Ancient Climate Change

Between the foundation of Constantinople as capital of the eastern half of the Roman Empire in 330 CE and its sack by the Fourth Crusade in 1204 CE, the Byzantine Empire underwent a full cycle from political-economic stability, through rural insecurity and agrarian decline, and back to renewed prosperity. These stages plausibly correspond to the phases of over-extension (K), subsequent release (Ω) and recovery (α) of the Adaptive Cycle in Socio-Ecological Systems. Here we track and partly quantify the consequences of those changes in different regions of Anatolia, firstly for rural settlement (via regional archaeological surveys) and secondly for land cover (via pollen analysis). We also examine the impact of climate changes on the agrarian system. While individual histories vary, the archaeological record shows a major demographic decline between ca .650 and ca. 900 CE in central and southwestern Anatolia, which was then a frontier zone between Byzantine and Arab armies. In these r...

Statistical analysis of Carl Blegen's pottery sequence using Correspondence Analysis (CA) suggests a gap of 100–200 years between his Troy III and IV periods. From the Manfred Korfmann excavations three stratigraphic sequences hitherto assigned to Troy IV and V appear to bridge it. This allocation is based on stratigraphic/architectural grounds and on the observable development in ceramic shapes and wares. Heinrich Schliemann's pottery sequence from 1870–1873 is also analysed by CA and found to compare well with Blegen's (with limited exceptions probably due to the larger scope of his excavations), but it does not exhibit the same gap. This suggests that during the ‘bridge’ period occupation shrank to the summit on the western end of the citadel mound. This ‘bridge’ period of seven or more building phases has a distinctive ceramic assemblage and may be called the Proto-IV period. It is broadly contemporary with Middle Helladic I, Beycesultan VIII–VI, Küllüoba II and the ...

This research investigates the impact of 4.2 ka and 3.2 ka BP climatic events on the agricultural practices of the Bronze Age Kingdom of Mukish by evaluating wheat and barley remains in archaeobotanical data sets acquired from two sites, Tell Atchana (Alalakh), a capital city, and Toprakhisar Höyük, a periphery site, both located in the Hatay province of southern Türkiye. The aim of this study is to determine whether, and to what extent, these climatic events affected the local agricultural strategies. Stable carbon isotope analysis on wheat and barley grains was also carried out to examine the water conditions under which the plants were grown. The findings demonstrated a shift toward drought tolerant barley at Toprakhisar at the end of the 3rd millennium BC, and at Tell Atchana between 1350 and 1200 BCE. Isotopic evidence indicated water stress at Toprakhisar from the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC and at Atchana during the latest phases of the LBA. The timing of shifts in crop preferences and the traces of water stress suggest a response to increasing aridity associated with the 4.2 ka BP and 3.2 ka BP climatic events. At Toprakhisar, the occupation seems to flourish in the corresponding period. By contrast, at Atchana, Hittite administrative control may have further influenced agricultural strategies to buffer the impacts of the 3.2 ka BP event by prioritizing barley production and investments in irrigation as mentioned in the textual sources. Overall, the findings highlighted the drought coping mechanisms adopted by the communities, rather than a total collapse of their agricultural systems during times of environmental variability.

The relative relationship of Holocene climate change, human cultures, and landscape evolution is unclear. However, palaeoecological and archaeological records, suggest that both have played an important role, acting in combination to varying degrees through time, to affect landscape dynamics. The country straddling the Puglia and Basilicata border region in southern Italy (the Mezzogiorno) is a landscape particularly sensitive to erosional processes, and provides an ideal area where these relationships can be studied. In addition, the affects of climate change in this area are magnified by poor land use practices that are being applied to an unstable, and easily erodible, surface geology. Moreover recent palaeoecological and archaeological research in this hilly country is also providing vital information regarding the role of climate and people in landscape dynamics. Four summers of preliminary research with a team consisting of a paleoecologist/geomorphologist, archaeologist, and a dendroclimatologist, has begun reconstruction of a full Holocene climate history from the records of alluvial erosion/deposition, spring discharge, and soil formation. These will aid in determing how climate, and human demography in the Puglia/Basilicata region relate to landscape dynamics. Archaeological surveys have already mapped the varying spatial distribution of cultural materials, providing an assessment of where people lived, population sizes, and their activities during the Holocene. Numerous dated erosion/deposition sequences in alluvium and valley terrace exposures along the Basentello/Bradano River valley detail the regional record of erosional cycles. Dated spring discharge events are beginning to record groundwater recharge linked either to climate, or to deforestation. In addition, dated soil formation episodes are evidence episodes of ground surface stability. A macrophysical climate model of local past effective precipitation is being used to reconstruct cycles of past erosion. These understandings are being used to predict future outcomes of global climate change.

