Prehistoric Human Adaptation to Climate Change: Bringing the Force of Geological Reasoning to Archaeological Data Sets

Abstract:

Human beings have contended with climate risk for the past 200,000 years. The last ice age ended in North America approximately 15,000 years ago, and the Younger Dryas occurred approximately 12,000 years ago. Archaeological data can be used to model how prehistoric peoples mitigated climate risks and that information can be used to aid modern climate adaptations.

Wetter climate and acidic soils in the northeastern United States leave a lithic-based archaeological record. Cultural and cognitive inferences using lithic-based data sets must be derived using geological reasoning. Where and how did prehistoric peoples quarry earth material? How did prehistoric peoples shape stone into tools? Why were there different typologies? Why were artifacts deposited where they were? What climate stressors played a role in such decisions? To answer these questions, researchers require a multi-modal, multi-scaled archaeological/geological understanding of where the rock crops out and the genesis (sedimentologic, diagenetic, stratigraphic) of different raw materials (volcanics, cherts, quartzites, hornfels). Researchers must understand geomorphological controls on site formation, preservation and erosion in order to plan excavations and explain the context in which sites occur. To understand prehistoric cognitive choices, researchers must utilize microscopic, hand-sample, outcrop, and landscape-scale data that answer the types of questions posed above.

Modern climate change has brought a new emphasis to what has been decades of effort by scientists to manipulate multidisciplinary data sets, to elucidate a complicated system of prehistoric human interactions with the environment. We can implement these methodologies in order to understand thousands of years of human achievement in adapting to climate risk.