Durham Research Online Deposited in DRO: 10 December 2018 Version of attached le: Published Version Peer-review status of attached le: Peer-reviewed Citation for published item: Chapman, John (2018) 'Climatic and human impact on the environment? : A question of scale.', Quaternary international., 496 . pp. 3-13. Further information on publisher's website: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2017.08.010 Publisher's copyright statement: c 2017 The Author. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). 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Durham University Library, Stockton Road, Durham DH1 3LY, United Kingdom Tel : +44 (0)191 334 3042 | Fax : +44 (0)191 334 2971 https://dro.dur.ac.uk Quaternary International 496 (2018) 3e13 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Quaternary International journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/quaint Climatic and human impact on the environment?: A question of scale John Chapman Durham University, Department of Archaeology, Durham DH1 3LE, UK article info abstract Article history: The environmental context of cultural transformation’ - frames the central issue of this paper e how Received 16 July 2016 were Neolithic and Chalcolithic landscapes in the Aegean, Balkan and Carpathian (ABC) zones shaped and Received in revised form transformed by climatic and anthropogenic impacts? The difficulties in interpreting proxy records for the 14 July 2017 middle, transitional stage of the Holocene aridification sequence, falling between the early wet stage and Accepted 4 August 2017 the late arid stage, have been created by the conjoint influence of two kinds of impact e climatic and Available online 31 August 2017 anthropogenic. An unhelpful influence in this debate stems from Willis and Bennett's (1994) hypothesis of minimal human impact on the pre-Bronze Age landscapes of South East Europe. In this paper, two Keywords: Aegean questions are posed: (1) what were the effects of the claimed global changes in Holocene climate at the Balkans regional and local scale in the ABC zones?; and (2) can we recognise human impact in these proxy re- Carpathians cords prior to the Bronze Age of our study regions? Following a discussion of general long-term climatic Neolithic trends and RCCs (episodes of rapid climatic change), I base a discussion of the so-called 8200BP ‘event’ Chalcolithic and pre-Bronze Age human impacts on a suite of 24 well-dated proxy records e mostly pollen se- 8200BP ‘event’ quences. The principal findings are that there is little evidence for impact from the 8200BP ‘event’ in Rapid climate change these records, while there is substantial evidence for pre-Bronze Age human impacts on the landscapes Palaeo-environmental change of the Aegean, Balkan and Carpathian regions. Proxy records © 2017 The Author. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license Human impact (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). 1. Introduction BC: Galop et al., 2009) relate to the unknown strength of anthro- pogenic influences on local and regional ecologies in relation to The middle Holocene period witnessed one of the most dra- climate-forced changes to vegetation history. There is still no matic periods of change in European prehistory e the spread of a agreement on the causes of the aridification trend or the ways in farming way of life from Western and North West Anatolia to the which this was materialized in proxy records. In a discussion of Aegean zone (zone A), the Balkans (zone B), the Carpathians (zone both the climatic and the anthropogenic impacts on middle Holo- C) and beyond into North-Central Europe. This period of change in cene landscapes, I seek to answer two questions: (1) what were the three contiguous and inter-related zones e the ABC of South East effects of the claimed global changes in Holocene climate at the Europe e was the focus of the Saloniki Conference from which this regional and local scale in the ABC zones?; and (2) can we recognise Special Issue of QI has been distilled. The title of ‘The Neolithic of human impact in these proxy records prior to the Bronze Age of our Northern Greece and the Balkans. The environmental context of study regions? It is inevitable that I confront issues of scale in these cultural transformation’ frames the central issue of this paper e questions, from global trends to local events. An example of scalar how were Neolithic and Chalcolithic landscapes in the ABC zones issues is the way that annual changes in grain-sowing or hunting shaped and transformed by climatic and anthropogenic impacts? strategies represented much more fine-tuned practices than the The general climatic framework for this discussion is the three- colossus of global climatic changes such as the 8200BP event. I stage division of the Holocene into an Early Holocene wetter stage, approach this topic from the viewpoint of an environmentally- a transitional stage and a Mid - Late Holocene aridification stage. aware prehistorian with a scepticism to environmental deter- Several commentators (e.g., Roberts et al., 2011) have suggested minism, on the grounds that human communities must have been that the difficulties in interpreting proxy records for the transitional flexible enough to react to, if not to predict, the directions in period (7000e4000 cal BC: Brayshaw et al., 2011;or5000e3500 cal regional environmental changes and make thoughtful choices about where to live and what cuisine (food and drink) to select. Here, I shall make “the default assumption … that the humans and non-humans are mutually implicated - that they co-constituted the E-mail address: [email protected]. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2017.08.010 1040-6182/© 2017 The Author. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). 4 J. Chapman / Quaternary International 496 (2018) 3e13 world” (Head, 2008: 376). It is clear that this approach relates 1991), by which directional changes in climate can produce closely to the approach to cultural entanglements made by Hodder changes in the spatial patterning of species distributions.1 Since (2012). This approach contrasts with what most palaeo- Majewski et al. (2005) work at a millennial time-scale, it is hard to environmental scientists working in the Holocene of the Balkans imagine the effects of RCCs on local communities because of the and the Carpathian Basin take as a ‘normal’ research goal e the fuzziness of their temporal definition. Thus, Majewski's 7th mil- identification of ‘human impacts’ on the ‘natural’ vegetation (e.g., lennium cal BC RCC e termed the ‘Glacial Aftermath’ phase - may Willis and Bennett, 1994; Magyari et al., 2012; Connor et al., 2013). well be tied into the ‘8200BP event’, while it is possible that his 4th millennium cal BC RCC, marked by Alpine glacial re-advances and 2. Holocene climatic trends increases in the tree-line, is related to the inception of the Medi- terranean aridification stage. Magny's research into long-term A broad perspective on climatic trends in the study region de- West-Central European lake levels correlates higher-than-average pends increasingly on the results of the analysis of large data sets, lake-levels with higher annual precipitation, lower summer tem- consisting of as many pollen diagrams or other multi-proxy se- peratures and a shorter growing season. The greater chronological quences as are available, often at a millennial time-scale. As precision of his regional database enables Magny to identify three Giesecke et al. (2011: 2809) observe, “a large number of Holocene RSS episodes e at 7600e7200 cal BC, 6350e6150 cal BC (equivalent climate shifts or short-lived excursions are reported in the litera- to the ‘8200BP event’) and 4400e3950 cal BC (perhaps coeval with ture so that it seems almost possible to find one within the un- Majewski et al.’s later RCC episode). Thirdly, in a wide-ranging test certainty of any standard radiocarbon date.” Because of forest of the dynamic equilibrium hypothesis conducted at a centenarial resilience, a high-amplitude or long-lasting shift in climate pa- timescale, Giesecke et al. (2011) highlight three peaks of RCC in the rameters is needed to produce vegetational change recognizable at majority of the 59 proxy records under study: the start of the Ho- a millennial timescale. In this account, I do not focus on the effects locene period, the ‘8200BP event’ and an episode in the late 5th of the Younger Dryas phase (10950e9750 cal BC: Straus and Goebel, millennium BC (perhaps related to Magny's third RSS episode). In 2012), since it is earlier than the periods discussed in this Special vegetational terms, Giesecke makes a strong case for synchronous Issue. However, the impact of the ‘8200BP event’ is an important expansion of Corylus avellana from a variety of refugia in the Early part of the general climatic story in later Balkan prehistory Holocene. (8000e4000 cal BC). What we can infer from these studies is that the timescale of the The quantity and quality of palaeo-environmental research in analysis is critical in producing useful results for regional and local the Balkans and the Carpathian Basin has improved enormously social practices.