Climate change is thought to have played a significant role in the rise and demise of complex Mesopotamian societies throughout the mid-to late Holocene. However, assessing the links between societal change and climate variability has been historically challenging, in part due to an absence of long-term, well-dated palaeoclimate archives located in close proximity to key archaeological sites. Here, we synthesise proxy data with archaeological information from Mesopotamia to demonstrate that the earliest urban development documented in this region coincides with increasing and potentially peak effective moisture in the mid-Holocene by ∼5500 BP. We posit that increasing moisture availability likely facilitated the expansion and development of the earliest cities, with resource extraction under favourable climatic conditions providing new opportunities for urban centres to expand their resource areas into new domains, and far beyond what is evident in earlier periods. Following ∼5200 BP, these same archives show increasing aridity coincident with the end of the Late Chalcolithic, and abandonment of several key settlements. Taken together, our work contextualises the evolution of critical urban centres in Mesopotamia between 6500 to 5500 yrs BP, and underscores the sensitivity of these centres to climatological variability.

Climate change is thought to have played a significant role in the rise and demise of complex Mesopotamian societies throughout the mid-to late Holocene. However, assessing the links between societal change and climate variability has been historically challenging, in part due to an absence of long-term, well-dated palaeoclimate archives located in close proximity to key archaeological sites. Here, we synthesise proxy data with archaeological information from Mesopotamia to demonstrate that the earliest urban development documented in this region coincides with increasing and potentially peak effective moisture in the mid-Holocene by ε5500 BP. We posit that increasing moisture availability likely facilitated the expansion and development of the earliest cities, with resource extraction under favourable climatic conditions providing new opportunities for urban centres to expand their resource areas into new domains, and far beyond what is evident in earlier periods. Following ε5200 BP, these same archives show increasing aridity coincident with the end of the Late Chalcolithic, and abandonment of several key settlements. Taken together, our work contextualises the evolution of critical urban centres in Mesopotamia between 6500 to 5500 yrs BP, and underscores the sensitivity of these centres to climatological variability.

I n this article we present evidence for the existence of a previously unrecognised period in the Bronze Age sequence at Troy and for its dating in both absolute and relative terms. In a previous article (Weninger, Easton 2014) we suggest that in the sequence established by Carl Blegen's excavations (1932)(1933)(1934)(1935)(1936)(1937)(1938) a gap of 100-200 years exists between Troy III and Troy IV. We now propose that, while this gap is attested in the Blegen sequence, there are a number of deposits known from the new excavations under Manfred Korfmann and Ernst Pernicka (1987-2012) which have been attributed to IV or even V and which in fact bridge it. We also argue that some of the deposits uncovered by Heinrich Schliemann's work (1870-1890) may do the same. Since Blegen's sequence has been generally accepted as the defining one for the site, and the new deposits represent a time-span and a development not represented

The concept of the formation of the "Hunn-Sarmatian" culture and the Hunnic union in the Trans-Urals in the 2nd –4th centuries is not supported by modern data. The Trans-Ural burials of nomads belong to the Late Sarmatian archaeological culture. The presence of the Late Sarmatian population in the Ural-Kazakhstan steppes and the Sargat population in the forest-steppe of Western Siberia after the 3rd  century is not confirmed. This was due to large-scale natural and climatic changes.

Концепция о формировании в Зауралье во II-IV вв. «гунно-сарматской» культуры, гуннского союза не подтверждается современными данными. Зауральские погребения кочевников относятся к позднесарматской археологической культуре. Не подтверждается присутствие позднесарматского населения в урало-казахстанских степях и саргатского в лесостепи Западной Сибири позднее III в. Это было связано с масштабными природно-климатическими изменениями.

The small scale is recognized as a necessary rebuttal to macroscalar narratives of climate-society relationships in the past, and archeologists and historians have increasingly turned to advocating smaller and shorter scales of analysis and interpretation, from "microclimates" to interannual droughts and single settlement histories. Such provocations rightly caution against the dangers of oversimplification and determinism in recent planetary or Earth-systems approaches to human history, as well as push scholars to acknowledge human-scale experiences: weather, seasonality, landscape change. When it comes to smaller-scale remains, however, like those of household practices, we often consider them data or proxies that validate larger-scale arguments about societal persistence or economic vulnerability. Yet the material and ideational ways that people in premodern worlds made sense of their surroundings, especially via gendered and class-based rhythms of production and consumption, were deeply entwined in the politics of everyday household life. What would a household archeology of climate entail? In this paper I highlight how households themselves were critical sites of environmental construction, experience and history-making through a selection of examples of archeological work from the Mediterranean. I argue that archeologists can critically rethink themes of persistence and adaptation by taking seriously the scalar constructions and varied politics of domestic life.

