Weathering Climate Change in Archaeology: Conceptual Challenges and an East African Case Study

Abstract

Research on the social dimensions of climate change is increasingly focused on people's experiences, values and relations to the environment as a means to understand how people interpret and adapt to changes. However, a particular challenge has been making seemingly temporally and geographically distant climate change more immediate and local so as to prompt behavioural change. Environmental humanists, anthropologists and historians have tried to address the challenge through analysis of the experiences, philosophies and memories of weather. Archaeology, commonly preoccupied by hard science approaches to climate change, has largely been absent from this conversation. Nevertheless, with its insights into material outcomes of human experiences and relations, it can become integral to the discussion of ‘weathering’ climate change and historicizing weather. Here, drawing on the subtleties of responses by Ilchamus communities in Kenya and using a mix of historical and archaeological sources, we highlight their experiences of weather since the end of the Little Ice Age and explore the potential of building archaeologies of weather.

Weather Landscapes and Archaeology: Material Weathering Practices and Tangible Climates

“…Weather is the lens through which the relationship between culture and climate can be understood and environmental imaginaries addressed. Weather is observed and experienced and it is through it that we mediate our relationship with the landscape (Endfield, 2019;Ingold, 2011;Petek-Sargeant & Lane, 2021). Communities have social institutions that -control‖ weather and connect it to broader imaginaries about the world, thus making it governable (Mahony & Randalls, 2020).…”

“…This has certainly been Nik Petek-Sargeant's experience during his historical ecological research and associated outreach in Kenya's Baringo County (Petek-Sargeant, in prep. ;Petek-Sargeant & Lane, 2021).…”

“…We can start to interpret how people historicised the climate through weather, and how that shaped perceptions and interactions with landscapes, and how communities built up their resilience toward prevailing, rare but devastating or unusual and unpredictable weather events. This will ultimately allow archaeologists to apprehend the full breadth of interactions (Petek-Sargeant & Lane, 2021;Pillatt, 2012b) and create meaningful narratives that interact with values of local community, landscape, history and others.…”

“…To help enhance archaeology's contribution, there is certainly scope for developing different (and new) ways of communicating knowledge about the past and the present that weaves in local narratives, human-environment entanglements, and future-making imaginaries (Petek-Sargeant & Lane, 2021). These should also aim to engage with specialists in climate change communication with a focus on linking the material traces of past societies to current practices, identities, and sensibilities and address the values of communities that often drive responses to climate change.…”