Seasonal records of palaeoenvironmental change and resource use from archaeological assemblages

Abstract

Seasonal climate variability can affect the availability of food, water, shelter and raw materials. Therefore, robust assessments of relationships between environmental change and changes in human behaviour require an understanding of climate and environment at a seasonal scale. In recent years, many advances have been made in obtaining seasonallyresolved and seasonally-focused palaeoenvironmental data from proxy records. If these proxy records are obtained from archaeological sites, they offer a unique opportunity to reconstruct local climate variations that can be spatially and temporally related to human activity. Furthermore, the analysis of various floral and faunal remains within archaeological sites enables reconstruction of seasonal resource use and subsistence patterns. This paper provides an overview of the growing body of research on seasonal palaeoenvironmental records and resource use from archaeological contexts as well as providing an introduction to a special issue on the same topic. This special issue of Journal of Archaeological Science Reports brings together some of the latest research on generating seasonal-resolution and seasonallyfocused palaeoenvironmental records from archaeological sites as a means to assessing human-environment interaction. The papers presented here include studies on archaeological mollusc shells, otoliths, bones and plant remains using geochemical proxies including stable isotopes (δ 18 O, δ 13 C, δ 15 N) and trace elements (Mg/Ca). The geographical scope encompasses parts of Europe, North America and the Levant, whilst temporally the studies range from Palaeolithic to historical times. Keywords: seasonality, palaeoenvironment, archaeology, sclerochronology, high-resolution proxy records 1. Climate and seasonality Anthropogenic climate and environmental change is one of the most pressing issues in today's world, yet our understanding of how human-induced environmental change fits into the Earth's pre-industrial, natural climate variability is limited by the shortness of the instrumental record. Instrumental records of past climate rarely extend beyond AD 1860 (Jones et al., 2001; 2009), yet many modes of climate variability operate on decadal to millennial timescales. Therefore, knowledge of past climate variability over longer timescales is essential to better understand the mode, scale and periodicity of natural climate variability and to establish a longer-term context from which to understand and interpret anthropogenic climate change. We can reconstruct climatic and environmental conditions prior to the instrumental record by analysing proxies preserved within palaeoenvironmental archives. It is essential to develop a broad range of proxy records of climatic and environmental change to enable an understanding of patterns of past climate and environmental change at various spatial and temporal scales (IPCC, 2013). Such data provide a framework of past changes,

What we talk about when we talk about seasonality – A transdisciplinary review

“…4; e.g., [604,8,564,518]. This is a part of the rapidly growing field of sclerochronology, which incorporates growth and age studies of mollusk shells in combination with 18 O records [604,564,87,452]. Mollusk shells used in sclerochronology are frequently derived from shell midden sites, which often provide stratified records that can bolster chronological resolution A transdisciplinary review on seasonality (see [297] for a more detailed analysis of shell stratigraphy and limitations).…”

“…Palaeoclimatology aims at documenting how seasonal changes affect the climate system through time [126,149], and the amplitude of seasonal changes [338,177,180,590,76]. Palaeoecology deals with the effect of seasonality changes on the ecosystem [470,346], while anthropology and archaeology document the effect of seasonality and changes in seasonality on human evolution, residency, subsistence strategies, and the adaptation of those strategies (the latter two involving human-ecosystem interaction; [452], and references therein). Recent work by Degroot et al [142] emphasized pitfalls of integrating data and knowledge between academic disciplines with different practices and standards of evidence.…”

Comparison of bulk and sequential sampling methodologies on mammoth tooth enamel and their implications in paleoenvironmental reconstructions

“…We suggest the sequential sampling method is more optimal because it provides not only an averaged multi-annual-scale isotopic composition (mean sequential value) but more importantly a time series of high-resolution paleoenvironmental records. Such records are crucial for understanding the highly variable climatic conditions of the Late Pleistocene and deciphering humanenvironmental interactions (Denton et al, 2005;Bradtmöller et al, 2012;Prendergast et al, 2018). In addition, the sequential δ 18 O variations that reflect seasonal environmental changes can also indicate whether there is a complete annual cycle, and if so, how many of them are recorded in each enamel ridge.…”

“…Although this method can effectively reconstruct the averaged paleoclimatic conditions over several years, the temporal resolution of reconstruction is limited to decadal scale, and consequently, a very small amount of data exist on sub-annual environmental conditions and climatic variations during the Quaternary from these regions. Such data, however, are crucial in understanding how the highly variable climate of the Late Pleistocene translated into regional-to local-scale environmental conditions, ultimately affecting a range of animalenvironmental and human-environmental interactions (Den-ton et al, 2005;Bradtmöller et al, 2012;Prendergast and Schöne, 2017;Prendergast et al, 2018).…”

Human-environment dynamics in the ancient Mediterranean. Keywords of a research field

“…97 Katrantsiotis et al 2018;Norström et al 2018. 98 Lewis et al 2017;Yanes & Fernández-Lopez-de-Pablo 2017;Prendergast et al 2018. 99 Seguin et al 2020b the range of decisions made, as well as the relevance of climate and other environmental forcing factors.…”