Drought and Cultural Instability

Summary

This is an abstract from the "2023 Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of Timothy Beach Part II" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Geologists and biologists work with archaeologists to address compelling questions about cultures of the past. Earth scientists who study tree rings, ice cores, speleothems, and lake sediment cores can provide information about the paleoclimatic and paleoenvironmental contexts in which ancient cultures developed, thrived, and disintegrated. Awareness of the negative socioeconomic consequences of recent global climate and environmental change has stimulated interest in past human-climate-environment interactions. Technological advances in remote sensing (e.g., lidar), stable isotope geochemistry, dating techniques, and ancient DNA analysis have enabled acquisition of large datasets that shed light on ancient human population densities, high-temporal-resolution paleoclimate (evaporation/precipitation ratio) and vegetation shifts, and presence/absence of prehistoric flora and fauna. Some profound cultural disruptions in the past were apparently associated with severe, protracted droughts (e.g., Maya, Tiwanaku, Anasazi). Yet many social scientists resist the notion that drought was the primary driver of cultural demise. The effect of climate fluctuations on cultural instability can be explored by (1) study of modern analogs (e.g., responses of sub-Saharan populations to recent droughts), (2) higher-resolution dating of paleoclimate archives and archaeological records to better temporally align the two, and (3) examination of the archaeological record for evidence of specific cultural responses to drying.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• 2023 Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of Timothy Beach Part II   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36738.0