3

THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF
CLIMATE CHANGE
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Climate in the making of society and society in the making

of climate
A central theme of this chapter is that humans, biologically and socially, have been
shaped in part by the changing climates of the natural environments they have
inhabited. At the same time, the inverse is true as well. Humans have long had the
ability to have local impacts on climate and, with the evolution of advanced indus-
trial technologies, to significantly shape the very climates at ever higher scales with
which they must cope. Based on an examination of the writings of archaeologists,
those working on the reconstruction of human ways of life at specific research sites,
as well as those carrying out temporal or regional analyses, this chapter assesses the
nature of the human–climate interaction through the sweep of archaeological time.
Ironically, it was historical geographers, like Carl Sauer (1941), rather than archae-
ologists, who examined the anthropogenic impact of humans on the environment
and climate. Archaeologists became to turn their attention to these topics around
2000 (Redman 1999; Redman, James, et al. 2007; Contreras 2016). As a cautionary
note, given that we are sociocultural anthropologists, our overview of the archae-
ology is by no means comprehensive. Therefore, readers who wish to pursue the
field more may wish to consult various archaeological journals, such as American
Antiquity, Journal of Archaeological Science, Geoarchaeology, and Environmental Archaeology
(also see Sandweiss and Kelley 2012).

Changing climate and human dispersal over time

When one contemplates time in terms of the age of the universe (estimated to be
Copyright 2018. Routledge.

about 15 billion years) or even the age of Earth (estimated to be about 5 billion years
old), it becomes quickly obvious that human existence has been so far, and probably

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AN: 1753628 ; Hans A. Baer, Merrill Singer.; The Anthropology of Climate Change : An Integrated Critical Perspective
Account: s5776608.main.eds
 42 The archaeology of climate change

ultimately will constitute, a quick blip in cosmic time. Gareth Morgan and John
McCrystal (2009: 85–86) delineate a geological memory lane for Earth consisting
of the following distinctive stages:

s 3NOWBALL %ARTHˆTHE PLANET IS COVERED IN ICE MAKING IT VIRTUALLY UNINHABITABLE

until around 635 million BP.
s 'REENHOUSE %ARTHˆTHE PLANET IS TROPICAL EVEN AT THE POLES $URING THIS PERIOD
which included the Age of the Dinosaurs, global temperatures were 4–6°C
(7.2–10.8°F), perhaps 10°C (18°F), warmer than today. Furthermore, CO2
concentrations were at times six times greater than today. This era lasted until
about 70 million BP.
s )CEHOUSE %ARTHˆA PERIOD CONSISTING OF GLACIALnINTERGLACIAL OSCILLATIONS BEGINNING
around 34 million BP. Over the course of the last 2.6 million years of this era,
ice sheets formed over the Eurasian and North American land masses, pulsing
about every 40,000 years. The last phase of icehouse Earth is known to science
as the Pleistocene, a period from 1.8 million BP until 11,550 BP.
s 4HE (OLOCENE INTERGLACIALˆCOMMENCING AT THE END OF THE 0LEISTOCENE IT IS THE
contemporary era, although, as noted in Chapter 1, there has been a movement
to use the term Anthropocene to label the segment of most dramatic human
impact on the planet.

Figure 3.1 displays the various geographic ages identified by the environmental
sciences that match up with Morgan and McCrystal’s climatic world model. These
ages are dated to have occurred within particular geological and climatic epochs in
Earth’s history.

Cenozoic geological epoch

65 million The present

years ago time

Quarternary era

Pleistocene and holocene periods

Holocene climate optimum

Roman climate optimum

Little ice age

FIGURE 3.1 The geological and climatic epochs of Earth

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 The archaeology of climate change 43

Figure 3.1 includes a number of different systems of periodization, including

both climatic and geological timescales, as clarified below:

s Glacial periods are named intervals of time (in thousands of years) within
an ice age, marked by cooling temperatures and the growth of glaciers around
the planet. Interglacials, in turn, are named warmer periods within an ice
age that occur between cooler glacial periods. A stadial (such as the Older
Dryas, the Younger Dryas, and the Little Ice Age) is a period of lower pressure
during an interglacial of insufficient duration (less than 10,000 years) to be
classified as a glacial period. There have been at least five major ice ages in
Earth’s history, outside of which Earth seems to have been ice-free even in high
latitudes.
s Thermals are named climate events, including the Holocene Climate Optimum
(a warm interval from 8,000 to 5,000 years ago) and the Roman Climatic
Optimum or Medieval Warm Period (a mild climatic period from 1,060 to 900
years ago prior to the Little Ice Age).
s The Cenozoic (meaning “new life”) is a geological epoch of time that stretches
from 65 million years ago, marked by the extinction of most dinosaur species,
to the present. It is subdivided into three eras, the Quaternary (2.5 million years
ago to the present), the Neogene, and the Paleogene. Of importance to human
history and activity on the planet are the two time periods that comprise the
Quaternary: the Holocene (12,000 years ago to the present) and before it
the Pleistocene (2.5 million to about 12,000 years ago).

Climatically, as this discussion suggests, Earth has seen periods of both relative
stability and dramatic change.
As seen in the various studies cited in this chapter, archaeologists and paleonto-
logists use several different dating schemes, including “kyr” (thousand years
before present), BCE (years before the contemporary or common era), BP
(years before present), and BC/AD (before Christ and Anno Domini, “in the year
of the Lord.”). We mention these here to avoid confusion in the review below.
This chapter scans times and places that “climate change” played a role in
human dispersal across the planet. In the course of the evolutionary history of
our species, different patterns of climate change occurred in different eras and in
different locations (across a spectrum of heating and cooling ranges). Throughout
the sweep of time, climate conditions have interacted with the tendency of life
forms (in this case, our pre-human and human ancestors) toward biological dis-
persal across local environments. Such movement tends to be constrained by
dispersal barriers, such as climate, that can make some places hard to colonize
at particular points in time. In the case of our species, the expanding capacity of
the human brain, other bodily changes, and the emergence of culture allowed
a particularly flexible response to quite diverse environmental challenges and
opportunities.

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 44 The archaeology of climate change

Children of the ice

Between 8 and 5 million years ago, Earth underwent a long-term drying and cool-
ing period. The reason this development is of importance, as Wood (2005: 75–76)
observes, is that:

Hominin [or hominid] evolution began in Africa at the times of these cli-
matic changes. Due to the increasing dryness, the dense forests were gradually
replaced with open woodland. Tracts of grasslands began to appear between
large patches of trees. We tend to think that the grass-adapted animals we
associate with the modern-day African savannahs, such as the antelopes and
zebra, have always been there. But they and the savannah they inhabit are
relatively recent phenomena. The common ancestor of modern humans and
living chimpanzees probably lived in the dense forest. Some of its descendants,
though, began to adapt to life on the ground in more open conditions.

