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Abstract: Recent refinements in radiocarbon sampling procedures have enabled a more robust absolute chronology for the Mesolithic in the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt area of northwest Europe. These refinements have allowed for a new chronological sub-division of the Early and Middle Mesolithic periods. Results of this research have indicated that the Middle Mesolithic period was bound by two Early Holocene cooling events, one at 9300 cal. BP and the other at 8200 cal. BP. These results enable a critical evaluation of the role of chronological precision in the investigation of contemporaneity between abrupt climate change and hunter–gatherer sociocultural change. In this paper we focus on the variable chronological resolution of the Early to Middle and Middle to Late Mesolithic transitions in the RMS area, and the role of this variable resolution in our ability to investigate the contemporaneity of these two transitions with different Early Holocene abrupt cooling events. This paper highlights two central challenges facing archaeological investigations of the relationships between climate and culture change: first, the requirement of tight chronological overlap between climate and culture change events and consideration of leads and lags in ecosystem and subsequent human responses to climate change; second, the equifinality problem and the separation of the impact of gradual from punctuated environmental change on human societies. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The reasons for megafaunal extinction in Australia have been hotly debated for over 30 years without any clear resolution. The proposed causes include human overkill, climate, anthropogenic induced habitat change or a combination of these. Most protagonists of the human overkill model suggest the impact was so swift, occurring within a few thousand years of human occupation of the continent, that archaeological evidence should be rare or non-existent. In Tasmania the presence of extinct megafauna has been known since the early twentieth century () with earlier claims of human overlap being rejected because of poor chronology and equivocal stratigraphic associations. More recent archaeological research has not identified any megafauna from the earliest, exceptionally well-preserved late Pleistocene cultural sites. In 2008 however an argument for human induced megafaunal extinctions was proposed using the direct dates from a small sample of surface bone from two Tasmanian non-human caves and a museum sediment sample from an unknown location in a cave, since destroyed by quarrying (). supplemented their data with published dates from other Tasmanian caves and open sites to argue for the survival of at least seven megafauna species from the last interglacial to the subsequent glacial stage. To investigate the timing of extinctions in Tasmania and examine the latest claims, new excavations and systematic surveys of limestone caves in south central Tasmania were undertaken. Our project failed to show any clear archaeological overlap of humans and megafauna but demonstrated that vigilance is needed when claiming survival of megafauna species based on old or suspect chronologies. The results of our six-years of fieldwork and dating form the first part of the present paper while, in the second part we assess the data advanced by for the late survival of seven megafauna species. A model of human prey selection and the reasons for the demise of a range of marsupials, now extinct, are discussed in the third part of the paper. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper emerges from an attempt to more actively integrate archaeology with ongoing geographical and environmental discussions of human responses to the effects of climate change in the Caribbean. If archaeology is to contribute to the mitigation strategies currently being developed, then robust interpretations are necessary that can be practically integrated with inter-disciplinary action. This paper discusses the methods needed to provide the high-resolution data and interpretations required using archaeological and palaeoenvironmental research from a case study area in northern Cuba. Using data collected from an ongoing collaborative archaeological research project with the Cuban Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment, we evaluate whether it is possible to make useful interpretations of human response to past changes in sea-level, precipitation and hurricane activity. Specifically, the effects of these activities on the changing nature of settlement locations, food procurement strategies and household architecture among pre-Columbian communities are evaluated. Indigenous mitigation strategies are identified and used to inform modern day preparation for the impacts of climate change in the Caribbean. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: A number of recent papers have argued that summed probability distributions of radiocarbon dates calibrated with the CALPAL software package can be used to identify population trends in prehistory. For instance, Gamble et al. (Gamble, C., Davies, W., Pettitt, P., Richards, M., 2004. Climate change and evolving human diversity in Europe during the last glacial. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B 359, 243–254; Gamble, C., Davies, W., Pettitt, P., Richards, M., 2005. The archaeological and genetic foundations of the European population during the Late Glacial: implications for ''agricultural thinking''. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 15, 193–223.) have demonstrated that during the European Late Glacial, demography was more variable than hitherto acknowledged. Building on this work, this paper presents evidence that the large, but so far largely ignored eruption of the Laacher See-volcano, located in present-day western Germany and dated to 12,920 BP, had a dramatic impact on forager demography all along the northern periphery of Late Glacial settlement and precipitated archaeologically visible cultural change. In Southern Scandinavia, these changes took the form of technological simplification, the loss of bow-and-arrow technology, and coincident with these changes, the emergence of the regionally distinct Bromme culture. Groups in north-eastern Europe appear to have responded to the eruption in similar ways, but on the British Isles and in the Thuringian Basin populations contracted or relocated, leaving these areas largely depopulated already before the onset of the Younger Dryas/GS-1 cooling. Demographic models are used to link these changes to the Laacher See-eruption and this research demonstrates that we cannot sideline catastrophic environmental change in our reconstructions of prehistoric culture history. