How Much Is Enough? First Steps to a Social Ecology of the Pergamon Microregion

In this study, we present a transparent and reproducible approach to model agricultural production with respect to environmental characteristics and available labour. Our research focuses on the city of Pergamon and its surroundings, with an emphasis on the transition between the Hellenistic and Roman Imperial Period, where widespread demographic changes took place. We investigated the degree of local self-sufficiency using different concepts of a city’s complementary region. Using simple topographic derivatives, we derive a measure of environmental suitability that we translate into a carrying capacity index. Our results show that workforce was not a limiting factor for local self-sufficiency. However, environmental carrying capacity may have been limiting in a scenario with a large population. An active investment into the environment, e.g., by the construction of terraces, could have helped to increase the degree of self-sufficiency. Future research should investigate the level of resilience of such a coupled socio-ecological system in relation to environmental and socio-cultural dynamics

Mobility as resilience capacity in northern Alpine Neolithic settlement communities

Resilience has recently become an insightful conceptual framework that helps scholars explore how communities respond to external shocks, such as environmental changes. In prehistoric archaeology, this notion has primarily been investigated using the Resilience Theory (RT) and the Adaptive Cycle model (AC), developed by Gunderson and Holling, which are applied to adaptive systems in order to understand the source and role of change. However, such systems-theoretical approaches, which derive from ecology and psychology, bear the danger of leading to a top-down application of deductive models when appropriated to the fragmented archaeological sources. In other words, the risk is to assume the RT and AC model first and then to fit archaeological data within those assumptions. In this paper, we propose an alternative, inductive bottom-up approach in which we define resilience as a set of adaptive capacities grounded in social practices that enabled communities to cope with and respond to challenges. We use the Neolithic wetland sites from the Three-Lakes Region in the northern Alpine foreland of western Switzerland as a case study. These sites provide an abundance of archaeological and palaeoecological information, which can be used to examine the resilience of settlement communities to climate fluctuations. We will evaluate whether a causal relationship might have existed between climate changes in the period between 3600 and 3200 BCE and an observable decline of settlement activities on the shores of the large lakes. In addition to year-accurate reconstructions of settlement histories, we will apply statistical significance tests on archaeological and palaeoclimatic time series to question the correlation and causality between settlement activities and climate fluctuations. Besides the settlement frequency curve, we will use the radioactive beryllium-10 isotope (Be10) content in the GISP2 ice core from the Greenland Ice Sheet and the δ18O values of well-dated speleothems as proxies for temperature and precipitation, respectively. The inferred hypothesis, i.e. that periodically rising lake levels led to the flooding of former inhabitable spaces on the lakes’ shore zones and forced communities to relocate their settlements to the hinterland, will further be tested. Therefore, we apply multivariate statistics to pollen data to evaluate human influence on vegetation (land clearing) taken as settlement activity beyond the shores of large lakes. In addition, we examine the relevance of transformations in pottery styles as further indicators for spatial mobility

Beyond lake villages. Archaeological excavations and paleoecologal analysis at Lake Burgäschi/Switzerland.

In 2015 started the international research project “Beyond lake villages: Studying Neolithic environmental changes and human impact at small lakes in Switzerland, Germany and Austria.” (University of Bern in collaboration with Landesdenkmalamt Baden-Würtemberg and University of Vienna, funding: SNF-DFG-FFW). Three archaeological and three palaeoecological teams work together on three small lakes on the Northern side of the Alps. The aim is to compare environmental changes and human impact of Neolithic societies. The Swiss study area is Lake Burgäschi, a small water body in the central part of the Swiss Midlands. Archaeological research started already in 1877 and several major excavation campaigns took place in the 1940ies and 1950ies. Up to now four settlement of the 4th millennium BC areas are known and single finds indicate settlement activities during the 5th and 3rd millennia BC. The presentation gives an overview on former and recent activities in one of the classic find spots of Swiss pile-dwellings research. A special focus will be put on new archaeological and palaeoecological results

Mapping past human land use using archaeological data: A new classification for global land use synthesis and data harmonization.

In the 12,000 years preceding the Industrial Revolution, human activities led to significant changes in land cover, plant and animal distributions, surface hydrology, and biochemical cycles. Earth system models suggest that this anthropogenic land cover change influenced regional and global climate. However, the representation of past land use in earth system models is currently oversimplified. As a result, there are large uncertainties in the current understanding of the past and current state of the earth system. In order to improve representation of the variety and scale of impacts that past land use had on the earth system, a global effort is underway to aggregate and synthesize archaeological and historical evidence of land use systems. Here we present a simple, hierarchical classification of land use systems designed to be used with archaeological and historical data at a global scale and a schema of codes that identify land use practices common to a range of systems, both implemented in a geospatial database. The classification scheme and database resulted from an extensive process of consultation with researchers worldwide. Our scheme is designed to deliver consistent, empirically robust data for the improvement of land use models, while simultaneously allowing for a comparative, detailed mapping of land use relevant to the needs of historical scholars. To illustrate the benefits of the classification scheme and methods for mapping historical land use, we apply it to Mesopotamia and Arabia at 6 kya (c. 4000 BCE). The scheme will be used to describe land use by the Past Global Changes (PAGES) LandCover6k working group, an international project comprised of archaeologists, historians, geographers, paleoecologists, and modelers. Beyond this, the scheme has a wide utility for creating a common language between research and policy communities, linking archaeologists with climate modelers, biodiversity conservation workers and initiatives

Mapping past human land use using archaeological data: A new classification for global land use synthesis and data harmonization

