Mid-late Holocene climate, demography, and cultural dynamics in Iberia: A multi-proxy approach

Lillios, Katina T.; González, Antonio Blanco; Drake, Lee; López‐Sáez, José Antonio

doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2016.01.011

Cited by 99 publications

(72 citation statements)

References 116 publications

(91 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…This being said, several recent papers demonstrate that the technique works best when the radiocarbon signal is combined with other categories of information, such as paleoenvironmental records and 'traditional' archaeological data, as we do here (e.g. Woodbridge et al, 2014, Lillios et al, 2016.…”

Section: Paleoenvironmental and Archaeological Data: Materials And Mementioning

confidence: 62%

A long hard road… Reviewing the evidence for environmental change and population history in the eastern Adriatic and western Balkans during the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene

Birch

Linden

2018

Quaternary International

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The eastern Adriatic and western Balkans are key areas for assessing the environmental and population history of Europe during the Late Pleistocene and early Holocene. It has been argued that the Balkan region served as a Late Glacial refugium for humans, animals, and plants, much like Iberia and the Italian Peninsula and in contrast to the harsh conditions of Eastern and Central Europe. As post-glacial amelioration occurred and sea level rose, these regions to the north and west of the Balkan Mountains became forested and were populated by Mesolithic forager-fishers. Meanwhile, to the south, the domestication of plants and animals in the Near East began to cause large-scale environmental as well as lifestyle changes. Even as the Balkan Peninsula was a likely crossroads on the route for the spread of agriculture and herding from Southwest Asia into Europe, issues such as pre-Neolithic settlement, the discussion of human-environment interactions, and the role of climate events such as the 11.4, 9.3, and 8.2 ka cal BP in this critical landscape are often overlooked. Efforts to counter this challenge have been hampered by an apparent lack of data, so that the region hardly occurs in distribution maps. In part this is due to patchy research and a complicated political history, which have contributed to a fragmented archaeological and paleoecological record. Yet, as we show here, there is in fact plenty of evidence available for review. We present a survey of different proxies for environment and settlement throughout the Late Pleistocene and into the Early Holocene, combining radiocarbon data with zooarchaeological, lithic, and palynological records. By mapping this evidence, we are able to discuss the impact of climate change during the Pleistocene/Holocene transition and consider the role of environment and landscape on human population distribution at this crossroads in place and time.

show abstract

Section: Paleoenvironmental and Archaeological Data: Materials And Mementioning

confidence: 62%

A long hard road… Reviewing the evidence for environmental change and population history in the eastern Adriatic and western Balkans during the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene

Birch

Linden

2018

Quaternary International

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…We note that, in Fig. 6, the identification of the 4.2 ka BP Event appears problematic (at least using AP % signal), which is not in the case for other pollen records in Italy (Magri and Parra, 2002;Di Rita and Magri, 2009;Di Rita et al, 2018a), the Iberian Peninsula (e.g., Blanco-Gonzalez et al, 2018;Lillios et al, 2016), or the Levant (e.g., Kaniewski et al, 2013Kaniewski et al, , 2018. Interestingly, some records may suggest that the 4.2 ka interval is characterized by several important oscillations rather than one simple long interval of specific (usually drier) climatic conditions (see, for instance, Skala Marion and Solufar or GLD1 in Fig.…”

