Environmental Change and Society in Holocene Prehistory

85 Environmental Change and Society in Holocene Prehistory arlene m. rosen and steven a rosen 85.1 INTRODUCTION Holocene prehistory encompasses the development of early village foragers using low-level cultivation of cereals, through to more complex village societies that were more fully committed to and dependent upon agriculture and food production systems. These communities preceded the rise of the earliest cities and states. Concomitantly, peripheral societies, based on pastoralism, developed in the desert and steppe zones, adopting domesticates (goats and perhaps sheep) from the agricultural areas of the Levant. Growing human populations increasingly managed and indeed engineered their environments on scales greater than in any previous time. These practices ultimately resulted in a greater reliance on food production rather than food collection, with the dual effects of enhancing food security in times of general climatic stability, but also increasing vulnerability to unpredictable climate change and environmental degradation. The explication of the relationships between environment and culture over the course of this time span must consider in close detail both the particulars of climatic and environmental reconstructions, and speciic historical and cultural circumstances (Rosen 2007). To reconstruct the culture–environment dynamic under increased social complexity and diversity, ine chronological and geographical reconstructions are necessary. It is also necessary to afirm that aligning peaks and valleys of proxies indicating dry/wet conditions with archaeological periodization systems offers few insights into the resilience of human societies to climatic shifts. The reductions of climate systems to wet/dry cycles and of human adaptations to archaeological culture systematics (e.g. Issar & Zohar 2004) are both chronologically imprecise and simplistically lump complex systems into single-variable phenomena. Variation in the frequencies and timing of droughts is as signiicant for the sustainability of farming as absolute amounts and mean precipitation; probabilities determine human behaviours, and contingency behaviours for severe environmental change rely on stored knowledge/memory and its adoption and adaptation for those times of crisis. Of course, sometimes that knowledge/memory is lost or rendered obsolete, exacerbating the crisis; however, such phenomena are functions of the particular society and the social and technological tools available to it, the amplitude of the environmental change, and the probability associated with that change. Similarly, the ability of human groups to adapt to changing environments and buffer themselves against risk by proactively constructing the environments in which they live is deeply embedded in the particulars of their social and demographic structures and technologies. 85.2 THE CLIMATIC AND ENVIRONMENTAL SEQUENCES Levantine climates and environments spanning roughly the 12th to 6th millennia BP (all ages below are calibrated) are examined. Chronologically, these seven millennia are divided into the Pleistocene–Holocene transition, the Holocene Climatic Optimum, and the post-optimum trends toward long-term desiccation. At a higher resolution, these three trends were punctuated by decadalto millennial-scale climatic and environmental changes, events, and episodes rendering the picture more complex, and with profound effects on human adaptations (cf. Butzer 1982; Rosen & Rosen 2001). Similarly, the environmental mosaic that constitutes the Levant (see many chapters in this volume) implies that the dynamics of climatic change will be expressed in different ways and at different amplitudes in the different sub-regions of the Levant. Most notably, the effects of climatic and environmental luctuations may be ampliied in geographic transitional zones, and less evident in the heart of an ecological zone. Impact on human settlement in such areas may be consequently greater, as the climate in transitional zones is less predictable and subject to more rapid change (cf. Bruins & Lithwick 1998). The complex nature of the environmental record is rendered even more dificult by the complexities of its basic reconstruction. Diverse lines of proxy evidence relect different response times to secular changes in temperature and precipitation, different 761 A.M. Rosen and S.A Rosen geographical scales of change, and different levels of chronological resolution. Correlating the climatic and environmental proxies is thus in itself dificult; establishing causal relationships with social dynamics is even more so. The Younger Dryas event, dated ca. 13,000–11,500 BP, is evident in virtually all proxy data. It is usually represented by a cold dry episode following the Bølling–Allerød warming trend subsequent to the Last Glacial Maximum. Thus, speleothem isotopic data (Bar-Matthews et al. 1999; Bar-Matthews & Ayalon 2004), pollen sequences (Niklewski & Van Zeist 1970; Rossignol-Strick 1995; Baruch & Bottema 1999; Yasuda et al. 2000; Wright & Thorpe 2003; Litt et al. 2012), and sedimentological data from alluvial sections (Goldberg 1986, 1987; Rosen 