The archaeology of climate change in Late and Post-Glacial North-west Europe

Abstract

Climate change regularly made the news in 2019. In the face of numerous protests around the globe, and increasingly frequent natural disasters, we appear to be entering a (perhaps overdue) stage of heightened awareness with regard to the fragility of the Earth and our impact upon it. Current concerns over the fate of our planet, and species, look set to stay, but for deep-time prehistorians, who have long contended with records of environmental change on a scale relatively unparalleled in historic times, business continues as usual. In the opening to Resilience and reorganisation of social systems during the Weichselian Lateglacial in North-west Europe, Sonja Grimm makes reference to the importance of the Club of Rome (a non-profit, non-governmental organisation) in highlighting socio-ecological stability as an issue for public concern, and one that archaeological studies such as this can contribute to and bolster. Meanwhile, Peter Moe Astrup, in his introduction to Sea-level change in Mesolithic southern Scandinavia, notes that Mesolithic people from this area would have been exposed to the consequences of global sea-level rise on a far greater scale than those predicted for our own future generations. What these volumes share is an emphasis on the importance of adaptive flexibility and the human experience in shaping our response to climate change.