The particular epoch of our 5–6 million years or so on the planet has led to
humans being described by some as the “children of the ice” (Behringer 2010:
39). In all, Earth has experienced ten major and 40 minor episodes of glaciations
over the past million years (Farley 2008). Milankovitch cycles, during which the tilt
of the Earth’s axis fluctuates between 22° and 24.5°, occur about every 41,000 years.
This shift in the axis of the planet causes the beginning and ending of ice ages. Other
natural forces that can affect climate include (1) changes in the Sun’s energy output;
(2) variations in the distance of the Earth from the Sun; (3) changes in the atmospheric
and oceanic circulation systems; (4) changes in the absorption or radiations of energy
by the Earth’s surface, related to the extent of cloud cover and the nature of
the planet surface; and (5) volcanic eruptions (Farley 2008; Officer and Page 2009).
The climate for the better part of the past 110,000 years has fluctuated between
“warm” states resembling the present time and prolonged “cold” states marked
by glacial advances and temperatures of 8°C (14.4°F) or more below the present
average, with the Last Glacial Maximum having occurred about 20,000 years ago
(Kennedy 2006). Atmospheric CO2 hovered between 180 and 300 ppm over the
course of the 650,000 years prior to recent times (Maslin 2009: 8). Most recently it
has begun to rise, but not because of natural factors.
Despite the emphasis that some archaeologists, such as Brian Fagan, give to
climatic factors in the rise and fall of civilizations, many archaeologists, as well as
historians, ignore or downplay the role of environmental and climatic change in
shaping social evolution as a reaction to the strong environmental determinism
earlier posited by V. Gordon Childe (1928/1954). Some archaeologists, in fact,
believe that scholars who write books like the one you are reading have fallen prey
to what Butzer (2011: 1) terms the “popular ‘new’ environmental determinism
centered on civilizational collapse in response to ‘abrupt’ climate climatic change”
and in relation to which he calls for “strong voices of caution.” He objects to the
work of people like Jared Diamond (2005) who argue that various ancient societies,

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 The archaeology of climate change 45

including Classic Mayan civilization, collapsed as a result of overexploiting their

environments. Butzer (2011: 13) asserts:

Most of the more popular claims that climate has impacted history are
deductive and based on data that are inadequate or misrepresented. Social
resilience and adaptation are not considered, ignoring case studies of the ways
in which people have confronted short- or long-term crises in the past.

Conversely, Ferri A. Hassan (2009: 60) argues that while historically human
societies have often “adapted” to multi-decadal fluctuations, they are “not immune
from experiencing environmental stresses caused by unanticipated, multicentennial
and millennial severe, abrupt climatic events.” Paleoanthropologist Ian Tattersall
(2012: 3) also recognizes the role of climate change in the human evolutionary
trajectory:

The earliest representatives of our own group lived at the end of the Miocene
and at the beginning of the following Pliocene epoch, each between about
six and 4.5 million years ago. And they appear just as the arrival of many new
open-country mammal genera in the fossil record signals another climatic
change. Oceanic cooling affected rainfall and temperatures on continents
worldwide. . . . [I]n Africa it inaugurated a trend toward the breakup of forest
masses and the formation of woodlands into which grasslands intruded locally.
This episode of climatic deterioration furnished the larger ecological stage on
which the earliest known hominids made their debut.

Controversies of this sort are not unusual in the sciences. The passage of time,
new data, new ways of understanding older data and of seeing the world, and the
arrival of a new generation of scholars often helps to sort out such disagreements.
Increasingly, in the work of younger scholars especially, acceptance of the significant
impact of climate change is becoming apparent.

Climate and the global spread of prehistoric foraging societies

The precise role played by climate change in the pathway of human evolution has
been considered by human paleontologists, archaeologists, and other scholars. Fagan
(2009b: 11) observes:

The seesawing Ice Age created extraordinary challenges and opportunities

for the humans and animals that inhabited the Pleistocene world . . . When
the Ice Age began, somewhat ape-like hominins were the only humans on
earth. They walked upright, made and used tools, foraged in small bands and
were well adapted to the more open country of cooler, drier times. At first,
humans were purely African mammals, but around 1.8 to 1.7 million years
ago people suddenly appeared in Eurasia and Asia, living as far north as
40 degrees. By this time, we were no longer purely tropical animals.

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 46 The archaeology of climate change

Steven M. Stanley, a geologist, presents a highly provocative theory that Homo,

as opposed to the earlier australopithecines, is the true “child of the Ice Age.” He
maintains that the modern Ice Age contributed to the evolution from Australopithecus
to Homo by suddenly altering the African landscape, and leading ultimately to
the extinction of the australopithecines (Stanley 1996: 4). Australopithecus, despite
being bipedal, was a relatively good tree climber, which allowed it to find refuge
from predators in the vast tropical forests. But climate change shrank the African
rain forest in the middle of the Pliocene epoch around the time of the onset of
the Ice Age (Stanley 1996: 111). Paleoanthropologist Rick Potts (1996: 42) argues
that “Protohominids became more terrestrial as the spreading savanna inspired
greater reliance on tools and meat.” Ardipithecus ramidus, a species that appeared
about 4.4 mya (million years ago) in Ethiopia, appears to have been bipedal, but had
a large, flexible toe allowing it to effectively climb trees, making it well adapted to
the humid woodland that it inhabited (Potts 2012: 156–157). Australopithecus afarensis
of “Lucy fame”, dating back to 3.8–3.5 mya at the Laetoli and Hadar sites in
Ethiopia, “shows the loss of some of the arboreal adaptations evident in Ardipithecus,
the environmental evidence from Au. Afarensis sites suggests similar habitat diversity
over time and space” (Potts 2012: 157). Australopithecus afarensis disappeared from
East Africa around 3 mya as the climate became drier. Several lines of hominins,
particularly Australopithecus africanus, a gracile form, and Australopithecus robustus, a
stockier form, emerged afterwards and were also found in South Africa.
As the forest contracted with the onset of the Ice Age, the australopithecines
could no longer easily escape predators, such as saber-toothed and leopard-type
cats, crocodiles, and hyenas, whereas chimpanzees and gorillas, which were nimble
in terms of retreating to the trees, were able to do so. Thus, the bones of our ancient
ancestors discovered by paleontologists and archaeologists often show signs of
having been gnawed by carnivores. Under conditions of erratic instability, environ-
mental and climatic pressures contributed to the evolution of a larger brain (a near
doubling of cranial capacity as well as a change in the size of the frontal lobes of the
brain) among some australopithecines around 2.4 million years ago that enabled a
new genus, namely Homo, to evolve and to survive by developing stone-tipped
weapons that allowed it to defend itself against various carnivores (Stanley 1996:
59). Potts (2010: 48) adds: “Although early hominins may have been relatively
defenseless from a physical standpoint, part of their primate heritage included
impressive defenses against predators, including being social and vocal.” As opposed
to Australopithecus, or more precisely Australopithecus africanus, Paranthropus or
Australopithecus robustus survived longer into the Ice Age, eventually becoming
extinct about a million years ago. Stanley maintains that the latter’s powerful jaws
and large molars provided it with a broader diet that included foodstuffs such as
tubers and roots—a factor in its longer persistence. In reality, the fossil record on
australopithecines is much more complex than the existence of a simple distinction
between Australopithecus africanus and Australopithecus robustus, a point that Potts
(1996: 216) admits in his observation that somewhere between eight and 13 distinct
species of bipedal hominids, including Homo habilis and Homo erectus, existed at one

