Climate and

Cultural
Change in
Prehistoric
Europe and
the Near East

Edited by
Peter F. Biehl and
Olivier P. Nieuwenhuyse
 Climate and Cultural Change
in Prehistoric Europe and the Near East

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 the institute for european and mediterranean archaeology
distinguished monograph series

Peter F. Biehl, Sarunas Milisauskas, and Stephen L. Dyson, editors

The Magdalenian Household: Unraveling Domesticity

Ezra Zubrow, Françoise Audouze, and James G. Enloe, editors

Eventful Archaeologies: New Approaches to Social Transformation in the Archaeological Record

Douglas J. Bolender, editor
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The Archaeology of Violence: Interdisciplinary Approaches
Sarah Ralph, editor
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Approaching Monumentality in Archaeology

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James. F. Osborne, editor

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The Archaeology of Childhood: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on an Archaeological Enigma

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Güner Coşkunsu, editor

Diversity of Sacrifice: Form and Function of Sacrificial Practices in the Ancient World and Beyond
Carrie Ann Murray, editor

Climate and Cultural Change in Prehistoric Europe and the Near East
Peter F. Biehl and Olivier P. Nieuwenhuyse, editors

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 climate and
cultural change
in prehistoric
europe and
the near east
16

IEMA Proceedings,
20

Volume 6
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edited by
Peter F. Biehl and
Olivier P. Nieuwenhuyse

s tat e u n i v e r s i t y o f
new york press

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 Logo and cover/interior art: A vessel with wagon motifs from Bronocice,
Poland, 3400 B.C. Courtesy of Sarunas Milisauskas and Janusz Kruk,
1982, Die Wagendarstellung auf einem Trichterbecher au Bronocice,
Polen, Archäologisches Korrespondenzblatt 12: 141–144

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State University of New York Press, Albany, NY

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Diversity of sacrifice : form and function of sacrificial practices in the

ancient world and beyond / edited by Carrie Ann Murray.
pages cm. — (SUNY series, The Institute for European and
Mediterranean Archaeology distinguished monograph series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-5995-0 (hardcover : alkaline paper)
ISBN 978-1-4384-5996-7 (e-book) 1. Sacrifice—Europe—History—
To 1500—Congresses. 2. Sacrifice—Meditarranean Region—History—
To 1500—Congresses. 3. Social archaeology—Europe—Congresses.
4. Social archaeology—Meditarranean Region—Congresses.
5. Archaeology and religion—Europe—Congresses. 6. Archaeology and
religion—Meditarranean Region—Congresses. 7. Material culture—
Europe—History—To 1500—Congresses. 8. Material culture—
Meditarranean Region—History—To 1500—Congresses. 9. Social
interaction—Europe—History—To 1500—Congresses. 10. Social
interaction—Meditarranean Region—History—To 1500—Congresses.
I. Murray, Carrie Ann, 1976– II. University of Buffalo. Institute for
European and Mediterranean Archaeology.

BL570.D58 2016
203'.40936—dc23 2015013508

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 1
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Contents
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Illustrations ix 15
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Acknowledgments xix 17
18
Introduction Olivier P. Nieuwenhuyse, Peter F. Biehl 19
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Climate and Culture Change in Archaeology 0 20

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P I 22
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Chapter One Mauro Cremaschi, Andrea Zerboni 25

The Oasis of Palmyra in Prehistory: Late Pleistocene and 26
Early Holocene Paleoclimate and Human Occupation 27
in the Region of Palmyra/Tadmor (Central Syria) 13 28
29
Chapter Two Mandy Mottram
30
When the Going Gets Tough: Risk Minimization Responses to the
8.2 ka Event in the Near East and Their Role in Emergence of the 31
Halaf Cultural Phenomenon 37 32
33
34
Chapter Three Olivier Nieuwenhuyse, Peter Akkermans, 35
The 8.2 Event in Upper Mesopotamia: Jan van der Plicht, A. Russell, A. Kaneda 36
Climate and Cultural Change 67 37
38
39
Chapter Four Patrick T. Willett, Ingmar Franz, 40
The Aftermath of the 8.2 Event: Cultural and Ceren Kabukcu, David Orton, 41
Environmental Effects in the Anatolian Late Jana Rogasch, Elizabeth Stroud,
42
Neolithic and Early Chalcolithic Eva Rosenstock, Peter F. Biehl
43
95
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 vi Contents