In the 12,000 years preceding the Industrial Revolution, human activities led to significant changes in land cover, plant and animal distributions, surface hydrology, and biochemical cycles. Earth system models suggest that this anthropogenic land cover change influenced regional and global climate. However, the representation of past land use in earth system models is currently oversimplified. As a result, there are large uncertainties in the current understanding of the past and current state of the earth system. In order to improve repre- sentation of the variety and scale of impacts that past land use had on the earth system, a global effort is underway to aggregate and synthesize archaeological and historical evi- dence of land use systems. Here we present a simple, hierarchical classification of land use systems designed to be used with archaeological and historical data at a global scale and a schema of codes that identify land use practices common to a range of systems, both imple- mented in a geospatial database. The classification scheme and database resulted from an extensive process of consultation with researchers worldwide. Our scheme is designed to deliver consistent, empirically robust data for the improvement of land use models, while simultaneously allowing for a comparative, detailed mapping of land use relevant to the needs of historical scholars. To illustrate the benefits of the classification scheme and meth- ods for mapping historical land use, we apply it to Mesopotamia and Arabia at 6 kya (c. 4000 BCE). The scheme will be used to describe land use by the Past Global Changes (PAGES) LandCover6k working group, an international project comprised of archaeologists, historians, geographers, paleoecologists, and modelers. Beyond this, the scheme has a wide utility for creating a common language between research and policy communities, link- ing archaeologists with climate modelers, biodiversity conservation workers and initiatives.publishedVersio

Mapping past human land use using archaeological data: A new classification for global land use synthesis and data harmonization

In the 12,000 years preceding the Industrial Revolution, human activities led to significant changes in land cover, plant and animal distributions, surface hydrology, and biochemical cycles. Earth system models suggest that this anthropogenic land cover change influenced regional and global climate. However, the representation of past land use in earth system models is currently oversimplified. As a result, there are large uncertainties in the current understanding of the past and current state of the earth system. In order to improve representation of the variety and scale of impacts that past land use had on the earth system, a global effort is underway to aggregate and synthesize archaeological and historical evidence of land use systems. Here we present a simple, hierarchical classification of land use systems designed to be used with archaeological and historical data at a global scale and a schema of codes that identify land use practices common to a range of systems, both implemented in a geospatial database. The classification scheme and database resulted from an extensive process of consultation with researchers worldwide. Our scheme is designed to deliver consistent, empirically robust data for the improvement of land use models, while simultaneously allowing for a comparative, detailed mapping of land use relevant to the needs of historical scholars. To illustrate the benefits of the classification scheme and methods for mapping historical land use, we apply it to Mesopotamia and Arabia at 6 kya (c. 4000 BCE). The scheme will be used to describe land use by the Past Global Changes (PAGES) LandCover6k working group, an international project comprised of archaeologists, historians, geographers, paleoecologists, and modelers. Beyond this, the scheme has a wide utility for creating a common language between research and policy communities, linking archaeologists with climate modelers, biodiversity conservation workers and initiatives

Wealth Consumption and What It Might Tell About Social Organization. A Case Study from the Middle Bronze Age Carpathian Basin

Applying the rather traditional method of constructing a wealth index based on grave goods and grave construction attributed to an individual, the presented study tries to open a dialogue for a more open-minded discussion towards Bronze Age social organization. The presentation will focus on the Bronze Age ceramic style complexes of the Carpathian Basin during the first half of the 2nd Millennium and their consumption of material wealth in burial rites. There is no rejection in the tendencies of increasing social stratification during the Bronze Age in Central European societies which becomes visible especially in the treatment of the dead. However, it seems possible to trace finer nuances of social organization when one is widening not only the methodological but also theoretical framework concerning the possible forms of social relations on intra- and intergroup levels. The vast spatiochronological transformations in material culture during specific periods of the Bronze Age not necessarily pictures conquest or economic exploitation of neighbors but might results through the contact and exchange, not necessarily peaceful, between neighboring communities facing the same struggles. I hope to show that communities which were often conceptualized as different might share specific economic and social traits what makes the idea of cooperation between them more comprehensible. And instead of seeing two ‘opposing’ ceramic style complexes different from each other in the expression of material culture see a bigger group which share a common system of social and economic organization

Scaling Archaeology? A glimpse on prehistoric settlement research in Neolithic alpine lake shore villages

Within the scope of the project \Beyond lake villages: Studying Neolithic environmental changes and human impact at small lakes in Switzerland, Germany and Austria" special attention is drawn to the modeling of the Western Swiss Neolithic (ca. 4500-2200 cal. B.C.) population density, land use and land cover under consideration of changing technological, socioeconomic and climatic infuences. The well preserved waterlogged lake shore settlements of the alpine foreland provide us with an extraordinary quality of archaeological data, including chronological precision, architecture, (bio-)archaeological material and the possibility to retrace taphonomic processes. Several studies showed that social as well as economic behavior can be deducted from archaeological remains. The detailed examination of the three case studies of Murten Pantschau (ca. 3430-3415 B.C.), Sutz-Lattringen Riedstation VI (ca. 3393-3388 B.C.) and Arbon Bleiche 3 (ca. 3384-3370 B.C.) will give an insight into the chronological development and intra-site structures of Late Neolithic lake shore villages. In regard of dependencies between quantities and population size, the presented investigation will compare the quantified silex, ceramic and bone inventories from different Neolithic lake shore settlements in regard to available population proxies. The method of scaling material from excavated settlements do contain noise factors, namely excavation techniques, conditions of conservation, the circumstances of settlement abandonment and its chronological development, which are hard to silence