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 The archaeology of climate change 47

time or other over the course of the past 4 million years. Since this observation,
paleoanthropologists have identified and debated over several new categories
of proto-hominids and early hominids, as well as added new named members of
the hominid family to our branch-rich family tree, a discussion that falls outside the
purview of this book.
Potts (1998) has proposed what he terms a variability selection hypothesis, which
asserts that specific adaptations that appeared among early human ancestors were not
narrowly shaped by any particular habitat. Rather, the key to human evolution was
environmental instability. Hominins did not become physically limited by diet or
other factors to a single type of environment, as is seen in some species, but, because
of continued exposure to a changing environment/climate, developed as generalists
capable of surviving in many different kinds of habitats. Indeed, the “survival condi-
tions of human evolution were continually revised as climate oscillated between arid
and moist and between cold and warm” as supported by environmental records
on shifting conditions from around the world (Potts 2010: 50). Over the course of
human evolution, hominins increased their physical and cultural coping skills,
allowing them to invade new and ecological quite different physical environments.
Prior to 2 million years ago, the African climate had been temperate and humid,
but became colder and more arid after about 1.9 million BP (Hetherington and
Reid 2010). The first hominids may have moved out of Africa about 2 million years
ago, with Homo erectus populations living in the region we today known as Pakistan
about this time and arriving in Java by 1.5 million years ago, possibly as early as
1.9 million years ago, and in Jordan by around 1.5 million years ago. It is at this
time that Earth underwent another warming, leading to an expansion once again of
the African forests (Hetherington and Reid 2010). Around 1.3 million years BP, the
climate chilled again, resulting in increased grasslands in Africa. Homo erectus appeared
in Europe around 900,000 years ago, a period of warming and rising of sea levels.
As Hetherington and Reid (2010: 87) observe:

During the early Pleistocene, glaciations were generally low amplitude and
high frequency, occurring about every 41,000 years. In the middle Pleistocene,
after about 800,000 years ago, glaciations were of higher amplitude and
reducing frequency, occurring about every 100,000 years. . . . Transitions
between glacial and interglacial conditions were more pronounced, resulting
in greater latitudinal shifts in fauna and flora. Beginning 1.2 million years ago,
a series of mainly mammalian dispersals began in Asia. By about 800,000 years
ago, more than 25 species of mammals had left Asia and relocated in central
and Western Europe. These dispersals are believed to be related to climate
change. It is possible that early hominins were part of this major mammalian
dispersal out of Asia.

Potts (1996) maintains that in the period between 500,000 and 200,000 years ago
there was a continual process of human diversification. Some scientists, he notes,
believe all of the hominids that lived during this period were members of a single

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 48 The archaeology of climate change

evolving evolutionary line that connected Homo erectus to modern Homo sapiens.
Other researchers, by contrast, view the paleontological record as being comprised
of four different species of humans during this era, with Homo erectus living in eastern
Asia, Homo heidelbergensis dwelling in Europe, some poorly known populations of
archaic Homo sapiens occupying Africa, and toward the end of this time range, the
Neanderthals, who had evolved in Europe and western Asia, living in Africa.
In John Hoffecker’s (2009) reading of the paleontological and archaeological
records, the Asian counterparts of Homo heidelbergensis vacated northern Asia during
glaciations. The Neanderthals followed in the wake of Homo erectus and Homo
heidelbergensis in Europe. Many scholars view the Classic Neanderthals, with their
big bodies, as an adaptation to intense cold in Europe and Eurasia. While many
physical anthropologists have argued that the Neanderthals were more or less
in direct line with modern humans, and have been designated as Homo sapiens
neanderthalensis, others, like Fagan (2010), view them as having been a sideline that
fell outside the genetic range of modern humans, a group that could not compete
with the more modern Cro-Magnon types who filtered into Europe from western
Asia around 45,000 years ago. However, genetic studies indicate that Neanderthal
genes are still found in human populations, so some interbreeding clearly occurred,
thus substantially supporting an argument posited by some paleoanthropologists in
the past (Stringer 2012).
In contrast to the Neanderthals, who “survived by moving into sheltered valleys
and slightly warmer environments in Italy and south of the Pyrenees,” the Cro-
Magnons with their more elaborate tool kits refined hunting techniques in a wide
array of landscapes, ranging from tundras to the margins of coniferous forests (Fagan
2010: 156–157). Fagan (2010: 157) boldly asserts that the “diverse Cro-Magnon
societies of the Last Glacial Maximum were an exemplar of later arctic hunter-
gather societies.” Eurasia’s population possibly fluctuated between the stadials and
interstadials of the Upper Paleolithic (Fagan 2010: 140). The climate in Europe
suddenly became warmer with the Boelling oscillation that set in about 14,500 BP,
lasting about 1,500 years (Fagan 2010: 226).
One study based upon a database of 499 archaeological collections from 332
European sites indicates that the Neanderthal tool kit only began to diversify during
the Fourth Glacial, suggesting technological stagnation during the long dura-
tion of the Middle Paleolithic, a period of 200,000–250,000 years, with a high
degree of climatic variability (Bocquet-Appel and Tuffreau 2009). In contrast,
modern humans during the Upper Paleolithic developed a wide variety of more
sophisticated tools, indicating a higher cognitive capacity.
Fagan (1999: 68) argues that oceans and deserts have repeatedly proven to be
“powerful engines in human affairs.” The Sahara Desert, for example, functions as
a pump which is driven by atmospheric changes and global climatic shifts (Fagan
1999: 68). The area had more precipitation some 130,000 years ago and contained
shallow lakes and semi-arid grasslands. When the Sahara dried up as glaciers advanced
in more northerly environments, it became a barrier between tropical Africa and
the Mediterranean area, but not before modern humans or Homo sapiens emerged

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 The archaeology of climate change 49

in Africa and radiated out to Eurasia (Stanley 1996: 208–211). Thus, Hassan (2009:
47–48) argues:

Human dispersal out of Africa took place between 130 and 90kyr . . . and may
have coincided with the global climatic changes associated with the last major
glaciation. Modern humans appeared in Palestine ca. 90kyr, and remains of
early humans in Southeast Asia date to c.75kyr. . . . This suggests that this
phase of dispersal may have been associated with warmer interstadials that
cluster in the period c.85–75kyr.

