The Impact of Rapid Climate Change on Prehistoric Societies during the Holocene in the Eastern Mediterranean

In this paper we explore the impact of Rapid Climate Change (RCC) on prehistoric communities in the Eastern Mediterranean during the Early and Middle Holocene. Our focus is on the social implications of the four major climate cold anomalies that have recently been identified as key time-windows for...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Documenta Praehistorica
Main Authors: Bernhard Weninger, Lee Clare, Eelco Rohling, Ofer Bar-Yosef, Utz Böhner, Mihael Budja, Manfred Bundschuh, Angelica Feurdean, Hans Georg Gebe, Olaf Jöris, Jörg Linstädter, Paul Mayewski, Tobias Mühlenbruch, Agathe Reingruber, Gary Rollefson, Daniel Schyle, Laurens Thissen, Henrieta Todorova, Christoph Zielhofer
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: University of Ljubljana Press (Založba Univerze v Ljubljani) 2009
Subjects:
Rapid Climate Change
Holocene
GISP2
Dead Sea Level
Levantine Moist Period
Neolithic
Archaeology
CC1-960
Greenland
Greenland ice core
ice core
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.4312/dp.36.2
https://doaj.org/article/9be686a045b34870b2a07cc60a700cf4
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Summary:In this paper we explore the impact of Rapid Climate Change (RCC) on prehistoric communities in the Eastern Mediterranean during the Early and Middle Holocene. Our focus is on the social implications of the four major climate cold anomalies that have recently been identified as key time-windows for global RCC (Mayewski et al. 2004). These cooling anomalies are well-dated, with Greenland ice-core resolution, due to synchronicity between warm/cold foraminifera ratios in Mediterranean core LC21 as a proxy for surface water temperature, and Greenland GISP2 non sea-salt (nss) [K+] ions as a proxy for the intensification of the Siberian High and for polar air outbreaks in the northeast Mediterranean (Rohling et al. 2002). Building on these synchronisms, the GISP2 agemodel supplies the following precise time-intervals for archaeological RCC research: (i) 8.6–8.0 ka, (ii) 6.0–5.2 ka, (iii) 4.2–4.0 ka and (iv) 3.1–2.9 ka calBP. For each of these RCC time intervals, based on detailed 14C-based chronological studies, we investigate contemporaneous cultural developments. From our studies it follows that RCC-related climatic deterioration is a major factor underlying social change, although always at work within a wide spectrum of social, cultural, economic and religious factors.

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