1 Chapter Five Philippa Ryan, Arlene Rosen

2 Managing Risk through Diversification in Plant
3 Exploitation during the Seventh Millennium B.C.:
4 The Phytolith Record at Çatalhöyük 117
5
6
Chapter Six Bleda S. Düring
7
The 8.2 Event and the Neolithic Expansion in Western Anatolia 135
8
9
10 P II
11 E
12
13 Chapter Seven Odile Daune-Le Brun,
14 “Singing in the Rain”: Khirokitia (Cyprus) in the Alain Le Brun
15 Second Half of the Seventh Millennium cal BC 153
16
17
18 Chapter Eight Catherine Perlès
19 Early Holocene Climatic Fluctuations and Human Responses
16
in Greece 169
20
20

21
22 Chapter Nine Clive Bonsall, Mark Macklin,
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23 Rapid Climate Change and Radiocarbon Adina Boroneanț, Catriona Pickard,

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24 Discontinuities in the Mesolithic-Early László Bartosiewicz, Gordon Cook,

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25 Neolithic Settlement Record of the Iron Gates: Thomas Higham

26 Cause or Coincidence? 195
27
28
29 Chapter Ten Detlef Gronenborn
30 Climate Fluctuations, Human Migrations, and the
31 Spread of Farming in Western Eurasia: Refining the Argument 211
32
33
34 Chapter Eleven Andrzej Pelisiak
35 Economic and Social Changes and Climate between
36 3200 and 2500 B.C. 237
37
38
39 Chapter Twelve Daniel Löwenborg,
40 Climate and the Definition of Archaeological Periods Thomas Eriksson
41 in Sweden 257
42
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 Contents vii

P III 1
C 2
3
Chapter Thirteen Ezra B. W. Zubrow 4
Epilogue to a Prologue: The Changing Climate of the 5
Past, Present, and Future 279 6
7
8
Contributors 293 9
10
Index 295 11
12
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 1
2
3
Introduction 4
5
6
Climate and Culture Change in Archaeology 7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
Olivier P. Nieuwenhuyse, Peter F. Biehl 15
16
17
18
19
T
16
his book examines how humans responded to climate change that occurred during
20
the Holocene in Europe and the Near East. It grew out of two workshops on the
20

21
archaeology of climate change organized in the Netherlands in 2010. One of these was
22
organized with a specific past climate event and geographic focus in mind, investigating
Y

23
the socioeconomic repercussions of the so-called 8.2k abrupt climate event in the ancient
N

24
SU

Near East, while the other aimed at a broader range of topics. What both workshops
25
held in common was an interest not merely in disseminating new data, insights, and
26
tentative conclusions but rather in the ways we as archaeologists proceed to investigate
27
the role of climate change as one of many causal factors in culture change.
28
The chapters scrutinize new archaeological and paleoenvironmental data in order
29
to contextualize key climatic events such as the 8.2k cal B.P., 4.2k cal B.P. and other
30
events with cultural changes and transitions. One of the main threats for the authors
31
is to discuss when, how, and if changes in climate and environment caused people to
32
adapt, move, or perish. Contrary to perceptions of threatening global warming in our
33
popular media, and in contrast to grim images of collapse presented in some archaeolog-
34
ical discussions of past climate change, the papers in this book rather unanimously reject
35
outright societal collapse as a likely outcome (cf. McAnany and Yoffee 2010, Schwartz
36
2006, Tainter 1988). Yet this does not keep them from considering climate change as a
37
potential factor in explaining culture change. The authors in this book started from the
38
view that when climate changes, societies may change by either adapting or transforming.
39
Yet, shying away from simplistic, mono-causal explanations, they adopt a critical stance
40
with regard to the long-standing practice of equating synchronicity with causality, and
41
explicitly consider alternative explanations. The chapters are illustrated with case studies to
42
analyze human responses to climatic events on a micro scale as well as on a macro scale.
43
44
1