Lake Chad has been a climatological barometer of the ancient Sahara. Present-
day Lake Chad is miniscule compared with the Lake Chad of 120,000 years ago,
which filled a vast basin larger than the Caspian Sea. The Sahara began to dry up
sometime before 2,700 BP for reasons that are still not understood. The Sahel
became an undulating grassy steppe fluctuating between 200 and 400km in length,
bordered on the north by the Sahara and to the south by forests. The Sahel has
experienced a climate characterized by irregular and sometimes severe droughts for
the past 2,500 years.
Between 1 million and 10,000 years ago, a period that more or less corres-
ponded with the Fourth Glacial, humans made their way to Eurasia, Australia, and
the Americas (Burroughs 2005). Hassan (2009: 48) identifies dispersals into southwest
Asia at about 50,000–40,000 years ago and into northern Europe around 40,000
years ago which apparently were “triggered by very severe cold conditions 50kyr,”
to Australia around 38,000 to 30,000 years ago, which “coincided with a period
of frequent millennial changes in climate starting before 40kyr until 36kyr,” to
northeastern Siberia around 20,000 years ago, “during the Last Glacial Maximum
(LGM), perhaps in response to episodic amelioration in climate during that cold
phase,” and across the Bering Strait to the Americas possibly “during the Younger
Dryas 13,000 to 11,600 years ago.” According to Hoffecker (2009: 127), a “wave
of innovation and change ensued between 30,000 years ago, when the Neanderthals
disappeared, and the maximum cold of the last glacial period about 23,000–21,000
years ago.” Technological innovations that occurred during this period included
large settlements in northern Eurasia and large dwelling units with multiple fireplaces
in south Siberia, at sites near Lake Baikal, as well as kilns used to fire ceramics in
parts of northern Eurasia.
As this discussion indicates, in the end, the Neanderthals joined many other
branches of the diverse evolutionary tree of hominids and became extinct. Notes
Potts (2010: 52):

Over the past three million years in particular, powerful climate swings would
have led to large fluctuations in supplies of crucial resources, contributing to
occasional crashes in population size. All of these factors can influence the
survival or extinction of species.

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 50 The archaeology of climate change

A lesson of the hominid fossil record is that extinction related to climate change
is as familiar to our own ancestral line as it is to other species. The critical question,
of course, is how it will figure in the hominid future.
As the foregoing review indicates, the progressive interaction of our biology with
climate/environments in conjunction with human interaction led us on a biosocial
course of brain capacity expansion and cultural production, which, in turn, allowed
our full dispersal to most ecological zones on the planet. We have become the
beings we now see in the mirror through our interactions with shifting climate/
environments, and, as the capacities born of this interface grew, especially the cul-
tural capacities, we have, in turn, shaped the world around us. When carried further,
however, with the continued development of the transformative capacity of culture
(particularly of technology), there has emerged an ability for humans to not only
adapt to varied environments, but to adversely impact and degrade the climate/
environment at the peril of our own extinction.
Alluding to the disappearance of various species of mega-fauna (i.e., large animal
species) in the Americas and Australia at the end of the Pleistocene, Potts (1996:
216) maintains:

it has always been difficult to separate the effects of climate and of

human predation on the extinction episodes of that time. The splurge
of human hunters over new landscapes occurred against a background of
major climate change, a time of ecological trauma in some places, such as
Australia, and of ecological recovery from glacial conditions in others, such
as North America.

Over the course of the past 10,000 years or so, generally referred to as the
Holocene and viewed by many as essentially the Fourth Interglacial, Earth’s climate,
as noted in Chapter 1, has been relatively stable (although hardly rigid and
unchanging). Indeed, it would be appropriate to refer to much of the Holocene as
a period of constrained but shifting stability. Anthropogenic climate change in very
recent times, however, has begun to play havoc with this relative stability. This
is not an entirely new set of circumstance for our species. Certainly, prior to the
Holocene, humanity, over the course of the last glacial, was in a climatically pre-
carious situation. Stanley Ambrose (1998: 623) refers to the Late Pleistocene as an
era of “bottlenecks and releases” during which many humans perished but some
survived in large tropical refuges, such as in equatorial Africa. He maintains that the
Fourth Glacial was preceded by 1,000 years of the coldest temperatures of the Later
Pleistocene (c. 71,000–70,000 years ago) which may have been caused by the
eruption of the Toba volcano in Sumatra, resulting in the decimation of most
modern human populations of the day.
Lower sea levels proved to be beneficial for some sectors of humanity, in
that they facilitated the movement of populations that had to migrate in order
to gradually accommodate their increasing numbers. According to Burroughs
(2005: 102):

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 The archaeology of climate change 51

In particular, in the Persian Gulf, around India, and most of all, down through
southeast Asia and Indonesia, the linking of many of the islands (which we
now call Sundaland) greatly assisted human mobility. The drop in sea level
after 85kya, and the low level between 67 and 61kya may have played a
crucial part in the movement out of Africa and the early arrival of humans in
Australia, although they still had to overcome the considerable challenge of
sailing across the much reduced Timor Sea. The same pattern applies to the
land bridge that formed between northeastern Asia and Alaska (termed
Beringia), which is regarded to be the only feasible route for modern humans
to reach North America.

The retreat of ice sheets allowed humans to penetrate North America and
Scandinavia (Hoffecker 2009). The subsequent rise of the sea levels, however,
eradicated the Bering Land Bridge between Siberia and Alaska possibly by 11,000
years ago (Hoffecker 2009). In the case of North America, a corridor developed
between the eastern and western ice sheets that allowed humans to penetrate into
the interior of North America and eventually make their way to South America.
A sea level drop of some 90m exposed a 300m-wide relatively flat section of the
continental shelf, the now submarine plain bordering the continent, which allowed
humans to penetrate the western coast of North America.
Climate change continued to be somewhat erratic at the end of the Fourth
Glacial, but overall the climate was warmer, facilitating the peopling of the New
World from Canada to the tip of South America, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific
coasts.
In retrospect, it appears that while fluctuations in climate nearly wiped out the
entire hominid line at certain points in time, these shifts also allowed the dispersal
of humans to new geographic zones, a dissemination that probably played a role in
the survival of our species despite devastating local climate/environmental upheavals.

