Adaptive Cycles and Resilience as explanatory templates for the formulation of coupled climate-culture models

Summary

Simplistic scenarios of the role of climate on the dynamics of socio-political trajectories are increasingly being replaced by coupled models in which climate and societies undergo mutually influential interactions. The concepts of adaptive cycles and resilience have been particularly helpful in understanding these interrelations.

Based on an extensive body of data from Early to Upper (Young) Neolithic sites in western Central Germany and adjacent regions, a model is proposed which takes into account both the potentially beneficial as well as the adverse influences of climate. These parameters are then set against markers of social resilience which at times forms independently, at times dependently from climate fluctuations. The result is a complex basic module for a coupled climate-culture interaction model which may eventually be taken as a template for mathematical modelling.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• ‘Calibrating’ Palaeoclimatology-informed Research in Old World Archaeology: Data, Methods and Theories

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