WAC 5 is held in partnership with the Anthropology Department of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History, the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian and in collaboration with the Getty Conservation Institute.

SESSION ABSTRACT

Archaeological excavations throughout the world and at all time periods show surprising but strong correlations between climatic oscillations and the character of social and cultural responses by different human populations. They confirm humanity’s battle with (and impact on) the environment. In some cases, adjustments are a principal cause for social and technological innovations. Innovations include plant and animal domestication, as well as the punctuated spread and adoption of agriculture, the first use of wheeled vehicles, the construction of large earthen and stone monuments, and perhaps the advent of metallurgy. In other cases, an outright collapse of cultural systems is indicated. Signs of collapse traced to climatic oscillations include religious and social upheavals, warfare, genocide, site abandonment, and population migration. This session aims to examine the range of sociocultural responses to climatic stress and specific climate forcing variables that may account for the observed climate record. Tree-ring data, lake level and glacial fluctuations, ice core data, pollen analysis, physical anthropology research, and other pertinent data will be used for high quality reconstructions of climatic and human history in different parts of the New and Old World. This history will be used in conjunction with changes in settlement and procurement strategies, human physical and dietary changes, technological innovations, as well as stylistic and symbolic convergence, to measure sociocultural responses to and impact on climate change, reflected in archaeological data from nomadic hunter-gatherers, proto-horticulturalists, sedentary agriculturists, to early urbanized societies.

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PUBLICATION

Although the WAC intends to publish the papers though Archaeopress, we will also look for a publishing house. Note that such a publisher may have additional requirements.

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ABSTRACTS

Transforming Linear Limits into Dynamic Solutions: Changes in Environmental Constraints and Cultural Adaptations.

Douglas Frink

Director/Principal Investigator

Archaeology Consulting Team, Inc.

Essex Junction, VT 05452

USA

dsfrink@aol.com

Abstract

Since the late 14th century scholars have attempted to understand cultural patterns in terms of their environmental context. The linearity of many of these studies were in part the result of a search for an environmental causal relationship that proscribed cultures, and were all to often used to legitimize racial and cultural biases. Subsequent studies argued that the complexity of cultures could not be reduced to categorical results determined by the environment. More recently, the complexity of the environment has been taken into account, rendering impossible any linearity between the two. Both cultures and environments are complex and dynamic systems whose organization can be understood through an analysis of their constituent components, and the internal relationships between the constituent components. As separate systems, one cannot be viewed as the cause or result of the other. However, cultural change and environmental change can be viewed as interrelated systems each influencing the other. The environment places constraints on a cultures strategies and their potential success. A culture's strategy may include modification of various components, and thus the relationships among all the components, of the environment. This paper will serve as an introduction to the following papers looking at various aspects of these interactive dynamic systems, and how they are being employed in current archaeological studies.

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From Hunter-Gatherer to Livestock-Keeper: Economic Change in Northeastern and Southwestern Africa.

Ralf Vogelsang

Universität zu Köln

Forschungsstelle Afrika

Jennerstr. 8

50823 Köln

R.Vogelsang@uni-koeln.de

Abstract

This paper focuses on the process of economic change during the middle and late Holocene in Northeastern and Southwestern Africa. Both areas show roughly similar economic sequences with a transition from foraging to pastoralism. However, differences in the transition process can be observed. In the Sudanese Saharan region of Northeastern Africa there was a complete change of economic system. By contrast, in Southwestern Africa, only some elements of the pastoral lifestyle seem to have been adopted. The background of these different developments is discussed on the basis of two case studies, situated in areas with different physical conditions. The first is the Wadi Howar region of the Eastern Sahara/Sudan, an ecologically favorable area in a key geographical position, but subject to dramatic climatic changes over the last 10.000 years. The second is in the Kaokoland in North-western Namibia which has had a more stable climate. The analysis of the archaeological data indicates that the differences in the economic transition process observed in each area can only partly be explained by the different intensity of climatic and environmental change. According to studies in the Wadi Howar region, the transition from foraging to cattle pastoralism seems to have been less stimulated by climatic change than by other factors such as social and demographic conditions. An important factor may have been the key geographical position of the Wadi Howar, which encouraged contacts with groups with different subsistence patterns and social structures. On the other hand, a second - later - change in this region is marked by an increase in economic diversification that seems to be mainly a reaction to the growing aridity. In the Kaokoland in Northwestern Namibia the situation is quite different. The slower and selective adoption of a new economic system in this region can perhaps be partly explained by the more static conditions in Southwestern Africa. In this area, there was no stimulus from far-reaching climatic and environmental change and no intense regional and inter-regional contact with groups with different subsistence patterns and social structures. New ideas seem to have needed more time to be accepted fully.

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Early Prehistoric Migration as Sociocultural Response to a Changing World.

Olena V. Smyntyna, Head

Department of Archaeology and Ethnology of Ukraine

Mechnikov National University

Odessa I.I.