Climate impacts on the Neolithic

Intensive food production began in the Near East toward the end of the Fourth
Glacial, or more specifically the Younger Dryas (a renowned cold spike that began
about 12,700 years ago in various locations around the globe) and the beginning of
the Holocene, which facilitated significant population growth (Dincauze 2000;
Hetherington and Reid 2010). Various scholars suggest that both climate change
and population growth contributed to the emergence of agriculture in several parts
of the world (Christian 2011; Hetherington 2012). Joy McCorriston and Frank
Hole (1991: 46) argue that plant domestication in the near East was driven by the
“synergistic effect of climate change, anthropogenic environmental change, and
social innovation.” These kinds of interaction are reflected as well in the “oasis
theory” developed in 1951 by Childe, who:

suggested that a colder, dryer climate forced humans and animals to retreat
to where the best sources of water remained and where hunting and

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 52 The archaeology of climate change

gathering continued to be good. These localized groups then developed

agriculture to feed the newly concentrated populations—perhaps some
refugees fleeing areas of drought or destruction brought with them
knowledge of upland wild cereals and stocks of their seeds. The growing
population provided the labor necessary to seed, tend, irrigate, and harvest
the crops. Society necessarily became stratified to organize the effort, and
so began the rise of civilization.
Hetherington 2012: 74

In a similar vein, Fagan (2013: 40) argues that the drought cycle that contributed to
a shift from a reliance on nuts and wild grasses to the domestication of plants and
animals in the Middle East led to the rapid spread of farming settlements throug-
hout the region as well as the eastern Mediterranean coast as the “cold snap and
accompanying droughts eased.”
Climatic factors also have played an important role in human relations with the
seas. Archaeologist Lewis Binford (1968) asserted that global change in sea level in
the post-Pleistocene era contributed to greater reliance on fish and other aquatic
resources, which in turn led to sedentarization in areas rich in marine resources and
to rapid population growth in certain regions based on stable, protein-rich diets.
Conversely, population pressures in these regions forced some populations into
more marginal environments where they shifted to food production as a means of
retaining or replicating standards of living in richer environments.
In a somewhat alternative perspective, Donald O. Henry (1989) argues that
environmental changes prompted by global climatic oscillations forced human
populations to gradually shift to farming near the end of the Fourth Glacial, some
10,000–13,000 years ago. According to Ian Whyte (2008: 56), the:

onset of the drier conditions that characterized the Younger Dryas period may
have forced the later Natufians [the name given to the sedentary hunter-
gatherers living in the Eastern Mediterranean between about 12,500 and
10,200 years ago] to switch from harvesting wild cereals to the deliberate
cultivation of these same crops in the Fertile Crescent.

Climate change appears to have placed pressure on the peoples of Mesopotamia

to relocate from the densely populated villages of the Hilly Flanks (an area curving
around the Tigris, Euphrates, and Jordan valleys of the Near East) to congregate
in cities in which elites coordinated elaborate irrigation systems (Morris 2011). As
Hoffecker (2009) observes, archaeologists speculate that the brief cold phase known
as the Younger Dryas forced changes in human subsistence economies that led
to the rapid emergence of village farming. Within a few millennia, the Near East
witnessed a sizeable enlargement of agricultural areas, the appearance of cities, and
the development of pre-modern civilizations, a pattern repeated in other parts
of the world as well.
Hassan describes the possible relationship between climate change and the move-
ments of Saharan populations between 7,800 and 6,800 BP, a period characterized

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 The archaeology of climate change 53

by frequent climatic oscillations and droughts. Climatic conditions became

progressively drier and led to the onset of severe aridity by 5,500–5,300 BP, signaling
the desertification of much of North Africa. The succession of wet and dry episodes
seems to have encouraged the adoption of pastoralism and the successive movements
of cattle and then ovicaprids (i.e., sheep and/or goats) westward following the
better-watered range and basin areas associated with the Saharan highlands (Hassan
2009). In the case of Central Africa, a team of archaeologists maintain that climate
change-induced expansion of savannahs in the Sanaga-Mbam confluence region
around 4,000–3,500 BP contributed to the large-scale settlement of Bantu-speakers
into Central Africa, later accompanied by the development of cereal crop farming
and metallurgy around 2,500 BP (Bostoen et al. 2015).

Ancient civilizations and later tribal societies

Based upon a Dahlem Workshop on the “Integrated History and Future of People
on the Earth” in Berlin in 2005, several archaeologists and other scholars identified
at least six global or at least semiglobal periods during which the amplitude of
change in precipitation, temperature, and wind was somewhat higher than before
the Holocene (Redman, Crumley, et al. 2007). They concurred that there were
two eras in climate history that underwent notable global scale climate change,
namely the 4.2K (kiloyear) event, a drier and much cooler period lasting from 2200
to 1800 BC and the seventh- to tenth-century episode. The 4.2K event induced
some sedentary farmers in northern Mesopotamia to abandon their settlements in a
move to more dispersed villages, but also witnessed the collapse of the Old Kingdom
in Egypt, cooler and drier conditions in much of China, and the renaissance of the
Harappan civilization in the Indus Valley due to the high flow of water from
melting Himalayan glaciers that was used for irrigation. Hassan (1994: 1) maintains
that the “collapse of centralized [Egyptian] government about 2200 BC . . .
coincides with the reduced Nile flood discharge, invasion of the Nile Valley by
dune sand, and possible degradation of the Delta floodplain.” The seventh- to
tenth-century event, which witnessed an increase in solar emissions and sea level
rises higher than the present day, contributed to the emergence of the High Middle
Ages in Europe, the fall of the Bal He Kuk Kingdom in Korea, the collapse of the
Maya civilization, and the fluorescence of the Hohokam culture in what is today
called Arizona (Redman, Crumley, et al. 2007).
Based upon their selected case studies, Redman, Crumley, et al. (2007: 143)
conclude:

It is clear that even within relatively uniform global climatic events, societies
respond in both parallel and diverse ways. Moreover, the same society at
one point in time may respond in a positive direction to the input and at
another point negatively.

