Climate change, adaptive cycles, and the persistence of foraging economies during the late Pleistocene/Holocene transition in the Levant

Abstract

Climatic forcing during the Younger Dryas (∼12.9-11.5 ky B.P.) event has become the theoretical basis to explain the origins of agricultural lifestyles in the Levant by suggesting a failure of foraging societies to adjust. This explanation however, does not fit the scarcity of data for predomestication cultivation in the Natufian Period. The resilience of Younger Dryas foragers is better illustrated by a concept of adaptive cycles within a theory of adaptive change (resilience theory). Such cycles consist of four phases: release/collapse (Ω); reorganization (α), when the system restructures itself after a catastrophic stimulus through innovation and social memory-a period of greater resilience and less vulnerability; exploitation (r); and conservation (K), representing an increasingly rigid system that loses flexibility to change. The Kebarans and Late Natufians had similar responses to cold and dry conditions vs. Early Natufians and the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A responses to warm and wet climates. Kebarans and Late Natufians (α-phase) shifted to a broader-based diet and increased their mobility. Early Natufian and Pre-Pottery Neolithic A populations (r-and K-phases) had a growing investment in more narrowly focused, high-yield plant resources, but they maintained the broad range of hunted animals because of increased sedentism. These human adaptive cycles interlocked with plant and animal cycles. Forest and grassland vegetation responded to late Pleistocene and early Holocene climatic fluctuations, but prey animal cycles reflected the impact of human hunting pressure. The combination of these three adaptive cycles results in a model of human adaptation, showing potential for great sustainability of Levantine foraging systems even under adverse climatic conditions. agricultural origins | Epipaleolithic | hunter-gatherers | Israel S ocial collapse is a theme most often applied to complex societies, but the shift from foraging to fully farming lifestyles represents a profound social change that many researchers implicitly or explicitly attribute to a failure of forager economies in the wake of abrupt climate change. This belief is especially true for the Near East, the center of domestication of founder crops, including wheat and barley. In this paper, we argue that, in the context of climate change, foraging societies in the southern Levant were highly resilient and robust in terms of diversity of options and mobility and forager responses relied on solutions that recur in a broadly cyclical manner over the longue durée. This argument is in contrast to the perception of economic vulnerability and collapse of forager economies. We emphasize three main concepts that apply to foragers as well as more complex societies: cultural systems are resilient and do not collapse as a simple stimulus-response to climate change; a broad range of economic strategies enhances social resilience; and long-term social memory of accumulated experiences is an important resource for preparing and responding to economic challenges.The arc...

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“…The Resilience Theory model is widely used in Ecology and to some extent in Archeology, and has proved to be a useful tool for analyzing the interlinked social-ecological systems that are adaptive and enduring in a deep-time perspective (Gunderson and Holling, 2001;Holling, 2001;Redman, 2005;Dearing, 2008;Rosen and Rivera-Collazo, 2012). At the core of Resilience Theory are the adaptive cycles, which move dynamically through four phases, described as α-, r-, K-, and Ω-phases.…”

“…Many studies based their environmental determinism on the major restructuring of vegetation resulting from climatic fluctuation, and proposed that the shift to wild-cereal cultivation was a response of hunter-gatherers to the Terminal Pleistocene Younger Dryas (YD) climatic deterioration (Wright, 1993;Bar-Yosef and Belfer-Cohen, 2002;Rosen and Rivera-Collazo, 2012). Some works even refer to this as a collapse of Natufian foraging systems (Weiss and Bradley, 2001;Burroughs, 2005).…”

“…Some works even refer to this as a collapse of Natufian foraging systems (Weiss and Bradley, 2001;Burroughs, 2005). Rosen and Rivera-Collazo (2012) proposed that the hunter-gatherer subsistence systems in the Near East were highly adaptable, and a shift in resource focus did not necessarily result in a major change in social and economic organization. The long-term social memory of past experience helped them initiate a series of subsistence procurement responses that allowed them to avoid an eventual shift from foraging systems, which simultaneously delayed the transition from foraging and low-level cereal cultivation to a major commitment to agricultural village farming in the southern Levant (Rosen and Rivera-Collazo, 2012).…”

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