Dirt, dynasties, and devastation in North China: Geoarchaeological perspectives from the Luoyang Basin

Summary

Anthropogenic disturbance of alluvial systems is increasingly influential through time, but the interplay of climatic systems and basin hydrology complicate attempts to fingerprint how humans influence these systems. We evaluate the importance of climate change, fluvial dynamics, and anthropogenic environmental modification in forming the Holocene sedimentary record of the Luoyang Basin, a tributary of the Yellow River, located in western Henan Province, China. Our fieldwork indicates that an un-conformity found within the basin is roughly coincident with a major, human-caused, change in the lower course of the Yellow River in AD 1128. For the first time in the late Holocene, the Yellow River took a southern course, flowing out to the Yellow Sea. This course change not only had dramatic environmental consequences for the lower Yellow River valley, but may have also changed the fluvial dynamics of upstream tributary basins, such as the Luoyang Basin, from aggradation to incision, potentially destabilizing the area for hundreds of years. Although many paleo-environmental studies imply that anthropogenic environmental change is a gradual process involving climate and environmental change. This study demonstrates that historically contingent decisions of human agents can result in sudden, long-lasting, environmental impacts.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 17029