The bigger picture: towards integrating palaeoclimate and environmental data with a history of societal change

Abstract

Recent technological and methodological advances in palaeoclimate and environmental reconstruction are increasingly allowing comparisons to historical and archaeological records of societal change. A major motivation of this work is to explore the interactions between natural and human systems on annual to millennial timescales to provide potential insights into future change. Research on this topic has shown that ancient societies in different regions of the world experienced and responded to a range of Holocene climatic and environmental changes with varying degrees of success. However, for the palaeo record to be fully exploited in this regard, it is clear that future work should focus on developing datasets that are more directly integrated with archaeological and historical evidence. Here we consider a range of issues related to achieving this aim and argue that increased interdisciplinarity through collaboration with human and social science colleagues will be critical.

Forging Ahead By Land and By Sea: Archaeology and Paleoclimate Reconstruction in Madagascar

“…Such perspectives must come from the careful integration of archaeological, paleoclimatological, and paleoenvironmental research and from broad dissemination of multidisciplinary findings. Better integration of these fields and of their respective methodologies and datasets will lead to more meaningful results and expand the possibilities for these findings to be applied to resolving modernday challenges (Bodin and Tengö 2012;Caseldine and Turney 2010;Davies 2012;Gunn and Folan 2000).…”

Soil cultures – the adaptive cycle of agrarian soil use in Central Europe: an interdisciplinary study using soil scientific and archaeological research

“…Crop refers to cereals (e.g., barley, wheat, rye), and excludes fruit, vegetables, and nuts. Climate change can be traced in ice cores, lake and ocean sediments, corals, tree rings, fossil leaves, and changes in pollen communities (Caseldine andTurney 2010, Aranbarri et al 2014). The effect of climate on the settlement pattern of a region is discussed by experts (Berglund 2003, Zolitschka et al 2003.…”

“…Studies of past human-environment interactions show that these are not unprecedented in history (Costanza et al 2007, Caseldine and Turney 2010, Büntgen et al 2011. Agriculture, as a system based on human-environmental interaction, also has had an impact on societies and the environment in Central Europe since its origin and spread from the Near East around 9500 BCE (Evans 2012).…”

Extreme wet conditions coincident with Bronze Age abandonment of upland areas in Britain

“…of palaeoclimate proxies, 'smearing' of archaeological chronologies and non-linear societal responses risks 'false positive' associations (Baillie, 1991;Caseldine and Turney, 2010;Coombes, 2005;Plunkett et al, 2013). Of particular significance in this regard is the Bronze Age, where climate change has been proposed to have played a significant role in large scale abandonment and migration around 1000 BC across the British Isles (3000 years ago) (Baillie, 1999;Burgess, 1985;Tipping et al, 2008;Warner, 1993), Europe (Burgess, 1989;Menotti, 2002;van Geel et al, 2004;Weiss, 1982) and the Near East (Frank et al, 2002;Kaniewski et al, 2010;Kaniewski et al, 2015;Weiss, 1982).…”