Archaeological evidence and non-evidence for climatic change
- 24 April 1990
- journal article
- Published by The Royal Society in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series A, Mathematical and Physical Sciences
- Vol. 330 (1615), 645-655
- https://doi.org/10.1098/rsta.1990.0045
Abstract
‘Climate' is often used by historians to explain phenomena for which they cannot otherwise account. Accordingly, much of what has been written about climatic effects and climatic change must be read with extreme scepticism. Even though a disturbance may be obvious in the archaeological record, and it may be synchronous with a climatic event, a cause and effect relation should be demonstrated before one can say with any degree of confidence that the evidence is secure. Only when a number of separate lines of investigation agree on the same thing are we safe in positing true climatic ‘effect’ or ‘change’. This paper focuses on several instances in Mediterranean and Aegean archaeology where more or less satisfactory evidence for climatic change may be sought among a number of disciplines.Keywords
This publication has 6 references indexed in Scilit:
- Famine and Food Supply in the Graeco-Roman WorldPublished by Cambridge University Press (CUP) ,1988
- Settlement Surveys and Documentary Evidence: Regional Variation and Secular Trend in Mesopotamian DemographyJournal of Near Eastern Studies, 1984
- Drought and Famine in the 4th Century B. C.Hesperia Supplements, 1982
- A Drought in the Late Eighth Century B. C.Hesperia: The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 1979
- Climate and the History of Egypt: The Middle KingdomAmerican Journal of Archaeology, 1975
- Drought and the decline of MycenaeAntiquity, 1974