Climate change cycles throughout the history of Egypt can be modeled using a variety of sources. Proxy data can be drawn from alluvium, pollen, isotope analysis (Carbon-14, O-18, and other sources), and tephra volcanic dating. Other indicators can be collected from the mural paintings in the tombs, the appearance of new positions in the administration positions to deal with times of famine, and the presence of certain insects in some tombs indicating the presence of a drought when the tomb was sealed. We suggest that engineering responses to environmental stress also provide a means of assessing the nature and extent of environmental stimuli through functional interpretation of Hydraulic Constructions. We focus on Tell Timai.

The relative relationship of Holocene climate change, human cultures, and landscape evolution is unclear. However, palaeoecological and archaeological records, suggest that both have played an important role, acting in combination to varying degrees through time, to affect landscape dynamics. The country straddling the Puglia and Basilicata border region in southern Italy (the Mezzogiorno) is a landscape particularly sensitive to erosional processes, and provides an ideal area where these relationships can be studied. In addition, the affects of climate change in this area are magnified by poor land use practices that are being applied to an unstable, and easily erodible, surface geology. Moreover recent palaeoecological and archaeological research in this hilly country is also providing vital information regarding the role of climate and people in landscape dynamics. Four summers of preliminary research with a team consisting of a paleoecologist/geomorphologist, archaeologist, and a dendroclimatologist, has begun reconstruction of a full Holocene climate history from the records of alluvial erosion/deposition, spring discharge, and soil formation. These will aid in determing how climate, and human demography in the Puglia/Basilicata region relate to landscape dynamics. Archaeological surveys have already mapped the varying spatial distribution of cultural materials, providing an assessment of where people lived, population sizes, and their activities during the Holocene. Numerous dated erosion/deposition sequences in alluvium and valley terrace exposures along the Basentello/Bradano River valley detail the regional record of erosional cycles. Dated spring discharge events are beginning to record groundwater recharge linked either to climate, or to deforestation. In addition, dated soil formation episodes are evidence episodes of ground surface stability. A macrophysical climate model of local past effective precipitation is being used to reconstruct cycles of past erosion. These understandings are being used to predict future outcomes of global climate change.

Historical climatic and environmental pressures and societal responses have varied markedly.  Connecting climatic changes to social transformations is not an invention of the modern age. Commentators since antiquity have attributed political and economic changes to extreme weather events. But while explanations for rapid change or catastrophic events were based within the cultural logic of the impacted society, past societies also learned to manage their environments within the limits of their technology and their beliefs and generally understood how to manage their resources sustainably. We offer examples of how pre-modern societies dealt with or responded to long- and short-term environmental and climatic challenges, including their ability or their failure to foresee and mitigate them. We also look at questions of how societal responses included measures contributing to both resilience and sustainability. Finally, we draw out some generalisable lessons about past responses and behaviours and the ways in which these have contributed, positively and negatively, to the development of more recent and contemporary understanding of and policies towards the impacts of climate change

Before we can generalize about historical collapse(s) and draw out any general patterns, it is obviously essential to study a range of historical cases and, crucially, to examine them in detail and to try to pinpoint the causal mechanisms at work. We need to find out how the societies in question worked as complex systems, what degree of resilience or brittleness they display when confronted by potentially existential challenges, and in which aspects or combination of aspects that resilience is located; we need also to find out—if we have the evidence—how the people who inhabited and constituted those systems responded to various types of societal or environmental stress or pressure, and why, because that is also a fundamental element in societal responses to stress and challenge, whether long- or short-term. To exemplify this approach, this chapter looks at one particular case at a particular stressful point in its history, the medieval eastern Roman empire—Byzantium—in the seventh- to eighth-century CE.

When studying the past, the amount of attention paid to causation, correlation, and coincidence is voluminous and need not be fully entertained here. Rather, it is enough to say that determining the relationships between events and conditions and human actions is a well-worn path. It is especially trodden when considering the relationship between environmental shifts and changes in societies. It is tempting to view changes in human structures as a series of quasi-mechanical responses to environmental changes, although the literature is populated with cautionary tales, noting that there is rarely a single triggering element to any major shift in societal structure. Recent fieldwork at the Middle Byzantine site of Avkat in central Anatolia provides a good case study for the assessment of the notions of continuity and change via the assessment of local spatial shifts in land-use patterns within the larger context of environmental and state-level conditions.