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Assessing the implications of paleoclimatic and paleoenvironmental data at temporal and spatial scales that would have directly intersected with human decision-making and activity is a fundamental archaeological challenge. This paper addresses this challenge by presenting a spatial and temporal downscaling method that can provide quantitative high-spatio-temporal-resolution estimates of the local consequences of climatic change. Using a case study in Provence (France) we demonstrate that a centennial-scale Mediterranean-wide model of Holocene climate, in conjunction with modern geospatial and climate data, can be used to generate explicit and solidly-grounded monthly estimates of temperature, precipitation, and cloudiness at landscape scales and with annual resolution, enabling consideration of climate variability at human scales and meeting the data requirements of socioecological models focused on human activity. While the results are not reconstructions – that is, particular values are single realizations, consistent with the coarse-grained data but not individually empirically derived nor unique solutions – they provide a more suitable basis for assessing the human consequences of climate change than can coarse-grained data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Southern Montane Forest-Grassland mosaic ecosystem in the humid subtropics southern Rift Valley of Africa comprised the environmental context for a large area in which modern human evolution and dispersal occurred. Variable climatic conditions during the Late Pleistocene have ranged between humid and hyperarid, changing the character of the ecosystem and transforming it at different points in time into a barrier, a refuge, and a corridor between southern and eastern African populations. Alluvial fans presently blanket the areas adjacent to major river systems, which were key areas of prehistoric human habitation. These sets of variables have created conditions that are both challenging and advantageous to conduct archaeological research. Lateritic soil development has resulted in poor organic preservation and facilitated insect bioturbation, which has demanded an integrated micro-macro scale approach to building a reliable geochronology. An integrated field and analytical methodology has also been employed to identify the nature and degree of post-depositional movement in alluvial deposits, which preserve a wide range of spatial integrity levels in buried stone artifact assemblages between 47 and 30 ka in Karonga, northern Malawi. This paper describes the methodological advances taken toward understanding open-air Middle Stone Age archaeology in sub-tropical Africa, and explores the inferential potential for understanding Pleistocene human ecology in the important southern Rift Valley region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Pleistocene continent of Sahul was first settled by people who arrived by watercraft from Island South East Asia about 50,000 years ago. Some of the oldest archaeological sites in Sahul are located in the southern Kimberley, in northwest Australia. This area lies within the southern zone of influence of the tropical monsoon and thus has always been highly sensitive to changes in monsoon dynamics over time. How these climatic changes have affected the colonisation and occupation of Australia is an important research theme in Australian archaeology. This paper illustrates the contribution and challenges of micromorphology in deciphering palaeoenvironmental and anthropogenic markers in a still largely unexplored Australian context. Micromorphological analysis of two archaeological sequences in the Napier Range (Carpenters Gap 1 and 3) provides a complementary and comprehensive reconstruction of the human-climate history in this area spanning nearly 50,000 years of Australian human presence. The results demonstrate an opportunistic use of sites by people through time, surprisingly independent of local climatic variation, suggesting highly flexible subsistence strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analysis of phytoliths has progressed immensely in recent years. Increases in the number of phytolith works within several disciplines has substantially extended our knowledge about these microfossils, while at the same time diversifying the approaches by which they can be used as archaeological and palaeoenvironmental proxies. The insufficient standardisation of these works, however, greatly increases the difficulty of utilising this body of research within a broader framework of powerfully integrated methodologies and models in archaeobotany and palaeoenvironmental studies. Further standardisation will facilitate the broadening of phytolith research beyond technique-oriented work, permitting greater opportunity for its application to inform on past cultures and their strategies of plant resources exploitation as well as the dynamics related to climate change and anthropic-driven environmental modifications. The aim of this paper is to drive our discipline towards a set of “best practices” that arise from current phytolith research but that are often applied in an unsystematic manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Palaeoenvironmental and palaeoclimatic data indicate that during the mid-to-late Holocene eastern Australia became significantly drier and experienced more intense and more frequent droughts. These changes, driven by the re-emergence and intensification of the ENSO climate phenomena, have been argued to have had considerable impact on Aboriginal societies, although there is uncertainty as to the exact nature, timing and magnitude of this impact. This paper analyses changes in the utilisation of toxic Macrozamia (cycad) seeds at seven archaeological sites in eastern Australia, identifying an extremely close correlation between the intensity of seed use and two proxy ENSO datasets, and a weaker correlation with a third ENSO dataset. Given the ecological attributes and resource potential of these plants, it is argued that these correlations are best explained as an intensified exploitation of a lower-ranked resource in direct response to the increased subsistence risks and lower productivity created by ENSO-driven climatic conditions. It also suggests that by 3000 BP the intensification of the ENSO system was driving changes in human subsistence behaviour on a sufficient scale to have considerable impact on other aspects of the wider cultural systems. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The West African sahel and savanna are today home to diverse cattle breeds derived from complex social, political and environmental processes over at least the past four thousand years. Current evidence from the sahel and its floodplains indicates multiple sizes of cattle over time that may correspond to modern breeds. However, little is known about the cattle further south in the savanna, such as the West African Shorthorn. These humpless cattle are well adapted to the environmental conditions of more humid zones, including their significant resistance to trypanosomiasis, or sleeping sickness. In this paper I present new archaeozoological data from the Iron Age village of Kirikongo, Burkina Faso (100–1700 CE) that indicate the presence of small cattle in the 1st millennium CE similar in size to West African Shorthorn. These results are contextualized through comparisons with other archaeological sites and environmental data in Central West Africa, suggesting that small cattle are generally associated with the savanna environment over time, and their distributions may have oscillated with climatic changes. Lastly, interregional processes are assessed given Kirikongo’s evidence for small savanna cattle in western Burkina Faso and their subsequent adoption in the Inland Niger Delta of Mali. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Research into the links between climatic change and hominin evolution has generated numerous hypotheses. In recent years, methodological refinement of, and increased research effort directed towards, reliable proxies for palaeoclimatic change have provided a growing body of data with which to test such hypotheses. Whilst many archaeologists are aware of these data, few are cognizant of the wealth of techniques developed by theoretical biologists over the last half-century to explicitly address the evolutionary consequences of adaptation to temporally heterogeneous environments. The current paper expands and adapts one such technique for use with empirical data, and applies it to a global palaeoclimatic record spanning the last five million years, in order to discern the potential impact of environmental heterogeneity on hominin evolution during this period. Of particular interest are the contributions of climatic change, associated with directional selection, and climatic variability, associated with selection for phenotypic plasticity. At this macro-scale, results suggest an early peak in selection for plasticity at approximately 2–2.7 mya, combined with three major shifts in directional selection at approximately 3.3–3.4, 1.4–1.5, and 0.5–0.6 mya. These results are employed to relate the fossil and archaeological records to a number of environmental hypotheses of human evolution. In particular, it is argued that the origins of the genus Homo and the spread of Oldowan technology are associated not with a major turnover pulse, but with a period of selection for phenotypic plasticity. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The Early Medieval period in Ireland (c. A.D. 400–1150) has been the subject of much archaeological and historical study. The recent application of various forms of archaeological sciences, as well as palaeoenvironmental studies, to the archaeological record have, however, added fresh impetus to this study area. It seems increasingly evident that significant changes to economy and society occurred during this period and were not recorded in detail in the contemporary documentary sources. This paper will attempt to outline those changes and to assess whether, or to what extent, they were influenced by climate change. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Although minor climatic and sea-level changes have been documented for the South Pacific during the late Holocene, our understanding of the consequent impact of these changes on the marine 14C reservoir, and therefore the 14C content of shellfish, is limited. Ultimately, this has implications for documenting the chronology of human movement and adaptation in this region. In this paper we compare marine reservoir (ΔR) data obtained from tightly controlled archaeological proveniences with known-age, pre-AD 1950 shells from the southern Cook Islands, American Samoa, and Marquesas Islands. Results indicate that there has been no significant change in the near-shore marine reservoir in these three locations over the last ca. 750years. Furthermore, known-age, pre-AD 1950 shell samples provide more precise ΔR values for use in sample calibration than archaeological paired shell/charcoal samples. This is attributed in part to the limitations of assigning provenance and age to material from archaeological sites. On the basis of these results we conclude that the known-age, pre-AD 1950 shell derived ΔR values can be used to calibrate shell 14C results from deposits of late Holocene age. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: On the basis of archaeological and alluvial records, this paper presents the first spatial analysis of artefacts in relation to the evolution of the Rhine River, at the Gallo-Roman site of Oedenburg, during the first four centuries AD. The dataset consisted of several thousand Roman artefacts found by pedestrian prospecting over the last twenty years, over half of which were coins. This dataset was used together with high-resolution topography and geomagnetic mapping, to reconstruct settlement evolution, both on the terrace and in the floodplain. A comprehensive monetary chart has been compiled for the Oedenburg site, which highlights four major phases of settlement. These results provide a possible causal link connecting historical factors and alluvial events with intra-site evolution. Therefore, while changes observed during Phases I (until AD 68), II (AD 69 to AD 180) and III (AD 180 to AD 295) seem largely related to historical and societal events, Phase IV (AD 295 to AD 402) shows patterns of abandonment of the lower part of the floodplain that may well be related to an unusually humid period in the fourth century. These results are set in a broader context, from the Rhine catchment area to the Alps, and are in agreement with the wet conditions also documented in alluvial, lacustrine, geomorphological and palynological records in Germany (Lahn River, Lake Constance, Lake Nussbaumen, Kaisersthul area and the Black Forest). Studying the intra-site spatial distribution of artefacts with high temporal constraints, at a long-lived site with contrasted topography, opens new avenues for the detection of discreet events such as a higher water table, affecting only the lower zone. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Climate deterioration at around the time of the Bronze Age/Iron Age transition has for long been argued to have resulted in upland abandonment in northern and western Britain, and recent research has provided evidence that a major climate downturn from 850cal BC caused settlement abandonment in western Europe and potentially worldwide. It is, however, unclear to what extent only ‘marginal’ sites were affected, due to the lack of any systematic attempt to view the evidence for settlement and land-use change across a range of landscape types with differing sensitivities to environmental change. This paper addresses this issue by an evaluation of 75 pollen sequences spanning the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age in Britain to assess whether climatic deterioration was sufficient to cause widespread land abandonment. The results provide no evidence for wholesale land-use change at this time; the overall picture is one of continuity of land use or even increased agricultural activity. There are, however, hints of regional variability, with a greater tendency to abandonment of upland areas in Wales, and signs of woodland regeneration in agriculturally productive areas of lowland central southern England. The latter pattern may reflect a combination of rising ground-water levels affecting local land-use in the immediate vicinity of the mires which provide the source of the pollen data, against a backdrop of regional-scale social and economic changes at the Bronze Age-Iron Age transition. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper investigates the taphonomy of predominantly biogenic sediments and pollen in the key archaeological site in the West Mouth of the Great Cave of Niah, Sarawak. Strong spatial patterning of sediments and pollen were found, with a zonation related to distance into the cave. Near the cave mouth, sedimentation is silty and derived from waters running down the cliff outside the cave, with leaves from external vegetation. Pollen assemblages are similar to forest floor samples outside the cave, and thus are of airfall or wash origin. In the interior of the West Mouth, sedimentation is highly organic and composed largely of bird droppings. Pollen assemblages in the interior are strongly but regularly biased, with ‘over-representation’ of mangrove and riverine taxa resulting from the recruitment of pollen by bats and swiftlets foraging preferentially in these zones, over 7 and over 2 km from the cave, respectively. The significance of these findings for the understanding of humid tropical cave sequences and particularly for the current reassessment of Niah Cave is discussed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper presents novel insights into the archaeology of food in ancient South Asia by using lipid residue analysis to investigate what kinds of foodstuffs were used in ceramic vessels by populations of the Indus Civilisation in northwest India. It examines how vessels were used in urban and rural Indus settlements during the Mature Harappan period (c.2600/2500–1900 BC), the relationship between vessels and the products within them, and identifies whether changes in vessel use occurred from the Mature Harappan to Late Harappan periods, particularly during climatic instability after 4.2 ka BP (c.2100 BC). Despite low lipid concentrations, which highlight challenges with conducting residue analysis in arid, seasonally-wet and alkaline environments, 71% of the vessels yielded appreciable quantities of lipid. Lipid profiles revealed the use of animal fats in vessels, and contradictory to faunal evidence, a dominance of non-ruminant fats, with limited evidence of dairy processing. The absence of local modern reference fats makes this dataset challenging to interpret, and it is possible that plant products or mixtures of plant and animal products have led to ambiguous fatty acid-specific isotopic values. At the same time, it appears that urban and rural populations processed similar types of products in vessels, with limited evidence for change in vessel use from the urban to the post-urban period. This study is a systematic investigation into pot lipid residues from multiple sites, demonstrating the potential of the method for examining ancient Indus foodways and the need for the development of further research in ancient organic residues in South Asia. • Systematic study on ceramic lipid residues from rural and urban sites of the Indus Civilisation in northwest India. • Lipid residue analysis provides chemical evidence for milk, meat, and possible mixtures of products and/or plant consumption. • Similarities in vessel use across settlements suggest common regional culinary practices. • Evidence for continuity in vessel usage practices after the decline of urbanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]