Ukraine

Abstract

From the very beginning of the systematic studies of early prehistoric cultures there was no doubt that Late Palaeolithic and Mesolithic groups changed their territory in time and space. In most cases these regular movements are explained by the necessity for a secure food base. Contemporary archaeology, facing the new millennium, now should try to reconsider this oversimplified interpretation, taking into account renewed theoretical and empirical data. Putting in operation of living space exploitation concept with its emphasis on territorial (dwelling-living floor-settlement-foraging territory-living space), temporal (daily-seasonal-year-round-life-long-generational) and most probably purposeful hierarchy of human activities opens wide opportunities for new migration theory delineation. Points of primary importance need to be clarified are: migrations scaling in accordance with temporal, territorial and purposeful frameworks of migrant's living space exploitation structure; migrations cause revision in consideration of economic as well as social and ritual activity of early prehistoric communities; the migration destination point and rout definition, taking into account not only food and raw material procurement, but also ethnic traditions, marriage and kinship systems, specific features of ritual activity, world outlook, religious beliefs etc.

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Dangerous Regions: A Source of Cascading Cultural Changes.

Joel Gunn

New South Associates, Inc.

Mebane, North Carolina

USA

Mailing Address

2712 Butler Road

Chapel Hill NC 27516

USA

jdgunn3@mindspring.com

Abstract

In 1961, Glenn T. Trewartha published The Earth's Problem Climates. In this book he examined important regional climates around the world. Although the book still serves as a source of initial assessments of regional climates, greater access to information on global-to-regional climate relationships and more detailed cultural chronologies allows for much for detailed understanding of local climate changes and the effects they have and will have on human populations. Two examples are provided, one from the Maya lowlands of the Yucatan Peninsula and the other from the Coastal Plain of North and South Carolina. The Bermuda-Azores subtropical high serves as the key link between global and local climates as the global energy balance changes. The analyses appear to show that although never the sole cause of cultural changes, climate is often the proximate cause. Some regions are more potently linked to global climate than others. They appear to be locales where changes in global temperatures precipitate shifts across critical cultural thresholds such as from urban-to-town life in the Maya lowlands and horticultural-to-gatherer life in the Carolinas Coastal Plain. Shifts across these critical subsistence level boundaries appears in many instances to lead to cascading cultural changes as populations and ideas are flushed out of more sensitive regions into surrounding less sensitive regions.

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Population Movements and the Archaeological Record.

Dean R. Snow, Chair

Department of Anthropology

The Pennsylvania State University

409 Carpenter Building

University Park, PA 16802

drs17@psu.edu

Tel.: 814-865-2509

Fax: 814-863-1474

http://www.anthro.psu.edu/

Abstract

Environmental change prompts population expansions and contractions over time and space at scales that are archaeologically detectable. Migration continues to be difficult to define and apply in archaeological interpretation because the term covers several often smaller scale processes that together drive large-scale demographic change. Cases from North American archaeology are used to show how archaeology can solve large-scale demographic problems using modern dating techniques and geographic information systems. The cases show that large-scale processes involve many small scale migrations. Cases from both northeastern and southwestern North America demonstrate the timing of migration episodes with climatic shifts. They also illustrate the common emergence of matrilineal social organizations amongst migrating communities of horticulturalists. The cases thus illustrate some basic processes that typically characterize the adaptive radiation of horticultural societies responding to long-term environmental changes.

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The Poverty of the Settlement Abandonment Concept in Archaeology: Ancestral Pueblo Landscape Use in the American Southwest.

Michael Adler

Anthropology Department

Southern Methodist University

Dallas, Texas

USA

madler@post.cis.smu.edu

Abstract

This presentation highlights the major changes in human land use, resource availability, and effects of human settlement in the northern part of the American Southwest after about the 12th century AD. The late pre-Contact period (AD 1150-1450) occupation of the northern Southwest by ancestral Pueblo peoples was typified by a few major trends in settlement strategy, including the aggregation of most puebloan peoples into large village settlements and settlement relocation to regions with lower variability in precipitation regimes. These alterations in local and regional settlement strategies resulted in fewer, larger village settlements distributed across what is now the Southwestern United States. The resulting archaeological landscape appears to be one in which large areas are abandoned in favor of fewer, densely occupied localities. Ancestral Pueblo land use, however, is best understood as locally intensive and regionally extensive. The "buffer zones" between settlements were underutilized for residential use relative to the village localities, but archaeological evidence indicates continued use of the interstitial areas for hunting and foraging activities. Along the same lines, earlier village settlements were often reused as farmsteads and other short-term activities. Given the increasingly patchy use of landscapes by village-dwelling ancestral Pueblo peoples, we need scale-sensitive paleoenvironmental reconstructions with respect to local and regional patterns of precipitation, soil erosion, aggradation, and resource availability. Anthropogenic changes to the environment may have to be modeled differently for those areas nearer to settlements compared to those areas outside of major settlement localities.

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It got cold and they died? Climate and the End of Norse Greenland.

