Demography and climate in Late Eneolithic Ukraine, Moldova, and Romania: Multiproxy evidence and pollen-based regional corroboration

Abstract

Attempts to correlate macro-scale climate dynamics with anomalies in local and regional archaeological data sets should account for differences in geographic scale and effect size. Using the modern analogue technique, this paper reconstructs temperature, precipitation, and growing degree-day trends in Ukraine, Moldova, and Romania from a set of 20 pollen cores in order to explicate the regional impact of the 6.0–5.0ka BP rapid climate change interval observed in the GISP2 K+ glacio-chemical sequence. Results are compared against a model of regional demographic development covering the time span of 6000–3000BCE. This study indicates that, while macro-scale trends are discernible in Eastern Europe, climatic instability during the fourth millennium BCE was regionally variable and resultant demographic responses were highly targeted and heterogeneous in nature. A period of cooling ca. 3825–3650calBCE resulted in the fracturing of Eneolithic complexes in Romania and generally spurred adaptation to more mobile systems of settlement and subsistence. However, a contemporaneous alternative response involved large-scale migrations to peripheral regions, including the establishment of the Tripolye giant-settlements in Central Ukraine. The methods used illustrate the need for obtaining more proximate confirmation when applying large-scale climate processes to explanations of local and regional archaeological contexts.