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 2 Olivier P. Nieuwenhuyse, Peter F. Biehl

1 A  C C

2
3 Archaeologists have always underscored that how humans respond to changes in their
4 natural environment plays a crucial part in the formation of society. In an era of unprec-
5 edented, threatening global warming and massive species extinctions, this message is clear
6 even to a broader contemporary audience. From world leaders expressing their concerns
7 to popular blockbusters such as The Day After Tomorrow to even the leader of the Roman
8 Catholic church (Schiermeier 2015), there is a general sense that we are constrained by
9 our environment even today, despite our tremendous capacity to adapt and bend nature
10 to our will. Environmental reconstructions, including climate, have always formed part
11 of larger narratives of long-term human development, and of who we are as a species. As
12 many authors have observed, archaeology as a discipline is uniquely situated to contribute
13 to current climate-versus-culture debates (Dann 2015:24; Danti 2010; Dawdy 2009;
14 Roberts 2011). By arriving at closely contextualized understandings of the heterogeneous
15 ways in which humans interacted with climate changes in the past, archaeologists may
16 offer valuable alternative strategies for today’s challenges.
17 With the rapid development of paleo-climatic sciences over the past few decades,
18 archaeologists have become confronted with a wealth of new data unprecedented both
19 quantitatively and qualitatively (Alley 2000; Birks 2008; Mayewski and White 2002).
16
20 This poses challenges of a methodological character and of a more conceptual kind. In
20

21 terms of archaeological method, it may be suggested that up until now much theorizing
22 of climate change versus culture change in the past was based upon poor data sets. Just
Y

23 as climatologists have long felt the need to collect improved records, so archaeologists
N

24 interested in these relationships feel compelled to do the same. As stressed in several

SU

25 chapters in this book, this brings a much more critical stance toward those earlier data
26 sets: Do they really synchronize well with climate change? And, have we really been using
27 the most relevant cultural proxies?
28 Conceptually, as Ur (2015:69–70) and many others have pointed out, models for
29 human-environment interaction tend to fall along a continuum. One extreme position
30 holds that the environment is seen as the primary determining factor causing social
31 change or even collapse. At the other end are those explanations that see human societies
32 as entirely independent from their environments, with social change emerging only from
33 shifting social relationships between individuals and groups. As Ur notes (2015:70), such
34 interpretations have their actors “exist in an abstract world without physical environment.”
35 Human societies are seen as existing entirely independent of their environments (Willet
36 et al., this vol.).
37 As with current global warming itself, neither extreme would appear to be sus-
38 tainable in the long run. Most scholars today would rather opt for some intermediate
39 position, arguing for a nonexclusive causal role for culturally mediated environmental
40 factors (Oldfield 2008; Rosen and Rosen 2001; Rosen 2007). Climatic factors may
41 constrain human decision making, occasionally in quite extreme ways, but they do not
42 fully determine specific responses and adaptations (McIntosh et al. 2000).
43
44

