Circum-Atlantic Responses to the Late Antique Little Ice Age (536-660 CE)

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Studies of North Atlantic cultures around the margins of the Bermuda Azores Subtropical High offer opportunities to observe parallel impacts on cultures on both sides of an ocean on four continents (Americas, Eurasia, Africa) as changes in global average temperatures influence the size and position of the High. Of special interest is the influence of the Late Antique Little Ice Age, the globally coldest climate episode in the last 2500 years. Its inception marked the change in general terms from a warming world with high sea levels and heavy precipitation toward an ice age of declining sea level and cool savannahs. We assume that change in global environment emerges into the realm of a Historical World Crisis when it appears on both sides of the Atlantic at the same time. In the first Millennium CE this is a meaningful quantification because similar hegemonic social structures dominated both hemispheres. The lynch pin of the 6th century world crisis is the fact that the Rome and Teotihuacan experienced sudden, severe changes at virtually the same moment in history with any differences in precise timing explainable in terms of other variables in their multivariable, cascading systems failures.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38474.0