Thomas H. McGovern

Northern Science & Education Center

Anthropology Dept

Hunter College CUNY

695 Park Ave

New York, NY 10021

Abstract

The extinction of the Norse colony of West Greenland in the late Middle Ages has long been considered a classic example of climatic impact on human societies. A small community that had been the westernmost out post of medieval Christendom for nearly 500 years collapsed and became extinct during the early phases of the "little ice age" ca AD 1350-1450, and generations of researchers have used this correlation as a deterministic explanation for the mysterious end of the Norse presence in the Western Hemisphere. New high-resolution proxy climate data, paleoenvironmental evidence from Greenland and fresh archaeological evidence from Greenland and the wider North Atlantic now allow a fuller and more sophisticated look at the end of Norse Greenland. While climate impact must have played a major role, broader economic and political factors were also important in creating fatal vulnerabilities in Greenlandic society. It did get cold and they did die, but the linkages between climate change and historical event are heavily mediate by human perception, politics, and worldview.

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Sprucing Up the House: An Interdisciplinary Investigation of an 18th Century Communal House in Northern Labrador.

Susan A. Kaplan,¹ Jim Woollett, Rosanne DíArrigo, Brendan Buckley, Allison Bain, and Cynthia Zutter

1. Director of Peary-Macmillan Arctic Museum & Arctic Studies Center

Sociology & Anthropology Dept.

Bowdoin College

211A Hubbard Hall

9300 College Station

Brunswick, ME 04011-8493

USA

207 725 3289

skaplan@bowdoin.edu

Abstract

Uivak was one of three significant 18th century whaling communities in Okak, Labrador, Canada. A communal house at the site has been dated to the very end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century through analysis of dendrochronological samples and a diverse array of artifacts. Analyses of faunal, dendrochronological, entomological, and botanical remains recovered from the communal house and its associated midden are providing insights into ways in which Labrador Inuit relied on terrestrial and marine mammals, as well as on trees and a variety of plants. These studies, combined with paleoenvironmental ice core and sea ice studies, are revealing how 18th century Inuit adapted to climate change and European contact, while profoundly altering the landscapes on which they made their homes.

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Late Holocene Climatic Change and Human Responses at Southern Patagonia: A Geoarchaeological view.

Cristian M. Favier Dubois

CONICET/Departamento de Arqueología

Universidad Nacional del Centro

Olavarría, Prov. de Buenos Aires. Argentina

cfavier@coopenet.com.ar

Abstract

Geoarchaeological research conducted in five localities in Southern Patagonia and Northern Tierra del Fuego (Argentina) identified archaeological material within a mollisol formed from late Holocene aeolian and colluvial deposits. The mollisol's chronology and development are due to increased humidity (ca. 1000 YBP) following an episode of severe drought during the Medieval Warm Period, Corroborating data is supplied from dendroclimatic and pollen studies. The distribution of artifacts shows a low frequency in the upper part of the pedologic profile. In spite of representing a stable surface for several centuries, it was not heavilly utilized by people. This would suggest a greater human presence in these places at some time prior to the mollisol's development, during arid conditions at a regional scale. It is speculated that changes occurring immediately prior to severe drought as evidenced by dendroclimatic studies, would have affected resource distribution and/or concentration, producing variations in human groups' mobility and permanence. These hydrological changes help explain the pattern found at sites in Lago Argentino by Borrero and Franco (1999), who propose an abandonment of the sector (already of marginal use), or a drastic change in circulation and settlement strategies probably linked to water availability. We also consider the changes generated in the formation processes of the archaeological record with the mollisol's emergence. The cultural evidence following the pedologic development is not easily visible, having a low resolution due to being superimposed on previous archeological deposits. Differences in earlier formation processes may conditioned the visibility and preservation of assemblages due to the pedologic development, thereby favoring some signs and occulting others. This study provides an example of the useful and necessary interaction between different perspectives in archaeological studies.

Keywords: Geoarchaeology, Southern Patagonia, late Holocene soil, Medieval Warm Period, site formation processes.

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Redefining the Shashe-Limpopo Landscape: An Archaeological Perspective.

Munyaradzi Manyanga

University of Botswana, Archaeology Unit

Botswana

MANYANGA@mopipi.ub.bw

Abstract

The paper looks at archaeological research and attempts at past environmental reconstruction in Zimbabwe's southern Lowveld. The research area, which is geographically referred to as the Shashe-Limpopo Valley, incorporates southern Africa's first known state system, Mapungubwe, which developed between the 11th and the 12th Century AD. A wide range of sites has been noted in the region, with important sites predating and post dating the achievements at Mapungubwe. A Number of the sites also show close affinities with those that have been recorded on the South African and Botswana side of the Valley. This suggests that a related and an interacting community once occupied both sides of the Shashe-Limpopo Rivers. Viewed against a background of recent droughts, floods and survival strategies that currently look beyond Zimbabwe's political boundaries, the Shashe-Limpopo valley is thus viewed as a treacherous landscape that has not been preferred by human populations since prehistoric times. The general perception of the valley has been that it is hot, dry and therefore not conducive to human habitation. Contrary to the general belief research has confirmed that the valley has always been abuzz with human activity. While the valley was at times affected by unfavorable environmental condition, it continued to attract human settlement beginning with the hunter-gatherers (30 000 years ago) to the current inhabitants of the area. A look at the ecological conditions as well as how the present inhabitants of the area are surviving today has in many ways offered an alternative explanation on how the prehistoric communities could have interacted with this fragile landscape. This emanates form observations made on the landscape and the human response to such recent events as flooding associated with cyclone Eline and droughts, of which the later has become perennial in the region. The cumulative data confirms earlier suggestions that the Shashe-Limpopo valley offers alternatives to this otherwise hash environment. The Mateke Hills area seem to benefit from the circumscribed environmental conditions while areas closer to the river valleys seem to have benefited from the flooding opportunities. This seem to be confirmed by the archaeological record in the form of sites which have a strong orientation towards the rivers over looking the flood plains. This brings a strong possibility of flood plain agriculture, a practice commonly used by local communities in the area today.

