. These documents, the earliest of which is dated 1539, are written on vellum (specially prepared animal skin) and parchment; some even bear royal insignia. The new source of information, coupled with previous archaeological investigation, details two thousand years of social and agrarian history. This research project will amend the contemporary definition of sustainability and revise current agricultural policy.

Professor Carole L. Crumley of UNC-CH's Department of Anthropology and the Carolina Environmental Program, along with four UNC student researchers, spent the summer of 1999 looking for clues to the remarkable durability of family farms in southern Burgundy (France). This new evidence enables the evaluation of day-to-day activities, social ties, and long-term economic strategies at a single farm.

Despite extreme seasonal and annual climatic variation, Burgundy has an agrarian history of great abundance. In contrast with corporate agrarian production in other areas of France, Burgundian family farms, carrying the same place name for centuries, produce grass-fed Charolais beef cattle for the global market.

Some of these farms have existed since Celtic times, over two thousand years ago, when horses and pigs were raised on the rolling terrain. During their long history the farms employed various strategies including: multicropping (animals, grains, and gardens) and more intensive exploitation such as wine production, cereal agriculture, and the production of hemp for cloth and rope.

Dr. Crumley and her research group will scrutinize this long history for climatic conditions, external events, and farming practices that compromised the sustainability of these family enterprises. One such time is already known: the period of Roman domination in the first centuries A.D. Roman colonial policies limited agrarian activity to cereal agriculture to supply large urban populations, termed monocropping, which led to economic collapse when the climate changed.

Elizabeth van Deventer, a UNC-CH Anthropology doctoral candidate and member of Dr. Crumley's research group, has completed fieldwork examining current Burgundian farm production and land use. Focusing on the effects of intensified cattle raising, her research explores the impact of European Union policies and global market pressures on the economic and ecological sustainability of these family farms. The Royster Society of Fellows supports Ms van Deventer’s research.

Taken as a whole, this project critically examines the concept of sustainability because policymakers rarely examine history to validate the durability of a particular economy. Preliminary work in Burgundy suggests that systemic collapse is not the result of particular land use practice, but an inattention to the integrated maintenance of all components within the ecosystem.