Fagan (2011: 134) describes Mesopotamia as a “world of climatic extremes and

violent floods, of torrential rains and steaming-hot summers, a place where political

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 54 The archaeology of climate change

rivalries always simmered.” Archaeologist William R. Thompson (2007: 168) has

described the role of climate change in the Near East prior and after the fourth
century BC in the follow terms:

The availability of water initially encouraged the expansion of human

populations in the region, particularly in the river valleys. When precipitation
and river levels declined, subsequent water scarcities prompted the develop-
ment of new adaptive strategies leading to the accelerated emergence of
nomadic-sedentary divergence, urbanization, writing, government, religion,
and state-making. Climate change did not determine what transpired. There
were a host of possible responses, many of which were pursued. The most
successful strategies, however, involved the development of cities and
states. . . . But climate change accelerated the development of multiple,
interactive process to new levels of intensity.

Thompson (2007: 168–169) develops five working hypotheses that could be

used to interpret the impact of climate change on ancient civilizations, with the under-
standing that similar climate–society interactions also occur in other regions of the
world:

H1—Periods of economic decline in the ancient world were systematically associated

with periods of deteriorating climate and diminished water supply.
H2—Periods of trade collapse in the ancient world were systematically associated
with periods of deteriorating climate and diminished water supply.
H3—Regime transitions in the ancient world were systematically associated with
periods of deteriorating climate and diminished water supply.
H4—The most significant center–hinterland conflicts in the ancient world were
systematically associated with periods of deteriorating climate and water
supply.
H5—The conjunction of significant political and economic crises in the ancient
world were systematically associated with periods of deteriorating climate and
diminished water supply.

These hypotheses are reflected in our socioecological model introduced in

Chapter 1. With climate change and its symptoms of climate turmoil (e.g., droughts,
severe storms), environments became less predictable, populations became more
vulnerable, and ultimately their resiliency began to deteriorate, as expressed in the
economic and political breakdowns Thompson mentions.
Renowned archaeologist Joseph Tainter (1988: 1) argues that civilizations are
“fragile, impermanent things” which are sooner or later subject to collapse. He
delineates 11 major themes in the collapse of civilizations:

1. Depletion or cessation of a vital resource or resources on which the society

depends.

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 The archaeology of climate change 55

2. The establishment of a new resource base which alleviates social inequities and
leads to a reversion to a simpler society.
3. The occurrence of some insurmountable catastrophe.
4. Insufficient response to circumstances.
5. Presence of other complex societies.
6. Intruders.
7. Class conflict, societal contradictions, elite mismanagement or self-serving
behavior.
8. Social dysfunctions that contribute to societal disintegration.
9. Mystical factors such as societal decadence or loss of social vitality.
10. Chance concatenation of events such as invasion by warrior tribal societies or
the coming to power of ineffectual rulers.
11. Economic factors.

Tainter notes that there is considerable overlap in the factors listed above. He
argues that two major explanations for the collapse of civilizations are subsumed
under the theme of resource depletion, namely “the gradual deterioration or
depletion of a resource base (usually agriculture), often due to human mismanagement,
and the more rapid loss of resources due to an environmental fluctuation or climatic
shift” (Tainter 1988: 44). Various scholars have sought to link climate and resource
depletion with the collapse of civilizations. Below is a brief review of the connection
between climate and resource depletion in selected places cited by Tainter.
The American Southwest:

Climatic change is the most common explanation for the collapse of

horticultural settlements, and of social complexity, in various areas of the
Southwest. . . . The most frequent resource depletion arguments postulate
such things as drought, erosion, shifts in rainfall seasonality, lower temp-
eratures, overhunting of game, and depletion or increasing alkalinity of
cultivable soils.
Tainter 1988: 46

Eastern North America:

The collapse of northern Hopewell was ascribed by James B. Griffin to a

slightly cooler climatic phase in the upper Mississippi Valley.
Tainter 1988: 47

On Egypt, Tainter comments:

Karl Butzer has argued in a number of studies . . . that the collapse of the
Old Kingdom, and other political catastrophes of Egyptian history, can
be traced at least in part to variations in Nile flood levels, and thus to
precipitation patterns in the interior of Africa. . . . [He] sees Nile fluctuations

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 56 The archaeology of climate change

as a contributory rather than a causal agent, acting in concert with political

weakness.
Tainter 1988: 47

On the Mycenaean civilization, in 1966, Tainter (1988: 49) reports, Rhys

Carpenter “developed an elegantly written argument for the collapse of Mycenaean
civilization: that it, and other thirteenth-century BC upheavals in the Mediterranean,
were due to climatic change leading to famine, depopulations, and migration.”
The societal collapses that have occurred through history, as Tainter’s account
suggests, reflect the interplay of climatic factors, pluralea interactions (e.g., over-
hunting of game, anthropogenic alkalinization of cultivable soils), and vulnerability
(e.g., political weakness), the complex entwinement of climate/environment/
society factors incorporated in our model.
More recently, Tainter (2014) has argued that while the Roman and Mayan
civilizations exhibited many differences, they also followed similar paths of socio-
cultural evolution and developed similar vulnerabilities. He seeks to highlight the
following seven lessons from the Roman and Mayan cases in terms of comprehend-
ing environmental sustainability challenges in modern industrialized societies,
particularly the United States:

1. funding retirements for the baby-boom generation;

2. continuing increases in the cost of health care;
3. replacing decaying infrastructure;
4. adapting to climate change and repairing environmental damage;
5. developing new sources of energy;
6. continuing high military costs;
7. continued need to innovate (Tainter 2014: 210).

Tainter is not highly optimistic about the capacity of industrialized societies to

effectively address these problems. Efforts to more or less maintain the status quo in
terms of the complexity and high material standard of living may result in “serious
consequences” and “political discontent as incomes stagnate and shrink.” In our
concluding chapter, we explore alternatives to not merely adapting to climate
change, but mitigating it by shifting to an alternative world system.

The human hand in historically relevant climate change

Climatic changes prior to at least 10,000 years ago can be safely assumed to have
been due to the natural forces delineated above. At some point, however, slowly
but increasingly, humans became a contributing agent to climate change. William
Ruddiman (2005: 5) contends that CO2 emissions began to slowly increase as
humans began to clear the land in their shift from foraging to farming about 8,000
years ago in places such as China, India, and Europe. Starting about this time, the
burning of peat for heating and cooking and of limestone to produce lime for

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 The archaeology of climate change 57

mortar and plaster also added to CO2 emissions. According to Dincauze (2000), the
massive deforestation that has occurred in various regions of the world for several
millennia has contributed to climate change. Ruddiman contends that methane
emissions began to increase around 5,000 years ago as various populations started to
irrigate for rice production and to raise livestock. Livestock produces methane from
both manure and gaseous belches. The clearing of forests and burning of grasslands
also produced methane, as did human waste. Of course, as these human-driven
transformations of the environment were taking place, people were unaware of the
larger impacts on the planet. Had human technologies remained at these levels,
those impacts would have been limited. This is not what occurred, however.