Sheep raising relied on a long local tradition in the Mesopotamian alluvium, where pastoralism was not confined to the outskirts of the economic landscape, but rather was nestled in it. Economic texts from Ur III Ĝirsu offer an interesting glimpse of the local pasture areas.

We explore settlement structures and hierarchy found in different archaeological periods in northern, specifically the Khabur Triangle (KT), and southern Mesopotamia (SM) using a spatial interaction entropy maximization (SIEM) modeling and simulation method. Regional settlement patterns are investigated in order to understand what feedback levels for settlement benefits, or incentives, and abilities to move or disperse between sites in a landscape and period could have enabled observed settlement structures to emerge or be maintained. Archaeological and historical data are then used to interpret the best results. We suggest that in the Late Chalcolithic (LC) and first half of the Early Bronze Age (EBA), the KT and SM appear to have comparable urban patterns and development, where settlement advantage feedbacks and movement are similarly shaping the two regions for those periods. Within period variations, such as restrictions to population diffusion or movement in the EBA, are possible. In the KT during the Middle Bronze Age (MBA), multiple centers begin to emerge, suggesting a lack of social cohesion and/or political fragmentation. This is similar to SM in the MBA, but we also see the emergence of a single, dominant site. In the Iron Age (IA), movement in the KT likely becomes the least constrained in all assessed periods, as socio-political cohesion facilitates this process, with small sites now the norm and dominance by one state over the region is evident. For the same period in SM, a single site (Babylon) obtains significant settlement advantages relative to its neighbors and easy movement enables it to become far larger in size and likely socially, economically, and politically dominant. Overall, the results demonstrate that the method is useful for archaeologists and social theorists in allowing them to compare different archaeological survey results, with varied spatial dimensions and diachronically, while providing a level of explanation that addresses empirical settlement patterns observed.

New Agendas in Remote Sensing and Landscape Archaeology in the Near East is a collection of papers produced in honour of Tony James Wilkinson, who was Professor of Archaeology at Durham University from 2006 until his death in 2014. Though commemorative in concept, the volume is an assemblage of new research representing emerging agendas and innovative methods in remote sensing. The intention is to explore the opportunities and challenges faced by researchers in the field today, and the tools, techniques, and theoretical approaches available to resolve them within the framework of landscape archaeology. The papers build on the traditional strengths of landscape archaeology, such as geoarchaeology and settlement pattern analysis, as well as integrating data sources to address major research questions, such as the ancient economy, urbanism, water management and the treatment of the dead. The authors demonstrate the importance of an interdisciplinary approach for understanding the impac...

One of the main questions that zooarchaeologists have attempted to answer in their studies of ancient agropastoral economies relates to animal diet. Starch granules and phytoliths, which derive from the plant foods consumed over the course of an animal's life, become imbedded in dental calculus and thus offer direct clues about diet. In this paper, we investigate pig diet with an eye toward understanding husbandry strategies in northern Mesopotamia, the region in which pigs were first domesticated, from the Epipaleolithic though the Early Bronze Age. Our data reveal that pigs consumed an assortment of plant foods, including grasses, wild tubers, acorns, and domestic cereals. Although poor preservation plagued the identification of plant microremains at Epipaleolithic (10 th millennium cal. BC) Hallan Çemi, the identification of a diet based on tubers and grasses matches models of wild boar diet. Pigs at 6 th millennium Domuztepe, 5 th millennium Ziyadeh, and 4 th millennium Hacinebi consumed cereals, particularly oats (Avena sp.) and barley (Hordeum sp.), as well as wild plant food resources. Several of the cereal starch granules showed evidence of cooking, indicating that pigs had access to household refuse beginning at least in the late Neolithic. Moreover, calculus from morphologically wild specimens also contained cooked cereal grains. This points to a close relationship between wild boar populations and human settlements in the Neolithic and beyond. Preservation was poor for 3 rd millennium sites in the study, including Atij, Raqa'i, Ziyadeh, and Leilan, but the available data suggest that pigs ate oats, barley and other Triticeae (the tribe that includes wheat, barley, and goatgrass), and other grasses. This may represent foddering practices in the Early Bronze Age.

New Agendas in Remote Sensing and Landscape Archaeology in the Near East is a collection of papers produced in honour of Tony James Wilkinson, who was Professor of Archaeology at Durham University from 2006 until his death in 2014. Though commemorative in concept, the volume is an assemblage of new research representing emerging agendas and innovative methods in remote sensing. The intention is to explore the opportunities and challenges faced by researchers in the field today, and the tools, techniques, and theoretical approaches available to resolve them within the framework of landscape archaeology. The papers build on the traditional strengths of landscape archaeology, such as geoarchaeology and settlement pattern analysis, as well as integrating data sources to address major research questions, such as the ancient economy, urbanism, water management and the treatment of the dead. The authors demonstrate the importance of an interdisciplinary approach for understanding the impac...

