Human Adaptations to Lateglacial and Early Holocene Climate and Environmental Changes: Towards a Trans-Atlantic Perspective (Part 1)

Increasing resolution of paleoenvironmental records are beginning to show the spatiotemporal dynamics of ecosystem responses to different climate changes during the Lateglacial and early Holocene. A primary cause of many of these climate changes were glacier meltwater outbursts from the Laurentide Ice Sheet into the North Atlantic. At present there has been more consideration of the impacts of these different abrupt climate change events on European than North American human populations. This session sets the foundations for bridging this gap and connecting researchers investigating these questions in Europe with researchers investigating these questions in North America. The session seeks to know what particular periods of climate and environmental change impacted both North American and European populations, as well as the periods when there were no such impacts, and where these impacts or non-impacts occurred. Presentations will focus on questions of 1) paleoenvironmental and archaeological data quality and amenability for integration and tests of correlation, 2) temporal leads and lags in local or regional ecosystem and/or human responses to climate change events, and 3) the specific adaptive strategies employed in these human responses (e.g. population collapse, mobility, social networks, raw materials, lithic technology).