Collapse of the great civilizations

The great civilizations of history were all ultimately impacted by climate. In
Mesopotomia, the Sumerians built the world’s first civilization “when sea levels
stabilized and short-term drought cycles related to the Southern Oscillation and
periodic monsoon failures became a reality of life in Egypt and southern Iraq”
(Fagan 1999: 92). Sumerian civilization existed in a fragile environment subjected
to cycles of floods and droughts.
Egypt underwent frequent arid spells around 7,800 to 6,800 BP, inducing many
Saharan inhabitants to settle on the banks of the Nile (Hassan 2009). According to
Hassan (2009: 54), between 5,800 and 5,300 BP, “Egyptian farming communities
made a transition to a state society.” He maintains that a “global climatic cold event”
(Hassan 2009: 54) contributed to a reduction of Nile floods, and political unification
followed, driven by a need to ensure collective protection against crop failures. As
this suggests, climate factors were critical to the emergence of ancient Egyptian
civilization, a societal fluorescence that had historical cultural impact on subsequent
developments in the Near East, Europe and the Americas.
The Roman Empire developed in northwestern Europe in the last two centuries
BC and the first century AD during a warm, dry period called the Roman Warm
Period or Roman Climatic Optimum (Tainter and Crumley 2007). Just as the
Empire underwent a series of crises during the third century, the Roman Warm
Period ended, resulting in lower agricultural yields. Rulers responded to these crises
by beefing up the state’s administrative apparatus and military, a costly endeavor
sustained by higher taxes, which negatively impacted the productivity of the
peasants, further exacerbating a tense situation and eventually leading to social
collapse.
The Mayan civilization in Mesoamerica, which came into existence around
AD 250, suddenly collapsed in the tenth century (Fagan 1999: 140). A number of
archaeologists who ascribe the collapse of Mayan civilization primarily to a series
of devastating droughts during the eighth and ninth centuries (Gill 2000; Ford and
Nigh 2014; Beach 2016). As a result of the inability of the Mayan elite to fulfill
their social obligation to ensure the flow of water, village farmers fled, dispersing
into smaller communities that permitted them to survive. Vernon L. Scarborough

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 58 The archaeology of climate change

(2007), however, contends that in the light of the environmental and societal
resilience of the Mayan civilization, political, economic, and ideological factors
internal to the composition of that society may have been of greatest significance.
Nevertheless, along with these factors, he, along with Lisa J. Lucero and Joel D.
Gunn, argues that the Mayan royal rulers who managed the supply of water for
farming public ceremonies, games, festivals, feasts and other socially integrative
activities by means of an elaborate system of reservoirs in the interior of their
kingdom lost their legitimacy as the water supply seriously diminished as a result of
a series of droughts during the Terminal Classic period (c. AD 800–950) (Lucero
et al. 2011).
Farther south, the Moche civilization flourished along the arid north coast
of Peru between AD 100 and 800 (Fagan 1999). This state society relied upon an
elaborate agricultural system that captured water from the Andes and fed a complex
irrigation system. The Moche also consumed anchovy and other fresh fish that they
extracted from the Pacific Ocean. Ultimately, however, El Niño contributed to
the collapse of yet another ecologically fragile empire that existed in a generally
parched environment (Fagan 1999). There had been droughts between AD 534 and
AD 540 and again between AD 563 and AD 594. In addition, El Niño produced
devastating floods that polluted springs and streams, strained sanitation systems, and
eroded fertile fields (Fagan 1999). These multiple climate-related assaults eventually
overwhelmed local resiliency, leading to household, community and societal
collapse.
Climate change also appears to have been a factor in the collapse of the Anasazi
culture of the American Southwest. Due to droughts and El Niño events, the
Anasazi abandoned sites such as Mesa Verde in southwest Colorado and Chaco
Canyon in northwest New Mexico in the twelfth century (Fagan 1999). Today the
Pueblos Indians, descendants of the Anasazi, live in a series of villages scattered
about the Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico, three mesas in northeast Arizona
(in the case of the Hopi), and the villages of Laguna and Acoma in western New
Mexico. As has occurred in multiple times and places, as complex social systems lose
their resiliency and collapse under pressure from climate/environment changes,
people, often less densely gathered together and in simpler social arrangements,
manage to survive in the shadow of fallen hierarchical social structures. The lesson
of this repeated pattern is difficult to gauge because the megacities of today are far
greater than anything seen in human history. It is hard to imagine societal collapse
of globally connected nation states in the contemporary era that would not lead to
a significant drop in the surviving populations.
The Medieval Warm Period (c. AD 900–1200) or the Medieval Climatic
Optimum has been the topic of much scholarly discussion. Apparently, actual
warming varied regionally during this period, with some places, such as Scandinavia,
Greenland, China, the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California, the Canadian
Rockies, and Tasmania experiencing warming, and other places, such as the US
Southwest, southern Europe along the Mediterranean, and parts of South America,
not experiencing warming (Hassan 2009). The Vikings took their long boats to

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 The archaeology of climate change 59

Iceland, Greenland, and Vinland (North America) during the Medieval Warm
Period. The population in northern Europe probably doubled between AD 1100
and 1300 during the Medieval Warm Period (Morris 2011: 363). Conversely, the
Medieval Warm Period adversely impacted the Islamic core, where population size
may have declined by 10 percent (Morris 2011: 364). By contrast, some areas of
North Africa flourished during this period.
The Little Ice Age commenced around AD 1250 and lasted until around the
mid-nineteenth century. While McGovern (1994: 141) acknowledges that climate
change played a major role in the extinction of the Norse colonies in Greenland,
he does not believe it was the only factor involved, noting that they “had failed
to make full use of resources locally available, while continuing to deform the
subsistence economy to produce inedible prestige goods for export.” McGovern
(1994: 154) further argues that the fate of the Norse colonies serves as a lesson for
large portions of humanity which are “pursuing limited, but intensive strategies
of exploitation requiring precarious balancing of distant resource zones and
markets,” processes that are inherent in the capitalist world system. The Low
Countries were buffeted by storm surges during the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries, and a seven-year period of heavy summer rains devastated farming,
resulting in the deaths of some 1.5 million people (Fagan 2009a). According to
Fagan (2009a: 204):

The climax of the Little Ice Age came in the late 17th century, during the
Maunder Minimum, a period of reduced sunspot activity. This was when
the Thames froze and fairs thrived on the ice. . . . The cooler and unsettled
centuries saw major fluctuations in Alpine glaciers, as well as a revolution in
agriculture that first took hold in the Netherlands, then Britain. The incidence
of famine was reduced, except in much of France, where bread shortages,
caused in part by poor harvests, contributed to the unrest of the French
Revolution.

