Rapid Climate Change, Integrated Human–Environment–Historical Records and Societal Resilience in Georgia

• Published in: Sustainability
• Main Authors: Loveluck, Christopher, Tielidze, Levan, Elashvili, Mikheil, Kurbatov, Andrei, Gadrani, Lela, Erb-Satullo, Nathaniel, von Suchodoletz, Hans, Dan, Anca, Laermanns, Hannes, Brückner, Helmut, Schlotzhauer, Udo, Sulava, Nino, Chagelishvili, Rusudan
• Other Authors: University of Nottingham, UK (UON), Monash university, Ilia State University Tbilisi, Bridgewater State University, University of Maine, Cranfield University, Institute of Geography, Leipzig University / Universität Leipzig, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität = Friedrich Schiller University Jena Jena, Germany, Archéologie et Philologie d'Orient et d'Occident (AOROC), École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE), Université Paris Sciences et Lettres (PSL)-Université Paris Sciences et Lettres (PSL)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Département des Sciences de l'Antiquité - ENS Paris (DSA ENS-PSL), École normale supérieure - Paris (ENS-PSL), Université Paris Sciences et Lettres (PSL)-Université Paris Sciences et Lettres (PSL)-École normale supérieure - Paris (ENS-PSL), Université Paris Sciences et Lettres (PSL), École française d'Athènes (EfA), Labex TransferS, Université Paris Sciences et Lettres (PSL)-Université Paris Sciences et Lettres (PSL)-Collège de France (CdF (institution)), École universitaire de recherche Translitteræ (EUR Translitterae), Université Paris Sciences et Lettres (PSL)-Université Paris Sciences et Lettres (PSL), Universität zu Köln = University of Cologne, Deutsches Archäologisches Institut (DAI)
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2024
• Subjects: [SDE.ES]Environmental Sciences/Environment and Society; [SDE.MCG]Environmental Sciences/Global Changes; [SDU.STU.CL]Sciences of the Universe [physics]/Earth Sciences/Climatology; [SHS.ARCHEO]Humanities and Social Sciences/Archaeology and Prehistory; ice core
• Online Access: https://hal.science/hal-04673426; https://hal.science/hal-04673426/document; https://hal.science/hal-04673426/file/sustainability-16-07116-with-cover.pdf; https://doi.org/10.3390/su16167116

International audience In the midlatitudes of the planet, we are facing the imminent disappearance of one of our best high-resolution (pre)historic climate and anthropogenic pollution archives, namely the loss of glacial ice, through accelerated global warming. To capture these records and interpret these vanishing archives, it is imperative that we extract ice-cores from midlatitude regions where glaciers still survive and analyse them within frameworks of inter-disciplinary research. In this paper, we focus on Georgia, part of the Greater Caucasus. Results of ice-core analyses from the region have never, to date, been integrated with its other abundant palaeo-environmental, archaeological and historical sources. We review the results of international projects on palaeo-environmental/geoarchaeological sediment archives, the archaeology of metal economies and preliminary ice-core data in Georgia. Collectively, we show that the different strands need to be integrated to fully explore relationships between climate/landscape change and human societal transformations. We then introduce an inclusive interdisciplinary framework for ongoing research on these themes, with an ultimate future goal of using data from the past to inform societal resilience strategies in the present.