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 Introduction 3

Archaeological scholarship as reflected in this volume is diverse in its paradigmatic 1

leanings. Some authors are more inclined toward an explicitly processual perspective 2
(e.g., Gronenborn, this vol.) or they are more outspoken in their preference for climate 3
as primary causal factor instigating cultural innovations (e.g., Motram, this vol.). But 4
they would all subscribe to the view that climate change is one among many factors, 5
and that archaeologists should strive to evaluate multiple, alternative explanations. For 6
instance, Perlès (this vol.) is explicit in searching for nonclimate alternatives: “This is not 7
to deny, evidently, that the climatic changes I have considered had no effect whatsoever 8
on human populations in Greece. Before such a conclusion could be reached, however, 9
a number of theoretical and methodological problems would first have to be solved.” 10
As Zubrow points out (this vol.), climate anomalies may also yield effects that do 11
not so much disturb a system as exacerbate already ongoing trends (see also Nieuwen- 12
huyse et al., this vol.). The classic systems view, as elaborated by Gronenborn (this vol.), 13
portrays a dynamic equilibrium as starting and ending points. In reality, systems and 14
cultures are always changing. The assumption that stability was a natural condition seems 15
to be misleading, as well as that some external factor—climate—is needed to bring about 16
culture change and reorganization, and new stability. Taking the systems approach very 17
literally would suggest that human societies were passive and climate active—in short, 18
a very one-sided relationship. Today, we see societies changing climate, and archaeology 19
16
offers good examples from the past. Thus, the relationship is mutual, dialectic. What this 20
20

means is that climate narratives based on a too-strict reading of the systems perspective 21
neglect the importance of cultural context, the insight that existing social structures and 22
Y

worldviews affect precisely how human groups respond to climate change. 23

N

Finally, archaeologists sometimes stress that adapting to climate changes does not 24
SU

only need to be a dramatic tale of struggling for survival. Even abrupt climate change 25
does not need to have negative impacts, and severe events such as the 8.2 event may even 26
have had positive impacts. For Upper Mesopotamia, Nieuwenhuyse et al. (this vol.), and 27
perhaps also Mottram (this vol.), argue that the event may have pushed people toward 28
taking the final steps to a very successful farming-herding strategy, which would continue 29
to dominate the cultural landscape for centuries after the event. For Greece, Perlès (this 30
vol.) asks us to consider that, against the background of a typically dry Mediterranean 31
climate, the cooler and wetter summers brought by the 8.2 event provided better con- 32
ditions for farming. In her view, they were a treat that all too briefly benefited human 33
beings, animals, and cultivars alike. 34
35
T I  S 36
37
The issue of synchronicity is key in each of the chapters in this book, as it is in climate 38
archaeology in general. At first sight this seems pretty straightforward. As Neil Rob- 39
erts observes (2015:30–31), accurate dating plays a key role in equating environmental 40
proxies with cultural sequences, as causal relations are often inferred from the timing 41
between events. Simply, because societal consequences cannot have preceded a purported 42
43
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 4 Olivier P. Nieuwenhuyse, Peter F. Biehl

1 environmental cause, this logic is generally used to falsify or verify a climate hypothesis
2 (Sandweiss and Quilter 2012).
3 On closer consideration, the relationship is far less easy than is often acknowl-
4 edged. Methodologically, formidable obstacles are still to be overcome to synchronize
5 archaeological cultural sequences with paleoclimate records. Typical for the culture-his-
6 torical paradigm that dominated archaeology until very recently, and in many parts of
7 the world still reigns superior, long-term cultural change was often conceived of in the
8 form of a static succession of cultural entities. The climatologist’s job then may simply
9 seem to be to seek synchronization between some climate event and some wholesale
10 culture-historical shift. However, as absolute dating frameworks are often still rather
11 poor for many prehistoric archaeological contexts globally, it remains all too easy to
12 slide important cultural boundaries up and down the chronological ladder so as to allow
13 perfect synchronization to emerge (Coombes and Barber 2005; Maher et al. 2011:19).
14 Settlement data, for instance, are key to understanding regional responses, yet they
15 are often problematic as to their synchronicity with climate change. To some degree this
16 is a general methodological issue found in many parts of the world. The issue is that the
17 establishment of synchronicity in settlement data depends on the nature of ceramic style
18 change: if this is very slow, before/during/after some climate event becomes invisible in
19 settlement patterns. If it is very quick and very conspicuous, before/during/after the event
16
20 can be isolated. Case studies for the latter scenario include the Upper Mesopotamian
20

21 steppes and Central Anatolia (Düring, this vol.; Nieuwenhuyse et al., this vol.). Which
22 scenario applies to a particular climate-culture discussion should be assessed carefully for
Y

23 each specific case.