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Marshland of Cities: Deltaic Landscapes and the Evolution of Early Mesopotamian Civilization.

Jennifer R. Pournelle

Office:

Mesopotamian Alluvium Project

3881 AP&M, UCSD

jpournelle@ucsd.edu

(619) 822-1540 (MAP lab, UCSD)

Departmental Address:

UCSD Dept. of Anthropology

9500 Gilman Drive, MC0532

La Jolla, CA 92093-0532

Tel.: (858) 534-4145

Fax: (858) 5946

Abstract

During the 1950s, the Iraqi government contracted for a series of engineering studies aimed at harnessing the water and power of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. It intended to implement ambitious schemes, first proposed by Sir William Wilcox in 1908, to systematically drain marshes, lower the saline water table, rationalize irrigation systems, and thereby reclaim "waste" land for high-profit agricultural production. Wilcox's ambitious proposal reflected 19th century European beliefs that marshes are inherently diseased, sodden wastelands, and that the appropriate effort of good government was to eliminate and bring them under cultivation. Final realization of these proposals in the 1990's has resulted in the elimination of some 20,000 square miles of wetlands in southeastern Iraq. The ideas that underpinned this hydrologic engineering were also imbedded in 20th century archaeological research paradigms. These viewed the birth of Mesopotamian civilization as inherently tied to sufficient drying of primordial lands to allow irrigated plow agriculture. Using declassified satellite photography to integrate geomorphologic, paleoclimatic, and excavation evidence within a comprehensive examination of the Tigris-Euphrates delta, I cast serious doubt on the landscape characterization underlying this model. The mid 5th-mid 3rd millennium BCE lower alluvium was not a uniform, arid plain transited by unitary rivers. It consisted in large part of vast wetlands that, rather than inhibiting social complexity, promoted settlement nucleation, facilitated transportation, financed accumulation, and buffered climatic and political extremes.

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Climatic Change and 3rd Millennium BCE Collapse: A View from the Mesopotamian Delta.

Jennifer R. Pournelle

Office:

Mesopotamian Alluvium Project

3881 AP&M, UCSD

jpournelle@ucsd.edu

(619) 822-1540 (MAP lab, UCSD)

Departmental Address:

UCSD Dept. of Anthropology

9500 Gilman Drive, MC0532

La Jolla, CA 92093-0532

Tel.: (858) 534-4145

Fax: (858) 5946

Abstract

Cultural-ecological investigations of early Mesopotamian urbanity continue to focus on the role and mechanisms of agropastoral production in an arid environmental context, and especially on ovicaprid husbandry and barley-wheat farming. Therefore, against the (seen from the long view) normative state of peer polity emulation/contestation among independent city-states in the southern Mesopotamian delta, considerable attention has been paid to the "collapse" of a short-lived regional polity that during the mid-3rd millennium BCE claimed for itself far-reaching, imperial, territorial prerogatives from its (as yet unlocated) capitol in the northern Mesopotamian alluvium. This disaster-focused approach privileges territorial empire as a normative political organization, presumes the political viability of Akkad absent regional climate change, ignores the cultural ecology of contemporaneous urban growth in southern Mesopotamian city-states, and fails to address urban resilience elsewhere in the face of unstable climatic regimes broadly correlated with the "collapse" period. New data derived from declassified satellite imagery suggests that, viewed from the Mesopotamian urban heartland, climatic change favored the expansion of political institutions adept at marshalling wetlands resources and opportunities.

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Nomadic Agriculturalists in Wetland Mediterranean Archaeology: Papa Uvas (Aljaraque, Huelva, Spain) in its Context.

Agustín Mª Lucena Martín

Área de Prehistoria

Facultad de Filosofía y Letras

Plaza del Cardenal Salazar, nº 3

C.P. 14003, Córdoba.

Spain

letal91@hotmail.com

ch1macrj@uco.es

Tel.: 0034-957-218299.

