Theme:
5. Climate Change and Socioenvironmental Perspectives
Session format:
Session with presentation of 6 slides in 6 minutes
Title:
The Societal Impacts of Climate Changes in the Past – What Can Hunter-Gatherer Archaeology Contribute to the Current Debate? [PaM]
Content:
The realities of climate change are with us: rising sea levels, melting glaciers, droughts, desertification, deforestation, changing storm tracks, and extreme weather events. Calls for socio-economic changes are getting louder, yet implementations remain slow. Palaeolithic and Mesolithic archaeology has often focused on responses to changing climatic and environmental conditions; discussing human adaptation is not new. But can an archaeological perspective and the study of hunter-gatherers bring new understanding and knowledge to the current debate?
Climate change was sometimes creeping, rapid at others, including systemic tipping points; adaptations similarly had to occur at different times. In analogy with foragers of the recent past and present, the people of the Pleistocene and Early Holocene were likely astute observers of their surroundings. Observations of short-term extreme phenomena such as tsunamis or volcanic eruptions, and of long-term developments such as sea-level rise were vital and transmitted across generations. Such knowledge is today referred to as Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) and widely recognised as essential in climate change response. Yet, demonstrating the efficacy of such TEK under current climate remains elusive, raising the question of hunter-gatherers’ limits to adapt.
In this session we ask:
When did the people of the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic move from ‘business as usual’ to significantly changing their behaviours? How can these changes be identified archaeologically?
Can we recognise the socio-economic responses to tipping points?
How does TEK influence responses and their timing?
Are there general patterns of responding to climate and environmental change?
What methods and proxies – traditional and innovative – do we have for studying deep past coping strategies?
And finally, is understanding Palaeolithic/Mesolithic adaptations relevant to the present?
We invite you to discuss these topics and questions through short talks or statements (6 slides in 6 minutes) to initiate what we hope may be fruitful discussions.
Keywords:
climate change response, hunter-gatherer, Palaeolithic, Mesolithic
Session associated with MERC:
no
Session associated with CIfA:
no
Session associated with SAfA:
no
Session associated with CAA:
no
Session associated with DGUF:
no
Session associated with other:
PaM, this is the PaM discussion session
Main organiser:
Sonja Grimm (Germany) 1,2
Co-organisers:
Astrid Nyland (Norway) 3
Felix Riede (Denmark) 4
Brian Wygal (United States) 5
Affiliations:
1. CRC 1266 Scales of Transformation
2. ZBSA - Centre for Baltic and Scandinavian Archaeology
3. Museum of Archaeology, University of Stavanger
4. School of Culture and Society, Aarhus University
5. Environmental Studies and Sciences, Adelphi University
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