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24 Then there’s the issue of scale, both diachronically and spatially. Paleoclimate proxies
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25 of global extent may be mute when it comes to understanding concrete human affairs
26 in the past. As Daune-Le Brun and Le Brun (this vol.) emphasize, climate changes
27 should be investigated at a local level as well, not only at a supralocal or even global
28 level. Local effects may be very diverse and different from global patterns, but it is these
29 localized effects that impacted prehistoric communities. Thus, assessing the effects of the
30 8.2 climate event on patterns of plant exploitation in Central Anatolia, Ryan and Rosen
31 (this vol.) argue that the lack of independent information about how the Konya region
32 was locally affected makes it difficult to assess the potential impact of climate as distinct
33 from other social and ecological factors. Similarly, cultural adaptations to the same cli-
34 mate event should not a priori be expected to play out similarly across larger regions.
35 Conceptually, the processual assumption that societal innovations are primarily the
36 consequence of environmental causes is seen by many archaeologists as problematic, or at
37 least as potentially too simplistic. Archaeologists today move beyond earlier deterministic
38 approaches: societies do not simply roll and flow with the environmental tide. Our own
39 situation today provides a valuable ethnographic example testifying to the importance of
40 cultural factors mediating responses to climate change: will it be “abandoning fossil fuels”
41 or “business as usual”? Whether our own societies of today will choose to fail or survive
42 (Diamond 2005) in the near future will ultimately depend on contemporary cultural
43
44

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 Introduction 5

perceptions of what climate is, on extant technologies, and, above all, on asymmetrical 1
relations of power. 2
Apart from the lurking determinism, of course, the relationship may equally work 3
the other way. Again looking at our modern world, a growing majority of people now 4
accept that socioeconomic innovations preceded environmental changes, even caused them. 5
In this regard, we may hardly be unique. In the past, as Zubrow reminds us (this vol.), 6
there may have been several instances of humans instigating climate changes already 7
in the Early Holocene (Oldfield 2008). The Near East and the Mediterranean, regions 8
that yielded most of the contributions in this book, are often seen as environmentally 9
marginal, hence vulnerable to even minor climatic perturbations. The other way round, 10
however, anthropogenic factors such as deforestation, overgrazing, or intense exploitation 11
of natural resources would have had noticeable effects on local environmental conditions, 12
especially in these regions (Glantz 1994; Redman 1999). 13
Cultural ecology in its strictest sense should therefore not be the only paradigm 14
adopted. Or rather, our reconstructions of social responses should consider how individual 15
members and subgroups of past societies would have perceived environmental changes 16
and how they would have adapted to them. A famous case in point is the cultural 17
response of Norse groups in Greenland when encroaching arctic conditions gradually 18
starved them out. Rather than adapting their subsistence, for instance by emulating the 19
16
successfully advancing Inuit, the Norse attributed their ill fortune to divine wrath and 20
20

erected more churches (Diamond 2005:248–76). Such social representations of climate, 21

and ecology in general, are not very explicit in the various contributions to this book 22
Y