Fax: 0034-957-218379

Abstract

Papa Uvas (Aljaraque, Huelva,) possesses a chronology that dates approximately from 3500-2500 B.C., and it has a cultural sequence that starts from the Late Neolithic to the Middle Copper Age. All of the documented structures in more than 200 practiced trenches are structures which were excavated by way of ditches or pits, and so, the site is inserted in a much more amplified chrono-cultural panorama, which affects an enormous number of Neolithic and Copper Age records that extends through Cyprus, Italy, the Balkans, Portugal and Spain. We can derive from the data about the succession of multiple processes of sedimentation and from the faunal and paleo-botanical information that Papa Uvas is a nomadic habitat. This nomadic habitat, in the middle of changing ecological conditions, would have been tied to the harvest cycles or to the posterior growing of vegetation and the natural resources of the environment, and thus it would be inserted into a wide circuit of settlements.

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Distribution Pattern of the Settlement Sites with Menhirs in SW Atlantic Europe and the Inference of the Socio-economic Organization of their Builders.

David Calado

Researcher at the IPPAR. Instituto Português do Património Arquitectónico - The Portuguese Institute for Architectonic Heritage

State Department for Cultural Affairs

Portugal

davidcalado@hotmail.com, dcalado@ippar.pt

Abstract

An intensive surface survey was undertaken to identify the sites with standing stones in a 50-km² area near the town of Lagos, Portugal. Seventeen large settlements with menhirs were detected during the survey. The settlements with menhirs appear to be related to an artifact set from the "Early Neolithic" period. Statistical analysis of lithic and ceramic artifacts suggested that these settlements date to the period between late 6th and first half of the 5th millennium BC, corroborating Gomes and Cabrita's earlier findings. This chronology is further supported by OSL dates from Menhir n.3 at the Quinta da Queimada site. The upper half of the thick soil layer overlaying and sealing the implantation pit of Menhir n. 3, was OSL dated to the transition of the 5th to the 4th millennium BC (Shfd 2013: 5925± 175 BT), providing a solid date ante quem for the erection of the standing stone. The erection of the menhir is substantially older than the OSL date. It is unlikely that the menhir was erected after middle of the 5th millennium BC, because incised ceramics, typically dating from the second half of the 5th millennium BC, are absent from the site. The use of geographical models to understand the dense pattern of spatial distribution of the settlement sites with standing stones suggest that the early food producer communities in the area were numerous and completely sedentary at the transition from the 6th to the 5th millennium BC.

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Breaking Unnatural Barriers: Comparative Archaeology, Climate, and Culture Change in Central and Northern Europe (6000 - 2000 BC).

Maximilian O. Baldia

Research Associate

Institute for the Study of Earth and Man

Heroy Science Hall

Southern Methodist University

3225 Daniel Avenue

Dallas, Texas 75275-0274

USA

Mailing Address:

The Comparative Archaeology WEB

3616 Dinsmore Castle Dr.

Columbus, OH 43221-4410

USA

http://www.comp-archaeology.org/

CompArchaeologyWEB@columbus.rr.com

the_comparative_archaeology_web@yahoo.com

the_comparative_archaeology_web@hotmail.com

Abstract

Bridging the unnatural barriers to interdisciplinary research, Comparative Archaeology aims to understand humanity's ability to overcome barriers created by a changing world. Here I analyze socio-cultural responses to climate change on a cross cultural, interregional, and diachronic level. Using archaeological and paleoclimate data, the focus is on Central and Northern Europe from the Mesolithic/Neolithic transition to the Bronze Age. The prevailing paradigm assumes that the spread of Near Eastern domesticates (if not outright human migration) encountered successive barriers in the Carpathian Basin, northern Central Europe, and Scandinavia. However, scrutiny of the data raises questions about the Carpathian Basin barrier and the timing of the Bandkeramik farmers' expansion. The northern Central European barrier is clearly established by the Bandkeramik during relatively calm climate conditions. Although the Bandkeramik ends with deadly warfare during an environmental disturbance, the boundary survives, remaining static for the next half a millennium of a generally optimal climate. Cracks appear in the northern Central European barrier only when climatic oscillations increase. Concurrently, elaborate pottery decorations and substantial longhouses are abandoned. The barrier's final breakup occurs as Nordic Mesolithic foragers and southern Copper Age farmers coalesce into the Funnel Beaker (TRB) interaction sphere to ensure long-term economic security. Simultaneously cattle byres, ploughs, long-barrows, and even stone walled hilltop sites develop. The subsequent lessening of climatic severity falls in line with increased construction of palisaded as well as stone walled "central sites" and long-barrows, the development of megalithic tombs, and the invention of wheeled vehicles. The production and exchange of copper artifacts intensifies and the resulting pollutants appear as far away as Greenland. Eventually the agricultural barrier reaches well into Scandinavia, retreating again with renewed climate change. Thereafter, numerous cultures appear, including the Corded Ware with its emphasis on individual burials in tumuli. This suggests a social adjustment focused on individual leaders and more specialized warfare. Additional climatic upheavals are concomitant with the advent of the Bell Beaker phenomenon and the Bronze Age. Paradoxically, the refinements in socioeconomic strategies, aimed at dealing with the changing world, seem to amplify environmental change.

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Taphonomic processes affecting monumental earthen architecture as a proxy for climatic change.