The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.

Over the last 8000 years the Fertile Crescent of the Near East has seen the emergence of urban agglomerations, small scale polities and large territorial empires, all of which had profound effects on settlement patterns. Computational approaches, including the use of remote sensing data, allow us to analyse these changes at unprecedented geographical and temporal scales. Here we employ these techniques to examine and compare long term trends in urbanisation, population and climate records. Maximum city size is used as a proxy for the intensity of urbanisation, whilst population trends are modelled from settlement densities in nine archaeological surveys conducted over the last 30 years across the region. These two measures are then compared with atmospheric moisture levels derived from multiple proxy analyses from two locations close to the study area, Soreq Cave in Israel and Lake Van in south-eastern Turkey, as well as wider literature. The earliest urban sites emerged during a pe...

The present article aims to assess the possible effects of climate change on settlement density changes that are indicative of the decline and rise of societies. Archaeological data and regional diachronic changes in settlement densities are compiled for eight geographic regions and contrasted with evidence for major rapid climate change (RCC) events (11.1, 10.3, 9.4/9.2, 8.2, 5.9, 5.2, 4.2, and 3.2/2.9) as reflected in high-resolution sedimentary archives. There are significant differences in settlement density in the east and west of the Iranian Plateau, often with different responses to the same RCC event, an indication that factors other than climate contributed to the settlement density in these regions. From another standpoint, it seems that the human occupations of the inner part of the Iranian Plateau had weaker responses to RCC events than those in the outer parts adjacent to the neighboring regions of Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley.

The Nile, the longest river of the world, connects Northeast Africa from its headwaters near Lake Victoria to the Mediterranean Sea. This chapter focuses on the Nile in Egypt, where the river's annual inundation (until the building of the two modern dams at Aswan) was the source of the country's fecundity and guarantor of its civilization since the 6 th millennium BCE. While the historical population of Egypt remained at a maximum of c. four million people until the mid-19 th century when Vice-Roy Muhammad Ali modernized the country, in 2019 the number passed the threshold of 100 million people. Increased demographic pressure, the alteration of the country's ecology through the mega-impact of the construction of the Aswan High Dam, and industrialization have led to a massive transformation of the Nile River system. One of the consequences has been an almost complete extinction of the country's native fauna and flora. The overuse of the water (rice and cotton irrigation projects) and the absence of the river's historical natural sedimentation have had irreversible effects on Egypt's agriculture and heritage (salination; disappearance of archaeological sites) and caused land loss to rising sea levels in the delta. In view of the environmental degradation in the Nile valley, and the dangers to Egypt's water security posed by overpopulation and the construction of the Merowe dams in Sudan and the Renaissance dam in Ethiopia, sustainable water management is of critical importance.

Literature results of chemical bronze analyses originating from Near Eastern excavation sites have been assembled to obtain a general overview of the Mesopotamian bronze technology during the 3rd millennium BC. Results show that at the end of the 4th and at the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC arsenic alloys with an arsenic concentration up to 5% were generally into use, while tin bronzes were introduced during the middle of the 3rd millennium. This introduction appears almost synchronously over the entire region of Mesopotamia, although there is an indication that the tin bronze introduction was slightly later in southern Mesopotamia.

The region of the northern Fertile Crescent experienced dramatic changes in the political and cultural life of its societies during the mid-late Holocene period (approximately 3000-1000 calibrated years B.C.). The range of these changes in terms of agricultural production, as well as their interrelationship with climate, is poorly understood. We review and highlight the transformations of agricultural systems, and what might have triggered them, through an interdisciplinary approach based on archaeobotanical, geoarchaeological, and philological data from a series of archaeological sites in northern Mesopotamia. The archaebotanical record suggests changes in crop cultivation at the transition from the Early Bronze Age to the Middle Bronze Age (MBA). The general pattern of the MBA manifests itself also in the Late Bronze Age sites, whereas the Iron Age sites reveal changes such as the extension of free-threshing wheat occurrence and a return of flax. These changes have been set in comparison to fluctuations of the stable carbon isotope composition in seeds and to the dynamics of irrigation networks documented by pedosediment profiles in the field, as well as by textual sources. According to the evidence, a number of reasons can be considered responsible for societal change during the Bronze Age, such as changing climatic and environmental conditions, increasing societal, political, and economic complexity, population growth and related problems of sustainability and warfare, which were all interwoven through feedback mechanisms. Whether we call these developments "collapse" or "recommencement" remains a matter of opinion.