but implicitly surface in some of the papers. 23

N

As Roberts observes (2015:30), the danger of determinism, of simply equating 24

SU

synchronicity with causality, can only be avoided when looking at the evidence from a 25
26
broad variety of perspectives. Bonsall et al. (this vol.) make this very clear: “Establishing
a causal link between climatic events and archaeological phenomena requires a convincing 27
mechanism for transmitting cause to effect.” Apart from establishing synchronicity, as 28
with all well-excavated and carefully documented cases discussed in this book, a direct 29
cause-and-affect scenario remains difficult. We argue that this is characteristic of climate30
archaeology as a whole, but has been generally overlooked by people seeking perfect 31
synchronization. Several authors in this book discuss situations where they believe the 32
evidence was messy and confusing and inviting to alternative, nonclimatic explanations. It 33
is only through multidisciplinary, contextualized analysis of social dynamics over multiple 34
scales that we may start to identify the differential impact of climate change. 35
36
C A  E  37
N E A 38
39
As readers will have observed, our collection of papers is not a homogeneous series 40
discussing a single climatic event, a circumscribed region, or a specific cultural context. 41
Nor do authors subscribe to a similar methodology or academic worldview. The papers 42
43
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 6 Olivier P. Nieuwenhuyse, Peter F. Biehl

1 differ vastly in geographic and temporal scale. This choice was deliberate. We wished to
2 bring together contributors that collectively reflect the methodological and paradigmat-
3 ic heterogeneity that is today characteristic of climate archaeology in Europe and the
4 ancient Near East. As a result, conclusions drawn in individual papers are sometimes in
5 opposition; this, too, is typical of climate archaeology. Rather than imposing our editorial
6 verdict on any conclusions reached, we hope that papers will speak for themselves and
7 stimulate much further debate.
8 Cremaschi and Zerboni provide in their opening chapter The Oasis of Palmyra
9 in Prehistory a paradigmatic link to the “Oasis Archaeology” of earlier generations of
10 archaeologists, influencing among others Childe’s famous “Oasis Theory” for the origins
11 of agriculture. Using the oasis of Palmyra in the Syrian Desert as a case study, they show
12 how long-term geomorphological changes affected human settlement and subsistence in
13 this challenging landscape.
14 The following seven chapters all focus explicitly on the cultural repercussions of
15 the 8.2 ka abrupt climate event in the ancient Near East and Mediterranean. Mottram’s
16 chapter When the Going Gets Tough steps away from monocausal, simplistic cause-effect
17 relationships, but argues for a strong causal role of climate change in the emergence
18 of the Halaf culture. The argument is fairly similar to the one made by the Tell Sabi
19 Abyad team since 2006, but both chapters differ in their emphasis on the role of climate
16
20 change as prime mover. Whereas for Mottram climate change was key, for Nieuwenhuyse,
20

21 Akkermans, van der Plicht, Russell, and Kaneda in their chapter The 8.2 ka Event in
22 Upper Mesopotamia, climate remains but one potential factor among many. Moreover,
Y

23 the Sabi Abyad team argues that its role is not particularly easy to isolate: climate may
N

24 have accelerated changes that already had begun.

SU

25 Both chapters stress continuity and adaptation, not collapse as had been proposed
26 by earlier scholars. This “change-and-continuity-not-collapse” approach to climate change
27 is also evidenced in The Aftermath of the 8.2 Event by Willett, Franz, Kabukcu, Orton,
28 Rogasch, Stroud, Rosenstock, and Biehl. They use Çatalhöyük as another example show-
29 ing the importance of collecting meticulously detailed local data on specific episodes of
30 culture change that happen to coincide with climate change. The examples of Tell Sabi
31 Abyad and Çatalhöyük show that once you get down to the ground level of messy archae-
32 ological data neat theories no longer look so neat. Interpretations become confused, as
33 multiple causal agents offer themselves, and a causal role for, specifically, climate change
34 becomes much harder to demonstrate in practice (see also Düring’s discussion of Western
35 Turkey and Perlès’s discussion of data from Greece).
36 Ryan and Rosen’s chapter Managing Risk through Diversification in Plant Exploitation
37 provide a nuanced discussion of plant exploitation evidence during the 8.2 event. The
38 authors suggest the possibility of climate change as a prime causal factor but in the end
39 they leave this as an open question, emphasizing the difficulty of disentangling climate
40 effects from other causal agents, for instance, anthropogenic factors. In The 8.2 Event
41 and the Neolithic Expansion in Western Anatolia Düring provides a critical reassessment
42 of issues of chronology and synchronicity with regard to the 8.2 event in Anatolia.
43 Pointing out several difficulties with the synchronicity perceived between the climate
44 event and Neolithic expansion in western Anatolia, Düring cautions forcefully for what