Douglas Frink

Director/Principal Investigator

Archaeology Consulting Team, Inc.

Essex Junction, VT 05452

USA

dsfrink@aol.com

Abstract

Pedogenic processes primarily issue from the interface between the soil and the atmosphere, and through time evolve downwards through the soil profile. The OCR Carbon Dating procedure takes into account a number of variables reflecting the pedogenic evolution of the soil, and models pedogenic processes through a dynamic, non-linear formula. As such, the OCR procedure is well suited to describing the physiology of the soil body. With close interval sampling along a vertical soil column, the archeological and temporal context of artifacts and turbational features may be determined. The variables used in the OCR Formula describe various related and temporally separate production processes in the soil network that participate in the transformation of the soil body through time. Together, these variables and processes describe the history and evolution of the soil. Using data from recent excavations at the Dzban Mound Group, Moravia, Czech Republic, correlations between defined turbation events and climatic change, based on proxy measures of tree ring growth and residual atmospheric 14C, are seen to correlate with cultural activities as well. The consilience of these independent and dynamic studies, paleoclimatic, pedogenic, and archaeologic, provides unique opportunities for hypothesis building and testing.

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GIS Study of Settlement Structure in Response to Climatic Change During the TRB: Moravia, Czech Republic.

Matthew Boulanger

Archaeology Consulting Team, Inc.

Essex Junction, VT 05452

USA

Abstract

Through the application of affordable computing power and geographic information systems software, archaeologists can combine a variety of data types to better analyze spatial and temporal information. Combining environmental and climatic data with archaeological information results in a broader contextual understanding at a variety of scales. Analysis of spatial, temporal, and environmental data suggests that Neolithic culture in the Eastern Czech Republic behaved in an organic fashion, evolving with, and responding to, a dynamic environment. Data describing site location and type are gathered from a variety of sources including survey maps, publications, and handheld Global Postioning Satellite systems. Environmental data including soil types, geologic formations, and river systems are incorporated with site data. Additional data is drawn from a climatic proxy, carbon dating results, and artifact typologies. Neolithic sites surrounding the Morava River valley, near Olomouc, Czech Republic, are represented by four general types: Villages/Settlements, Wall and Ditch Enclosures, Mound Groups, and Burial Sites. Spatial relationships between these different site types appear to remain constant throughout the three major Moravian Neolithic eras: Linearbandkeramik (LBK), Trichterbecherkultur I (TRB I), and TRB II. Neolithic culture is seen to cluster around Wall and Ditch Enclosures, forming a colony. Through self-organization, inter- and intra-colony communication, and consumption/production of resources, Neolithic colonies efficiently respond to their environment and climatic variability. This analysis provides much needed contextual information for existing theories about the development of agriculture and complex society in Central Europe.

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Cultural Response to Environmental Change in the Alps: Seeking Continuity in the Bronze Age Lake-Dwelling Tradition.

Francesco Menotti

Institute of Archaeology

36 Beaumont Street

Oxford, OX1 2PG

ENGLAND

francesco.menotti@arch.ox.ac.uk

http://athens.arch.ox.ac.uk/schoolarch/institute/staff/fmenotti

Abstract

Following an abrupt change in climatic conditions, the middle Bronze Age northern Alpine lake-dwellers were forced to abandon their settlements. As a result, the archaeological record shows a gap of occupation from the end of the sixteenth century to the beginning of the twelfth century BC. Where did those groups go within that period? Recent studies show that some MBA sites hitherto regarded as traditional dry-land dwellings might represent now constructions by former lacustrine people. Typological analyses of pottery assemblages and house structure remains found on these sites have made it possible to trace them back to an origin in the lacustrine tradition. Through GIS analyses, the paper also explains how palaeo-lacustrine environments have been reconstructed and lake level fluctuations simulated in order to demonstrate graphically how those lakeside villages were affected by the water transgressions. The MBA lake-dwelling occupational hiatus could finally be bridged and the process of cultural continuity reconstructed. The MBA lake-dwellers certainly did not evaporate; they just temporarily adapted to a drier environment until the lake shores became exposed again for re-settlement.

Keywords: Lake-dwellings, wetland archaeology, environmental and cultural change, occupational patterns, chronology, continuity, GIS, Bronze Age, central Europe.

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Society and Ecology during the Middle Bronze Age of Southern Scandinavia.