Over the last 8000 years the Fertile Crescent of the Near East has seen the emergence of urban agglomerations, small scale polities and large territorial empires, all of which had profound effects on settlement patterns. Computational approaches, including the use of remote sensing data, allow us to analyse these changes at unprecedented geographical and temporal scales. Here we employ these techniques to examine and compare long term trends in urbanisation, population and climate records. Maximum city size is used as a proxy for the intensity of urbanisation, whilst population trends are modelled from settlement densities in nine archaeological surveys conducted over the last 30 years across the region. These two measures are then compared with atmospheric moisture levels derived from multiple proxy analyses from two locations close to the study area, Soreq Cave in Israel and Lake Van in south-eastern Turkey, as well as wider literature. The earliest urban sites emerged during a pe...

Between the foundation of Constantinople as capital of the eastern half of the Roman Empire in 330 CE and its sack by the Fourth Crusade in 1204 CE, the Byzantine Empire underwent a full cycle from political-economic stability, through rural insecurity and agrarian decline, and back to renewed prosperity. These stages plausibly correspond to the phases of over-extension (K), 2 subsequent release (Ω) and recovery (α) of the Adaptive Cycle in Socio-Ecological Systems. Here we track and partly quantify the consequences of those changes in different regions of Anatolia, firstly for rural settlement (via regional archaeological surveys) and secondly for land cover (via pollen analysis). We also examine the impact of climate changes on the agrarian system. While individual histories vary, the archaeological record shows a major demographic decline between ca .650 and ca. 900 CE in central and southwestern Anatolia, which was then a frontier zone between Byzantine and Arab armies. In these regions, and also in northwest Anatolia, century-scale trends in pollen indicate a substantial decline in the production of cereal and tree crops, and a smaller decline in pastoral activity. During the subsequent recovery (α) phase after 900 CE there was strong regional differentiation, with central Anatolia moving to a new economic system based on agro-pastoralism, while lowland areas of northern and western Anatolia returned to the cultivation of commercial crops such as olive trees. The extent of recovery in the agrarian economy was broadly predictable by the magnitude of its preceding decline, but the trajectories of recovery varied between different regions.

The fundamental issue obscuring our understanding of the place of animal husbandry in the societies and economies of the ancient Near East remains definitional. Sheep and goat recovered from settlements that show evidence for foddering, or grazing on cultivated crops, is argued as proof of a lack of mobility, but this fails to take into account whether these animals are used for meat and milk, sacrifice, or their wool. It also does not distinguish between those animals kept for daily use by individual households and institutionally owned animals. The textual evidence from Mari, which describes mobile pastoralism, is argued to be anomalous. But, in fact, Mari pastoralism is not independent pastoralism either. It is, however, mobile and long-distance, as well as variable according to the particular pastoralist group under discussion. This paper argues that a wide range of textual material, of which the Mari archive is but one source, shows that multiple kinds of pastoralism coexisted ...

This study sheds light on the agricultural economy that underpinned the emergence of the first urban centres in northern Mesopotamia. Using δ(13)C and δ(15)N values of crop remains from the sites of Tell Sabi Abyad, Tell Zeidan, Hamoukar, Tell Brak and Tell Leilan (6500-2000 cal bc), we reveal that labour-intensive practices such as manuring/middening and water management formed an integral part of the agricultural strategy from the seventh millennium bc. Increased agricultural production to support growing urban populations was achieved by cultivation of larger areas of land, entailing lower manure/midden inputs per unit area-extensification. Our findings paint a nuanced picture of the role of agricultural production in new forms of political centralization. The shift towards lower-input farming most plausibly developed gradually at a household level, but the increased importance of land-based wealth constituted a key potential source of political power, providing the possibility f...