Section: Chronology: the Achilles Heel Of The Problemmentioning

confidence: 85%

The 4.2 ka BP Event in the Mediterranean region: an overview

et al. 2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The Mediterranean region and the Levant have returned some of the clearest evidence of a climatically dry period occurring around 4200 years ago. However, some regional evidence is controversial and contradictory, and issues remain regarding timing, progression, and regional articulation of this event. In this paper, we review the evidence from selected proxies (sea-surface temperature, precipitation, and temperature reconstructed from pollen, δ 18 O on speleothems, and δ 18 O on lacustrine carbonate) over the Mediterranean Basin to infer possible regional climate patterns during the interval between 4.3 and 3.8 ka. The values and limitations of these proxies are discussed, and their potential for furnishing information on seasonality is also ex-plored. Despite the chronological uncertainties, which are the main limitations for disentangling details of the climatic conditions, the data suggest that winter over the Mediterranean involved drier conditions, in addition to already dry summers. However, some exceptions to this prevail -where wetter conditions seem to have persisted -suggesting regional heterogeneity in climate patterns. Temperature data, even if sparse, also suggest a cooling anomaly, even if this is not uniform. The most common paradigm to interpret the precipitation regime in the Mediterranean -a North Atlantic Oscillation-like pattern -is not completely satisfactory to interpret the selected data.

show abstract

“…In contrast, during the last 3,000 years, fire regime has been essentially mediated by anthropic activity (Abel‐Schaad et al, ; López‐Sáez et al, ; Morales‐Molino et al, ; Vannière et al, ). Human impact and fire regime in the Mediterranean region have been analyzed by many research works in the last decades (Colombaroli et al, , ; Vannière et al, , , ; Connor et al, ; Leys et al, , ; Doyen et al, ), demonstrating that fire was a key factor in mountain ecosystems management since the Neolithic with the aim of creating open spaces in forests for both agricultural and livestock activities (Colombaroli et al, ; Lillios et al, ). In particular, the comparative analysis of pollen and macrocharcoal records from southwestern Europe has provided substantial evidence of the role played by anthropogenic fires, which have been a major player in establishing interspecific links between plant species and shaping vegetation dynamics from mid‐Holocene, causing the expansion of grasslands and scrublands, the progressive disappearance of conifer and mesophilous forests, and finally the establishment of large areas of cultivation and grazing pastures (Colombaroli et al, ; Carrión et al, ; Bisculm et al, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Paleofire Dynamics in Central Spain during the Late Holocene: The Role of Climatic and Anthropogenic Forcing

López‐Sáez¹,

Vargas

Fernández

et al. 2017

Land Degrad Dev

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The use of fire and, consequently, its severity and incidence on the environment have grown steadily during the last millennia throughout the Mediterranean. This issue can be assessed in several mountain ranges of central Iberia where changes in the management policy on anthropic activities and exploitation of high‐mountain environments have promoted a remarkable increase on fire frequency. Our research focuses on fire dynamics throughout the last 3,000 years from three peat bog charcoal records of the Gredos range (central Iberia). Our aim is to reconstruct past fire regimes according to forest vegetation typology (Castanea sativa, Pinus pinaster, and Pinus sylvestris). Charcoal influx shows low values between 3,140 and 1,800 cal. year bp when forests were relatively dense in both high and mid‐mountain areas. Fire appeared synchronous between 1,800 and 1,700 cal. year bp for Lanzahíta and Serranillos and around 1,400–1,240 cal. year bp for the three sites, suggesting anthropogenic fire control between the Late Roman and Visigothic periods that can be related to the cultivation of olive trees in the valleys and a greater human impact in high‐mountain areas. By contrast, during the Muslim period (1,240–850 cal. year bp), fire dynamics becomes asynchronous. Later, fires turn again coeval in the Gredos range during the Christian period (850–500 cal. year bp) and can be also correlated with drought phases during the Late Medieval Warm Episode. In short, our study demonstrates that fire activity has been enormously variable during the late Holocene in response to both short‐term and long‐term regional and global climate, vegetation dynamics, and land use changes. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

show abstract

Mid-late Holocene climate, demography, and cultural dynamics in Iberia: A multi-proxy approach

Cited by 99 publications

References 116 publications

A long hard road… Reviewing the evidence for environmental change and population history in the eastern Adriatic and western Balkans during the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene

A long hard road… Reviewing the evidence for environmental change and population history in the eastern Adriatic and western Balkans during the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene

The 4.2 ka BP Event in the Mediterranean region: an overview

Paleofire Dynamics in Central Spain during the Late Holocene: The Role of Climatic and Anthropogenic Forcing

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About