Lars Larsson, Chair

Arkeologi

University of Lund

Lund, Sweden

Tel: 046-222 79 39

Lars.Larsson@ark.lu.se

Abstract

As a reaction against the view of man as an inactive being, more importance is attached to societal relations, and the physical environment became something that humans exploited and manipulated. This view of humankind and our physical environment has become much more multifaceted. Studies of the attitude of prehistoric societies to the landscape have meant that new dimensions have been integrated in research. It is believed that the landscape was not used exclusively as an economic resource; the shaping of the landscape also had an important social and mental dimension. The perception of the landscape is changed by human impact. The most marked of the human influence on the landscape during the entire prehistory of southern Scandinavia has been identified and dated to the middle part of the Bronze Age at about 1000 BC. To set the framework within the archaeological discussion, other innovation periods can be recognized before and after 1000 BC. During the preceding phase a large number of barrows are built and the burials contains a number of bronze grave goods, which reflect high-quality local or regional bronze artefact manufacture. Southern Scandinavia is established as an independent region within Bronze Age Europe. This is interpreted as reflecting the formation of a new elite and enforcing the ritual and social significance of a chiefly lineage. In about 800 BC a new legitimization crisis appeared with an increased intensity of hoarding that might reflect an increase in ritual. However, the period around 1000 BC lacks marked symbols in the material culture as well as the formation of monuments. But how are we to understand this transformation of the landscape? Different explanations, well known as well as new, are evaluated in an interregional perspective.

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The Mesolithic/Neolithic transition in the Carpathian Basin: Was there an ecological trap during the Neolithic?

Pál Sümegi¹-Róbert Kertész²-Imola Juhász³- Gábor Tímár⁴-Sándor Gulyás¹

1. University of Szeged, Department of Geology and Paleontology, 6722 Szeged Egyetem u.2., Hungary, sumegi@geo.u-szeged.hu

2. János Damjanich Museum, 5000 Szolnok Kossuth tér 4. Hungary

3. Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Archeological Institute,1014 Budapest Úri u.49. Hungary

4. ELTE University of Budapest, Department of Geophysics, Space Research Group, Budapest Pázmány Péter sétány 1. Hungary

Abstract

According to palaeoecological, climatological, soil and recent archeological data a new agro-ecological model was created for the Carpathian Basin, with an eye to the environmental and social factors determining the expansion of the Early Neolithic communities with cultural roots and farming experience from the Balkan and the Mediterranean areas. This new model of the relationship between man and the environment in the Carpathian Basin reflects an approach which is fundamentally different from previously offered explanations. While describing this model we disproved the "Proto-Tisa" boundary and earlier palaeoenvironmental theories. The lack of prominent geomorphological form (hills or rivers) along this barrier raises the question: Why did the northern expansion of the earliest Neolithic culture deriving from the Mediterranean halt within the central part of the Carpathian Basin? Our research shows that this part constitutes a transitory region between the environments of the Balkan Penninsula and Western Europe. These environmental differences were already present during the Holocene and determined the life of Mesolithic and Neolithic groups. In the research area, there was the Central European - Balkan Agro-Ecological Barrier (CEB AEB) which, in the Early Neolithic, limited the settlement and expansion possibilities of the Körös culture. The barrier also played an essential part in the neolitization of the Late Mesolithic communities in the Carpathian Basin, the establishment of the autochthonous Neolithic groups already independent of their Mediterranean cultural roots, and the development of the Linear Pottery complex. However, there are infiltration zones in the area along the main rivers, where Late Mesolithic and Early Neolithic communities maintained contact with one another. For this area, which was transitory in terms of landscape, climate, flora and soil, we not only have to take into consideration an environmental shift due to the increase in elevation above sea level, but also pay attention to the effect of micro-level mosaicity. These differing micro-environmental conditions altered and modified the settlement strategy of the Körös culture and led to the establishment of alternative settlement functions, accommodating loessic ground surfaces.

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Unionidae as a potential food source for a Late Neolithic community from Hódmezõvásárhely-Gorzsa, Hungary.

Sándor Gulyás¹, Anikó Tóth¹, Pál Sümegi^1,2

1. University of Szeged, Department of Geology and Paleontology, 6722 Szeged Egyetem u.2., Hungary, gubanc@yahoo.com

2. Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Archeology, H 1014 Budapest, Úri u.49. Hungary

Abstract

The aim of this study was to shed light onto the dietary habits and gathering modes of a Late Neolithic tell community near Hódmezővásárhely-Gorzsa, Southeast Hungary, using detailed archeozoological, morphometric and paleoecological analysis of previously collected bivalve shells. The shell material came from a waste ditch of the oldest horizon in the tell settlement dated 4898-4874 BC. More than 400 kgs of shell has been excavated. In this study only a minor part of the shells (1213 pcs.) have been utilized as a first step in developing suitable methodology for analyzing the dietary habits of this community. Frequency histograms show whether or not the gatherers of the Neolithic community collected the shells selectively. The larger older shells, yielding more edible soft material, were primarily collected. Similar results have been gained from statistical distribution analyses of age data derived from the counting of yearly growth lines. In order to determine the time or seasonality of collecting, a part of the shell material was sectioned and acetate replicas were created, following the methods of Sato (1999). Thin sections in plastic were prepared. Growth lines were counted under the microscope at magnifications 40x and 100x. By counting the growth lines and marking the last yearly inactive period, we could give a good estimate for the time of collection (early spring, late summer or early fall). As a result, we can determine if the material from the waste ditch was collected at once or at different times of the year, when either harsh conditions required it, or just for supplementary dietary purposes.

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Grasslands, woodlands and culture in the Carpathian Basin (Poster).