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 Introduction 7

he perceives to be climate determinism (see also Gronenborn’s chapter on the spread of 1

farming in Europe). 2
Moving on toward Europe, in “Singing in the Rain,” Daune-Le Brun and Le Brun 3
document another case for change-and-continuity and adaptation through the 8.2 ka 4
event in the eastern Mediterranean, not collapse. The authors highlight the complexities of 5
correlating culture change with climate change methodologically. Apart from establishing 6
synchronicity, as with all well-excavated and carefully documented cases discussed in this 7
book the cause and affect scenario remains difficult. The authors emphasize the “insu- 8
larity” of the cultural setting they describe for Khirokitia, cautioning against super-gen- 9
eralizing climate or cultural modeling. 10
Perlès continues in Early Holocene Climatic Fluctuations and Human Responses in 11
Greece with a discussion of settlement patterns in Greece before, during, and after two 12
climate events, one of which is the 8.2 ka event. Pottery styles in the seventh millen- 13
nium did not change so quickly that synchronicities with climate change can so easily 14
be observed in settlement data. With many other authors in this book, Perlès explicitly 15
engages in scrutinizing alternative, nonclimate explanations for explaining culture change 16
(also Nieuwenhuyse et al.; Bonsall et al.; Pelisiak, Löwenborg and Eriksson, this vol.). As 17
in the preceding chapter, the author emphasizes the importance of localized ecological 18
impacts of global climate events such as the 8.2; in Greece, this event may not have 19
16
instigated drought but instead may have locally led to more severe flooding. 20
20

Moving north into the Danube, Bonsall, Macklin, Boroneant, Pickard, Bartosiewicz, 21
Cook, and Higham contextualize the question of cause or coincidence in Rapid Climate 22
Y

Change and Radiocarbon Discontinuities in the Mesolithic-Early Neolithic Settlement Record 23

N

of the Iron Gates. They stress that establishing synchronicity alone is not enough and 24
SU

explicitly discuss alternatives including social changes and taphonomic effects. If this and 25
previous chapters mostly adopted a microregional, or even site-based perspective, this 26
contrasts with the macro-scale, almost global approach of Gronenborn in his Climate 27
Fluctuations, Human Migrations, and the Spread of Farming in Western Eurasia. Together 28
with, to some degree, Mottram (this vol.), Gronenborn is among the few authors in the 29
book to explicitly adopt a systems or processual approach. Thus, Culture as extrasomatic 30
adaptation rests in dynamic equilibrium with the ecological environment, until factors 31
external to the system—i.e., climate change—push the system off balance leading to 32
adaptation and renewed balance. Gronenborn’s contribution is valuable in making explic- 33
it what remains implicit in many other chapters, and by extrapolation climate change 34
discussions elsewhere in the archaeological literature. 35
Pelisiak’s Climate Change in the Polish Upland Bronze Age sketches in detail the 36
environment/climate background to culture change and shifts in settlement patterns. 37
However, the author describes that the potential impacts of climate were intimately 38
connected with internal social, economic, and political processes, and hence climate 39
change may have been only one of many factors involved in prehistoric culture change. 40
Finally, Löwenborg and Eriksson’s Climate and the Definition of Archaeological Periods 41
in Sweden offers an explicit, theoretically informed discussion of climate archaeology and its 42
methods used so far. They provide a historical summary of the role of climate in Swedish 43
archaeology, starting with the rise of scientific archaeology and processual archaeology 44

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 8 Olivier P. Nieuwenhuyse, Peter F. Biehl