This paper employs data from selected sample survey areas in the northern Fertile Crescent to demonstrate how initial urbanization developed along several pathways. The first, during the Late Chalcolithic period, was within a dense pattern of rural settlement. There followed a profound shift in settlement pattern that resulted in the formation of large walled or ramparted sites ('citadel cities') associated with a more dynamic phase of urbanization exemplified by short cycles of growth and collapse. By the later third millennium BC, the distribution of larger centres had expanded to include the drier agropastoral zone of northern and central Syria, termed here the 'zone of uncertainty'. This configuration, in turn, formed the context for Middle Bronze Age settlement, and the pattern of political rivalries and alliances that typified the second millennium BC. Evidence is marshalled from archaeological surveys and landscape analyses to examine these multiple paths to urbanization from the perspectives of (a) staple production within major

A collection of the author’s smaller webpages and articles on the subject of Atlantis in the Irish Sea 2017-2020. In 1995 the author published The Atlantis Researches, later republished in UK and USA as Atlantis of the West. These more recent articles extend that earlier work and fill some of the gaps. Central to the theories was the case that indicators of time and place (based on a comparison of the ancient sources and modern science) pointed towards a location for Plato’s lost city in the eastern Irish Sea; following a pole shift event that occurred towards the end of the fourth millennium BC. This event submerged the low-lying plains around the British coast ‘in a single day and a night’. The submergence is related to the memories of an Otherworld beneath the sea in Irish mythology and the Annwn of equivalent Welsh myths. The articles combined below are:

1) R. K. Gresswell and the Irish Sea Coast

2) Patterns on the Irish Sea Floor

3) Plato’s Impossible Plain.(added in 2022)

4) The Isle of Man Legends and Sea Views (added in 2025)

Remember to DOWNLOAD THE PDF version so that you can access the extra citations in the hyperlinks.

Archaeological evidence, particularly that deriving from systematic regional surveys, offers great potential for understanding social and demographic change in Anatolia between 300 and 1200 CE. We first consider major factors inherent to regional archaeological data sets that complicate simple synthesis and generalization between projects. We then provide a synthesis focused on longue durée questions relevant to cross-disciplinary examination of the relationship between environmental and societal change and examine potential connections between major changes in settlement patterns observed in the seventh-and eighth-century archaeological data and larger questions of systemic collapse and resilience in the face of climate change. To conclude, we assess current archaeological evidence for the processes of agricultural adaptation at the transition associated with the end of the ancient economy.

Between the foundation of Constantinople as capital of the eastern half of the Roman Empire in 330 CE and its sack by the Fourth Crusade in 1204 CE, the Byzantine Empire underwent a full cycle from political-economic stability, through rural insecurity and agrarian decline, and back to renewed prosperity. These stages plausibly correspond to the phases of over-extension (K), 2 subsequent release (Ω) and recovery (α) of the Adaptive Cycle in Socio-Ecological Systems. Here we track and partly quantify the consequences of those changes in different regions of Anatolia, firstly for rural settlement (via regional archaeological surveys) and secondly for land cover (via pollen analysis). We also examine the impact of climate changes on the agrarian system. While individual histories vary, the archaeological record shows a major demographic decline between ca .650 and ca. 900 CE in central and southwestern Anatolia, which was then a frontier zone between Byzantine and Arab armies. In these regions, and also in northwest Anatolia, century-scale trends in pollen indicate a substantial decline in the production of cereal and tree crops, and a smaller decline in pastoral activity. During the subsequent recovery (α) phase after 900 CE there was strong regional differentiation, with central Anatolia moving to a new economic system based on agro-pastoralism, while lowland areas of northern and western Anatolia returned to the cultivation of commercial crops such as olive trees. The extent of recovery in the agrarian economy was broadly predictable by the magnitude of its preceding decline, but the trajectories of recovery varied between different regions.

New Agendas in Remote Sensing and Landscape Archaeology in the Near East is a collection of papers produced in honour of Tony James Wilkinson, who was Professor of Archaeology at Durham University from 2006 until his death in 2014. Though commemorative in concept, the volume is an assemblage of new research representing emerging agendas and innovative methods in remote sensing. The intention is to explore the opportunities and challenges faced by researchers in the field today, and the tools, techniques, and theoretical approaches available to resolve them within the framework of landscape archaeology. The papers build on the traditional strengths of landscape archaeology, such as geoarchaeology and settlement pattern analysis, as well as integrating data sources to address major research questions, such as the ancient economy, urbanism, water management and the treatment of the dead. The authors demonstrate the importance of an interdisciplinary approach for understanding the impac...

The essential ideas behind the major methods for assessing the relative ages of geological and archeological materials and events are reviewed. These include the principles of original horizontality, superposition, inclusion, cross-cutting relations, and cross-dating by index fossils (biological succession) or artifacts. Some general principles of absolute dating are introduced, and, as representatives of non-radiometric methods, tree-ring, thermoluminescence, obsidian hydration, and amino acid racemization dating are discussed with examples.

Davis A. Young The essential ideas behind the major methods for assessing the relative ages of geological and archeological materials and events are reviewed. These include the principles of original horizontality, superposition, inclusion, cross-cutting relations, and cross-dating by index fossils (biological succession) or artifacts. Some general principles of absolute dating are intro- duced, and, as representatives of non-radiometric methods, tree-ring, thermoluminescence, obsidian hydration, and amino acid racemization dating are discussed with examples.