Imola Juhász^2,,Pál Sümegi¹, Sándor Gulyás¹, Sándor Molnár¹, Katalin Herbich¹, Mariann Imre¹, Gabriella Szegvári¹

1. University of Szeged, Department of Geology and Paleontology, H-6722 Szeged, Egyetem u.2-6. Hungary, e-mail of corresponding authors: sumegi@geo.u-szeged.hu, gubanc@yahoo.com,

2. Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Archeology, H- 1014 Budapest Úri u. 49., Hungary

Poster Abstract

According to detailed geological and paleontological analyses on the Pleistocene deposits of the Carpathian basin, this 300,000 km² area lying at the interface of the woodlands of Central and Central-Eastern Europe and the arboraceous grasslands or steppes of Eastern Europe can be characterized by a highly complex and versatile development during the past two and a half million years. From the opening of the Ice Age within the region under examination three major areas displaying large-scale complexity and mosaicity in all the micro-, meso- and macro- scales have developed. The formation of a macro-scale mosaicity or complexity was due to an overlap in three major climatic zones. This is further complicated with a gently decreasing Continental effect from the east to the west complemented by an increase in the Oceanic effect in the same direction. Furthermore an increasing Submediterranean influence from the north to the south and the presence of Subcarpathian-Carpathian influence in the hilly areas and mountain can be observed. The regional and local geological, geomorphological and hydrological conditions have some modifying effect on the final outcome of environmental conditions. Geoarcheological studies seem to indicate that this complexity had a major deterministic role on the immigrating and settling of human communities forcing them to adapt to these conditions. Thus the newly arriving groups of people originating from different climatic areas could conquer only certain parts of the basin suitable for their economic needs. Thus it may not be surprising that not a single culturally and materially uniform human society or community was able to conquer the whole of the Carpathian basin in the course of its history. On the other hand the basic conditions and techniques of agricultural production were forced to follow the continuous climatic changes as well. These changes were further enhanced by the presence of culturally, economically and socially different communities living adjacent to each other, thus creating not only environmental but cultural borderlines in the Carpathian basin. In our opinion these dual effects, both cultural and environmental in nature are continuously present in the Carpathian basin and must be blamed for forcing the newly arriving and settling groups to alter their economic and social behaviors.

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Late Neolithic man and environment in the Carpathian Basin- a preliminary geoarcheological report from Csőszhalom at Tiszapolgár (Poster).

Pál Sümegi ^1,2, Sándor Gulyás¹, Imola Juhász², Zoltán Hunyadfalvi¹. Sándor Molnár¹, Katalin Herbich¹, Mariann Imre¹, Gabriella Szegvári¹

1. University of Szeged, Department of Geology and Paleontology, 6722 Szeged Egyetem u.2., Hungary sumegi@geo.u-szeged.hu

2. Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Archeology, H-1014 Budapest Úri u.49. Hungary

Poster Abstract

The Late Neolithic tell and settlement of Csőszhalom at Tiszapolgár is situated at the northeastern corner of the Great Hungarian Plains in the northern interface of two main regions, the Hajdúság and the Hortobágy, bordered by the alluvial plain of the river Tisza within the Carpathian Basin. The geological history of these regions fundamentally determined the bedrock and soil conditions as well as the composition of the vegetation within the surroundings of Csőszhalom, thus offered possibilities of living and settlement formation for the Late Neolithic communities as well. According to results of boring the Csőszhalom tell and settlement was situated on a large, sandy area covered with alluvial loess, forming a wide levee. From the top down to the surrounding riverbeds a hydro series greatly dependent on local morphology and responsible for the mosaicity of soil conditions and vegetation as well could have been observed along with a soil and a vegetation series. The following Late Neolithic paleogeography has been established for the area on the basis of sedimentological, micromorphologic), pollen analytical and carpological investigations on samples from the surrounding ditches, riverbeds and archeological sites. Micromorphologic analysis of sediments from ditches surrounding the Late Neolithic tell and the boreholes indicated a relatively thick vegetation cover (mainly various soft-bodied plants) with fine, red, amorf, jelly-like iron-oxihydroxid (limonite-goethite) bands around the roots. Besides the carbonate grains and bands reddish iron concretions (pea structures) with a diameter of 0.5-0.6 mm could have been identified between levels of 92-92.5m up to the height of 93m above sea level. This indicates that during floods preceding the period of river regulations relatively high zones of saturation could have developed, up to 92-93 ms above sea level with surficial groundwater arteries. Only regions higher than 93ms above the sea level were suitable for establishing settlements and starting production in the investigated area. The process of soil formation was highly variable. Sedimentological and micromorphologic analyses refer to the development of a soil series with paludal soils in the upfilling channels and hydromorf woodland soils on the banks. Palaeobotanical results reinforce the interpretations. It is concluded that in this mosaic environment, where the Late Neolithic people settled, human activities totally altered the original vegetation cover of the loessy levees while the composition of the flora of marshy and forest areas has been only gently modified.

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For additional WAC information go to http://wwwehlt.flinders.edu.au/wac5/indexhomepage.html

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[1] Originally proposed by Drs. Nicholas and Lilley.