Human impact and climate changes—synchronous events and a causal link?

Neolithic human impact on the landscapes of North-East Hungary inferred from pollen and settlement records

“…The creation of floodplain pastures probably reflects improved land management in this phase, but it is also conceivable that cooler and wetter summers in the Late Neolithic mitigated against cultivation, making more viable the practice of extensive pasturing, which is reflected in deforestation and grassland and meadow expansion in the Sarló-hát pollen diagrams. A similar shift towards extensive pasturing was observed and connected to climate change in several Neolithic pollen records in NW Europe (Berglund 2003). On the other hand, the archaeological and archaeobotanical records from Polgár provide evidence for technological improvement, as a greater diversity of crops and more integrated agro-pastoral strategies were found (Fairbairn 1992(Fairbairn , 1993Raczky et al 2011).…”

“…A recent example form Eastern Hungary is Parkinson's (2006) attempt to explain the shift from Late Neolithic settlement nucleation on tells and large flat sites to Early Copper Age dispersed farmsteads in terms of Johnson's (1984) 'scalar stress' hypothesis. In part, this is due to the difficulties in differentiating the impact of anthropogenic from climatic variables in the interpretation of pollen sequences (Behre 1981;Berglund 2003) and there is also the residue of the reaction against environmental determinism characteristic of some processual archaeologists (Jones et al 1999) and environmental scientists (Kertész and Sümegi 1999). But the main reason for mistrusting a simple equation between climatic change and cultural and social change is the multi-level intervening variables that must be taken into account in such an assessment.…”

(Pre-) historic changes in natural and anthropogenic heavy metals deposition inferred from two contrasting Swiss Alpine lakes

“…In Meidsee, the heavy metal fluxes continuously decrease following the decline of the Roman Empire (ca AD 400), and remain low during the subsequent cold Migration period (ca AD 375e534), which is known as a period of land abandonment and reforestation in Northwest Europe (Berglund, 2003). Afterwards, anthropogenic pollutants significantly rise during the Spanish-Islamic Golden Age (ca AD 800e1100), and especially during the Late Middle Ages (ca AD 1400).…”

Geomorphological records of human activity reflected in fluvial sediments in the Carpathians and their foreland

“…In the temperate climatic zone of the northern Carpathians foreland, the problem of the relationship between the influence of climate changes (changes in precipitation) and the impact of economic activity on soil erosion and fluvial deposition is a matter of great interest to geomorphologists, palaeobotanists and archaeologists (Wasylikowa et al 1985, Starkel 1987, 2005a, Kalicki 1996a, Kruk et al 1996, Berglund 2003, Dobrzańska, Kalicki 2004, Dotterweich 2008, Gębica et al 2008, 2013, Twardy 2011, Klimek 2012, Starkel et al 2012, Superson 2012. However, it is very difficult to distinguish the influence of climate changes from the anthropogenic factors (Kalicki 1996b, Starkel 2006.…”