The Impacts of Abrupt Climate Change Events on Human Paleo-demography in the Great Basin

Abstract:

A central question of research on prehistoric human-environment interaction concerns the role of abrupt versus gradual climate and environmental changes on human demography. This research requires high resolution, regional-scale paleoenvironmental records that provide researchers with the ability to discern variable spatial and temporal scales of ecosystem responses to climate change. Another requirement of this research is the development of human paleo-demographic proxies that can be arrayed as continuous time series and directly compared to continuous time series generated from proxy paleo-environmental data. In this presentation we contrast a compilation of nearly 5000 cultural radiocarbon proxies of human demography in the Great Basin with high resolution paleo-environmental records, each partitioned across nine floristic sectors. Results suggest regionally-variable responses of human populations to abrupt and gradual climate and environmental change. This presentation advances knowledge of the specific scales of climate and environmental change driving human demography in the Great Basin.