Living through changing climates: Temperature and seasonality correlate with population fluctuations among Holocene hunter-fisher-gatherers on the west coast of Norway

Abstract

The use of archaeological proxy records representative of population dynamics is paramount for a richer understanding of prehistoric cultural change, but its use require a dialectic assessment between proximate climatic drivers and ultimate cultural responses. Focusing on the Stone Age archaeological record of Western Norway (11,500–4300 cal. BP), this paper presents an exhaustive empirical curation and statistical testing between changing climates and demographic responses among coastal hunter-fisher-gatherers. The results connect long-term demographic fluctuations with changes in annual mean temperatures and seasonality and the results are discussed in relation changes in technology, subsistence and mobility. The paper also highlights the process of population decline and cultural loss towards the end of the Late Mesolithic (ca. 7000–6000 cal. BP) and emerging cultural novelties and population re-growth during the Early and Middle Neolithic (ca. 6000–4300 cal. BP). However, despite its strong correlation, the archaeological record of Western Norway lacks sufficient detail to ascribe an exclusive explanatory role to climate change, especially in episodes of significant population decline. This helps to emphasise that changing climates, while evidently central, form but a part of a larger system of interactions leading to demographic fluctuations and cultural change, the substantiation of which requires significant empirical improvements to the archaeological record.

Comparing summed probability distributions of shoreline and radiocarbon dates from the Mesolithic Skagerrak coast of Norway

“…This has also been the case for Norwegian Stone Age archaeology (e.g. Bergsvik et al 2021;Jørgensen 2020;Lundström 2023;Nielsen et al 2019;Nielsen 2021a;Persson 2018;Solheim 2020;Solheim and Persson 2018; see also Persson 2009).…”

“…In the same vein, environmental conditions, constraints and developments beyond RSL change also represent a range of factors that can have implications for these dimensions, and will consequently be of future importance to unpack the relationship between the proxies (e.g. Hoebe et al 2023;Jørgensen et al 2020;Lundström 2023;Manninen et al 2018;Ordonez and Riede 2022). To account for the confounding effects these might have, a more principled and comprehensive evaluation of how investigatory practices might impact the SPDs would also be beneficial.…”