Potential responses and resilience of Late Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age societies to mid-to Late Holocene climate change on the southern Iberian Peninsula

Mara Weinelt,Martin Hinz,Jutta Kneisel,Artur Ribeiro,Julien Schirrmacher

doi:10.1088/1748-9326/abd8a8

Mara Weinelt, Martin Hinz + Show 3 more

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https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/abd8a8

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Abstract

In this investigation, we use a socio-environmental multi-proxy approach to empirically test hypotheses of recurrent resilience cycles and the role of climate forcing in shaping such cycles on the Iberian Peninsula during mid-Holocene times. Our approach combines time series reconstructions of societal and environmental variables from the southern Iberian Peninsula across a 3000 yr time interval (6000–3000 cal yr BP), covering major societal and climate reorganisation. Our approach is based on regional compilations of climate variables from diverse terrestrial archives and integrates new marine climate records from the Western Mediterranean. Archaeological variables include changes in material culture, settlement reconstructions and estimates of human activities. In particular, both detailed chronologies of human activities evolving from the Late Neolithic to the Bronze Age and mid- to Late Holocene climate change across the mid-Holocene are compared, aiming to assess potential human responses and coping processes associated with abrupt mid-Holocene climate changes.

Highlights

Climate change is regarded as one of today’s major challenges threatening the stability of human communities
Archaeological variables include changes in material culture, settlement reconstructions and estimates of human activities. Both detailed chronologies of human activities evolving from the Late Neolithic to the Bronze Age and mid- to Late Holocene climate change across the mid-Holocene are compared, aiming to assess potential human responses and coping processes associated with abrupt mid-Holocene climate changes
The ensembles of precipitation records during this interval show a gradual decrease in winter precipitation with largest fluctuations in annual precipitation in winter, in particular (figures 2(A) and (B)), which were more pronounced in the SE

Summary

Introduction

Climate change is regarded as one of today’s major challenges threatening the stability of human communities. It is ranked among the main causes of large-scale population movement and international migration. Predictions of the IPCC 2019 report estimate up to 200 million people who will be displaced by shoreline erosion, coastal flooding and agricultural disruption by 2050 (IPCC 2019). Implications for societies and environments (feedbacks and amplification) are increasingly discussed with hypotheses of climate impact on social stability, social resilience, environmental vulnerability and economic wealth. Environmental variability can increase the risk of being dependent on particular resources through the incidence of extreme events in nature, such as drought or flood, or from the impact of pests and diseases on agricultural systems. A long-term perspective as provided by concerted palaeoecological and archaeological reconstructions extending over a period of several millennia can help to better understand such independencies (e.g. Finné et al 2011, 2019, Izdebski et al 2016, Bevan et al 2017)

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