The Little Ice Age ended in the 1850s as the Industrial Revolution was well
under way and already dependent on coal as an energy and warming source (Fagan
1999). Generally, the world entered a new era of warmer temperatures and less
dramatic climatic swings, although occasional cold spells occurred, including three
severe winters between 1939 and 1942 which interfered with Nazi invasions in
France and the Soviet Union (Fagan 1999). Behringer (2010: 174) argues that if was
not for rapid industrialization, which contributed significantly to global warming,
the “Little Ice Age was heading for another ‘cold maximum’, all the more intense
because of the volcanic eruption on Krakatoa in Indonesia.”

The lessons of history

Karen Holmgren and Helena Oberg (2007: 130) propose several generalizations that
shed light on some possible impacts of climate change on human societies over time:

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 60 The archaeology of climate change

1. Societal changes often coincide with climatic changes.

2. Climatic changes do not always result in societal changes—a stable and resilient
society can survive severe climate conditions.
3. Climatic change is a common external trigger in societies suffering from
internal instability. When periods of climate change coincide with periods of
socioeconomic and political instability, this may result either in societal
catastrophes or in new social developments.
4. Climatic conditions that are favorable for agricultural or pastoral production
have been an important factor in the rise of new and powerful centers of wealth
accumulation.
5. From the historical data, we can observe that adaptational or resiliency strategies
include:
a. flexibility in short- and long-term mobility and in the relocation of centers;
b. flexibility in agricultural practices and in types of staple crops; and
c. the possibility of controlling external trade.

Comparative sociologist Sing C. Chew (2001, 2007) has discussed in detail the
idea of Dark Ages which various civilizations, including the Mesopotamian, ancient
Egyptian, Harappan in northwestern India, and Mycenaean Greece, as well as
the vast Roman Empire, historically encountered in the wake of periods of rapid
climatic, ecological, and social upheaval. However, these Dark Ages, such as the
one during the Middle Ages in western Europe when socioeconomic activities
broke down, allowed for the rejuvenation of the environment. Thus, “In certain
ways, the Dark Age of Antiquity was a rebalancing of Nature–Culture relations
following centuries of anthropogenic stress of the landscape” (Chew 2007: 165). In
the past, climatic and ecological crises often prompted populations to disperse to
new locations which had previously been either uninhabited or sparsely populated
by human beings. In contrast, catastrophic climate change in the present world may
not leave many options for adversely affected populations to relocate to uninhabited
areas. As Chew (2007: 181) so eloquently argues:

At this stage of the globalization process, planet Earth is fully encompassed,

and thus if ecological collapse (Dark Age) occurs there are few replacement
areas for system expansion. Besides this, the level of connectivity of the world
system in terms of production and reproduction processes means that the
collapse will be felt globally, unlike previous Dark Ages in which not all
the peripheral areas were impacted by the collapse.

In the present, societal collapse, expressed as failed states, economic crises, mass
migrations of populations, and intense humanitarian crises, is not likely to be solely
a consequence of climate change, but rather the multiple blows of climate-induced
turmoil in interactions with diverse anthropogenic ecocrises that overwhelm the
ability of states, communities, and households to adapt. Indeed, Tattersall (2012:

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 The archaeology of climate change 61

230) somberly reminds us that “behaviors that a resilient environment could simply
absorb when Homo sapiens was thin on the ground became hugely damaging to
human populations when there are seven billion of us around.” However, it is
important to note that the more affluent sectors of the world, particularly in the
developed countries, but increasingly among the rising super-rich and middle classes
of the developing world, are having a more drastic destructive impact on the planet
than the billions of indigenous peoples, peasants, and poor urbanites who struggle
for their existence from day to day. These are the conditions of our world today, a
world that anthropologists among and with others are struggling to understand and
to develop meaningful responses.

Towards a climate change archaeology

Robert van de Noort (2013) has made the first explicit effort to create a climate
change archaeology, largely by examining how communities in the past have
adjusted and today are adjusting with sea level variations, particularly sea level rise
related to climate change, largely natural in the past, but mainly anthropogenic in
the present era. Even though he notes that archaeologists have been examining
past climate change and its impacts for at least 150 years (see Trigger 2006), he
laments that “studies of how societies adapted to climate change and its environ-
mental impacts in the past have made no contribution to the debates on the ways
in which humanity will need to adapt to climate change in the future” (Van de
Noort 2013: 2).
Van de Noort, however, maintains that archaeological research theoretically
provides visions of adaptive pathways that can assist communities in their efforts to
respond to climate change. In his book, he focuses on four diverse coastal regions,
namely the North Sea basin, the Sundarbans in the Bay of Bengal, Florida’s wetlands
in the Gulf of Mexico, and the Al-Ahwar/Iraqi Marshlands in the Persian Gulf. Van
de Noort (2013: 227) chose these landscapes, which have all adapted to fluctuating
sea levels in the past and will have to in the future, because the people who live in
them “are amongst the first that will be affected significantly by climate change–
sea level rise.” Whereas in the North Sea basin, policy-makers have adopted an
integrated approach to coastal zone management, which includes building sea walls,
such an effective coastal zone management plan has not been implemented in part
due to an on-going dispute between Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal
over the Farakka Barrage constructed between 1961 and 1975, thus putting
communities at risk from flooding and erosion. What Van de Noort does not
consider is differential access to resources to adapt to sea level rises in, on the one
hand, developed countries bordering the North Sea basin and the United States in
the case of Florida’s wetlands, and, on the other hand, developing countries, such
as Bangladesh in the case of the Sundarbans and Iraq in the case of the Persian Gulf
wetlands. His ambitions for a climate change archaeology are modest and do not
seek large-scale solutions that will be required as a result of rising sea levels and
climate change as a whole. In a similar vein to Van de Noort, Jeneva Wright (2016)

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 62 The archaeology of climate change

asserts that maritime archaeology is “uniquely positioned to support climate change

research and the understanding of the past human adaptations to climate change.”
Furthermore, archaeologists associated with the IHOPE-Maya Project believe that
Maya archaeology is well positioned to “contribute to broader, more current
debates concerning climate change, population limits, urban forms, landscape
modifications, and degrees of stability” (Chase and Scarborough 2014: 5).
However, what is needed is a more critical climate change archaeology, one that
engages with critical social science perspectives that we discuss in subsequent
chapters and touches upon not only adaptation to climate change, but also mitigation
strategies for addressing climate change. A possible step in this direction is a paper
titled “The possibility of collapse from a marxist perspective: Marx, Luxemburg and
Benjamin” presented by Miguel Fuentes, a PhD student at the Institute of
Archaeology, University College London, at the multidisciplinary conference on
Climate Change, Archaeology and History in December 2016.

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