At the beginning of time there were two brothers, twins, one named Man (*Manu, in Proto-Indo-European) and the other Twin (*Yemo). They traveled through the cosmos accompanied by a great cow. Eventually Man and Twin decided to create the world we now inhabit. To do this, Man had to sacrifice Twin (or, in some versions, the cow). From the parts of this sacrificed body, with the help of the sky gods (Sky Father, Storm God of War, Divine Twins), Man made the wind, the sun, the moon, the sea, earth, fire, and finally all the various kinds of people. Man became the first priest, the creator of the ritual of sacrifice that was the root of world order.
Being the third Volume of The History of The Proto-Indo-Europeans, specifically the Tocharian Tribes, to Greater and Little Yuechi, the Kushans and finally down to the present Khattar Horse Tribe of the Indo-Pak Subcontinent.

The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.

Between the foundation of Constantinople as capital of the eastern half of the Roman Empire in 330 CE and its sack by the Fourth Crusade in 1204 CE, the Byzantine Empire underwent a full cycle from political-economic stability, through rural insecurity and agrarian decline, and back to renewed prosperity. These stages plausibly correspond to the phases of over-extension (K), 2 subsequent release (Ω) and recovery (α) of the Adaptive Cycle in Socio-Ecological Systems. Here we track and partly quantify the consequences of those changes in different regions of Anatolia, firstly for rural settlement (via regional archaeological surveys) and secondly for land cover (via pollen analysis). We also examine the impact of climate changes on the agrarian system. While individual histories vary, the archaeological record shows a major demographic decline between ca .650 and ca. 900 CE in central and southwestern Anatolia, which was then a frontier zone between Byzantine and Arab armies. In these regions, and also in northwest Anatolia, century-scale trends in pollen indicate a substantial decline in the production of cereal and tree crops, and a smaller decline in pastoral activity. During the subsequent recovery (α) phase after 900 CE there was strong regional differentiation, with central Anatolia moving to a new economic system based on agro-pastoralism, while lowland areas of northern and western Anatolia returned to the cultivation of commercial crops such as olive trees. The extent of recovery in the agrarian economy was broadly predictable by the magnitude of its preceding decline, but the trajectories of recovery varied between different regions.

Recent investigations into the cause of the 1755 Lisbon earthquake have brought focus upon the fault lines and seamounts opposite the Strait of Gibraltar and the threat to Iberia from future mega tsunamis. These may be compared to ancient reports of such earthquakes and catastrophes that suggest earlier episodes, as well as the probability that the seamounts were islands above sea-level during earlier human prehistory and are remembered in myths and legends.

Plato’s dialogues give a clear indication of where he believed the sunken island of Atlantis to have been situated. However, modern commentators have sought  alternative  locations  within  the Mediterranean and elsewhere. So firstly, examine what he actually says. "…in  those  days  the  Atlantic  was  navigable;  and  there  was  an  island  situated  in  front  of  the straits which are by you called the Pillars of Heracles;...and was the way to other islands, and from these you might pass to the whole of the opposite continent, for this sea which is within the Straits of Heracles  is only a harbour…" In the Critias he describes a peninsula of Atlantis: “facing the country which is now called...Gades [Cadiz] in that part of the world”. [Timaeus, Jowett translation] Therefore it is clear that Solon’s Egyptian sources describe a location just outside the Strait of Gibraltar. So where might we find these lost islands?

Contents: Submerged archaeology & Russian claims, bathymetry, Gorringe ridge, seamounts, tectonics and tsunamis.

Remember to DOWNLOAD THE PDF so that you can access the extra citations in the hyperlinks.

The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact

This paper employs data from selected sample survey areas in the northern Fertile Crescent to demonstrate how initial urbanization developed along several pathways. The first, during the Late Chalcolithic period, was within a dense pattern of rural settlement. There followed a profound shift in settlement pattern that resulted in the formation of large walled or ramparted sites ('citadel cities') associated with a more dynamic phase of urbanization exemplified by short cycles of growth and collapse. By the later third millennium BC, the distribution of larger centres had expanded to include the drier agropastoral zone of northern and central Syria, termed here the 'zone of uncertainty'. This configuration, in turn, formed the context for Middle Bronze Age settlement, and the pattern of political rivalries and alliances that typified the second millennium BC. Evidence is marshalled from archaeological surveys and landscape analyses to examine these multiple paths to urbanization from the perspectives of (a) staple production within major