Abrupt cooling events during the Early Holocene and their potential impact on the environment and human behaviour along the southern North Sea basin (NW Europe)

Abstract

In this paper the potential impact of the 9.3k cal a BP cooling event on the environment and human occupation in the Rhine-Meuse-Scheldt region of NW Europe is investigated. Although various environmental (decreased fluvial activity, increased wildfires and changing vegetation) and cultural changes (lithic technology, raw material circulation, decreasing site density) can be identified in the (late) Boreal, a serious problem of equifinality remains. Lacking a high-resolution chronology for these events, it is still difficult to separate the impact of gradual from punctuated climatic changes. However, at present it seems that (some) environmental and cultural changes were already ongoing before the 9.3k cal a BP event but were accelerated by the latter. To gain a better understanding of these processes, it is necessary to take a holistic, multidisciplinary approach towards the Early Holocene in the southern North Sea basin. #

Ecology and fluvial dynamics of an Early Holocene medium‐sized European lowland river valley (Upper Scheldt, northern Belgium)

“…This made the forests more vulnerable to burning, a process which locally triggered slope instability (Dreibrodt et al . ; Crombé ; P. Crombé, L. Allemeersch, K. Aluwé, F. Cruz, K. Deforce, J. Mikkelsen, J. Sergant, A. Storme & H. Vandendriessche, unpublished data). If this was the case higher up in the Scheldt catchment, this may have resulted in increased sediment transport and fluvial activity in the middle reach.…”

“…) and evidence of Mesolithic sociocultural change has been linked to the 9.3 ka BP event (Robinson et al . ; Crombé ). However, evidence of fluvial or vegetational response to this cooling event is scarce and difficult to obtain due to the required high resolution for the detection of such short‐lived events (Crombé ).…”

“…; Crombé ). However, evidence of fluvial or vegetational response to this cooling event is scarce and difficult to obtain due to the required high resolution for the detection of such short‐lived events (Crombé ). Moreover, contemporaneity does not necessarily imply a causal relationship.…”

Global perspectives on the impact of drastic environmental changes in hunter‐gatherer technologies

“…Picin, ) to Holocene times (e.g. Crombé, ), from the Middle Stone Age (Thompson et al, ) to the Mesolithic, and geographical contexts, from South Asia (Roberts et al, ) to Atlantic Iberia (i.e. Cascalheira and Bicho, ; Straus, ), sometimes bounded by great climatic phases, such as MIS 3 (Riel‐Salvatore and Negrino, ) or the Last Glacial Maximum (Burke et al ., ).…”

People Living by Changing Seas. Mesolithic Coastal Settlement on the West Side of the Baltic Sea

“…Our knowledge of climate variations in the Baltic region is also rather limited. We know a lot about the change in 8.2 ka BP, but smaller changes may also have had palpable consequences (von Grafenstein et al 1998;Rasmusen et al 2007;Crombé 2017;Griffiths, Robinson 2017). Changes in temperature, precipitation, waves and currents ought to be an important research field in the future (Bond et al 2001;Brooks, Langdon 2014).…”