The 4.2 ka BP event in western Anatolia: Tracing the impact of climatic change

Abstract

Climatic change has been called for as an explanation on many occasions of societal change. The way climatic deterioration affects societies appears to be straightforward; it causes such alterations in the environment that critical subsistence resources are not anymore available in sufficient abundance. Nevertheless, it is not clear how these alterations can be identified and verified in the archeological record, and there is not an easy way to clarify if modifications observed in subsistence patterns are the consequences of climatic change or other agents. Additionally, there is a number of problems related to paleoenvironmental data that measure the climatic fluctuations, mostly concerning the exact timing of events and their intensity which may not have been the same universally. In this research, we examine the 4.2 ka BP climatic event and its possible effects on western Anatolian societies through a set of published data. We discuss the information we have about the event from available paleoenvironmental data and the gaps in this kind of research. We examine the agropastoral economy from Troy, Küllüoba, Kanlıgeçit, and Karataş-Semayük for possible changes according to a set of criteria that we consider as indicators of responses to aridification. We found diverging strategies that may relate to the different local environments or varying societal structures unique to each site. We consider a partial turn to nomadic pastoralism as an adaptation strategy based on changes in settlement patterns. Finally, we evaluate our findings against other possible explanations since the observed patterns could have had multiple explanations.