1 when climate was elevated to the role of prime causal agent for culture change. In contrast,
2 notwithstanding increasing methodological sophistication in recovering environmental data
3 and vibrant theoretical debate, in much post-processual archaeology in Sweden today
4 climate is categorically rejected as a causal agent. The authors call for a more balanced,
5 theoretically informed consideration of both cultural and environmental factors. We hope
6 the various contributions in this book may offer a means toward this end.
7
8 E
9
10 In December 2001, several weeks of intermittent northerly winter outbreaks caused seri-
11 ous disruptions around the Black Sea–Aegean Sea region. The severe conditions included
12 sustained periods of subzero temperatures, snowstorms and blizzards, heavy rains, and
13 strong winds. Athens and Istanbul received about thirty cm of snow, and city governor
14 Erol Cakir even declared conditions in Istanbul a “national disaster.” In Larissa, Greece,
15 night temperatures plummeted to a minimum of –20.2° C. More than 300 villages in
16 northern and central Greece were snowed in, while airports and schools were closed in
17 the North. In Bulgaria, heavy snowfall cut power lines, while frosts cut off water supplies.
18 Of course, what happened here was simply weather. What climatologists formally term
19 climate is weather averaged over a period of thirty years. But these horrifying conditions to
16
20 some degree match the scenario often reconstructed for the infamous 8.2 ka abrupt climate
20

21 event, estimated to have lasted for about two centuries or more, the equivalent of perhaps
22 ten human generations. Based on the above, we may start to imagine the climatic impacts
Y

23 experienced around Europe and the Near East in Prehistory. Winter conditions would
N

24 have been characterized by extremes much more pronounced than today, and very exten-
SU

25 sive rainfalls and snowfalls would have given rise to serious problems with crops, grazing,
26 flooding, and the attendant destabilization of hillsides and mud-brick dwellings. During
27 other winters conditions may have remained very dry, again with considerably detrimental
28 effects on crops and grazing. Overall, we can imagine a considerable amount of pressure
29 on resources, and general environmental stress during climatic events.
30 Yet, as the examples in this book show, prehistoric communities in Europe and the
31 ancient Near East did not perish and in some cases may even have flourished. Nor are
32 contributors to this book unanimous in ascribing all culture change they observe in the
33 archaeological record to adaptation to environmental adversities. Climate archaeologists in
34 Europe and the Near East are certainly aware of the importance of climate in explaining
35 cultural innovation, but they remain unimpressed by simplistic tales of collapse caused
36 by the “serial killer of civilization” (Linden 2009) called climate.
37
38 R C
39
40 Alley, R. B. 2000 The Two-Mile Time Machine. Ice Cores, Abrupt Climate Change, and Our Future.
41 Princeton University Press, Princeton.
42 Birks, H. J. B. 2008 Holocene Climate Research—Progress, Paradigms, and Problems. In Natural
43 Climate Variability and Global Warming. A Holocene Perspective, edited by R. W. Battarbee
and H. A. Binney, pp. 7–57. Wiley-Blackwell, West Sussex.
44

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 Introduction 9

Coombes, P., and K. Barber 2005 Environmental Determinism in Holocene Research: Causality 1
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19
16
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20
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20

McAnany, P. A., and N. Yoffee 2010 Why We Question Collapse and Study Human Resilience,
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McIntosh, R. J., J. A. Tainter, and S. K. McIntosh 2000 Climate, History, and Human Action. 25
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tosh, J. A. Tainter, and S. K. McIntosh, pp. 1–42. Columbia University Press, New York. 27
Oldfield, F. 2008 The Role of People in the Holocene. In Natural Climate Variability and Global 28
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Redman, C. L. 1999 Human Impact on Ancient Environments. University of Arizona Press, Tucson. 31
Roberts, N. 2015 Holocene Climate Changes and Archaeological Implications, with Particular
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Rosen, A. 2007 Civilizing Climate. Social Responses to Climate Change in the Ancient Near East. 38
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Sandweiss, D. H., and J. Quilter 2012 Collation, Correlation, and Causation in the Prehistory 40
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1 Schwartz, G. M. 2006 From Collapse to Regeneration. In After Collapse. The Regeneration of

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7
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