1986a; Goodfriend & Magaritz 1988) generally indicate a cooler and drier climate, with increased winds in the dune areas of the Negev (Enzel et al. 2010; Roskin & Tsoar, Chapter 56 of this volume), and with consequent contraction of forests and stream incision in areas farther north. Conversely, during at least part of the Younger Dryas, Lake Lisan had a slight rise in level (e.g. Stein et al. 2010; Stein & Goldstein, Chapter 12 of this volume), an indicator of wetter conditions in the north of Israel in spite of the dry period in the south (Frumkin 1997; Migowski et al. 2006; Enzel et al. 2008). The Levantine Pleistocene–Holocene transition ca. 11,500 BP, following the Younger Dryas, is also relected in a wide range of proxy evidence. Speleothem records from the Soreq Cave as well as from another Judean Hills cave (Frumkin et al. 1999) show a rapid return to the warmer and moister climatic regime evident just prior to the Younger Dryas. Environmentally, this is seen in the apparent cessation of streambed incision, and in luctuations of Dead Sea lake levels, eventually forming the modern Dead Sea (Stein et al. 2010). Although there are disputes over the ages of pollen records from the Hula wetlands of northern Israel and Ghab Lake in Syria (Rossignol-Strick 1995; Meadows 2005), some scholars interpret the rise in arboreal pollen – most notably oak, pistachio, and olive – as occurring in the Early Holocene (see Rosen 2007 and Wright & Thorpe 2003 for arguments supporting the spread of forests in the Bølling/Allerød, ca. 14,700 to 12,700 BP). In Turkey, pollen data derived from sites in the west show a rapid return to moist conditions and dominance of arboreal pollen after the Younger Dryas. Pollen diagrams from eastern Turkey and western Iran suggest, however, a slower recovery, and perhaps were more inluenced by higher altitudes and cooler, continental climates (Eastwood et al. 1999; Kuzucuoğlu et al. 1999; Wick et al. 2003), or even human management practices (Roberts 2002). The Ein Gedi core (Litt et al. 2012; Litt & Ohlwein, Chapter 39 of this volume) shows relatively high arboreal pollen and a hiatus ca. 8 ka, followed by generally lower arboreal pollen in the middle Holocene. Carbon isotope compositions of land snail shells in the Negev indicate a slight southward shift of C3 vegetation during this period, relecting the expansion of mesic vegetation into the semi-arid northern Negev (Goodfriend 1999). This shift, as late as 7 ka, indicates mean annual rainfall of 290 mm yr−1 in areas currently receiving 150–200 mm yr−1 . As the annual precipitation in the northern Negev correlates positively with precipitation in areas to its north, in Israel and Lebanon, this may indicate increased precipitation there (e.g. Enzel et al. 2003, 2008). 762 These ameliorating trends continued throughout the early Holocene, 11.5–7.5 ka. The Soreq Cave speleothem data offer higher resolution of climate variability in this long period, showing the general warming trend until ca. 9.5/9.0 ka, a short and low-amplitude reversal of the trend at about 9 ka, and two highamplitude episodes of warm and moist climate around 8.4 ka and 7.6 ka. These two episodes were 100 and 300–400 years long, respectively. It was proposed that these short events were characterized by temperatures and rainfall roughly equivalent to that of modern times and in signiicant contrast to the preceding and succeeding periods (Bar-Matthews et al. 1999; Bar-Matthews & Ayalon 2004). Lacustrine evidence shows early Holocene marsh formation in eastern Jordan (e.g. the Jafr Basin), in general accordance with the moister conditions evident from other proxy materials. Similarly, Dead Sea sediments (Migowski et al. 2006) show wetter episodes in the early Holocene. The ameliorated conditions of the Early Holocene are occasionally relected in the geomorphological record. Goodfriend (1999) interpreted colluvial deposits in the Negev as indicative of wetter climates, and the cessation of colluvial deposition in the Negev ca. 8,000–9,000 BP as perhaps relective of the 8.2 ka event. However, recent analysis suggests that the colluviation may be as much a result of increased wind activity as of moisture (Crouvi et al. 2008, 2010; Enzel et al. 2010). Customarily the middle Holocene is 7.5 to 4 ka, although the 5th millennium BP is already well within historic times and outside our scope. The Soreq Cave speleothems provide the climatic sequence with the inest resolution (Bar-Matthews et al. 1999; BarMatthews & Ayalon 2004). They indicate increased aridity and cooler temperatures following the inal phase of the early Holocene optimum, ca. 7.5 ka. Although cooler and drier than the preceding period, the middle Holocene was still warmer and wetter than modern times. The pollen analysis by Litt et al. (2012) from the Dead Sea indicates a dryer and warmer phase for the middle Holocene; it is dificult to reconcile these contradictions, although they perhaps result from the effects of microenvironments and different drainages. Notably, this interval can be characterized as one showing more luctuations than the previous period. In particular, following the initial phase of drier conditions ca. 7500 BP, a short moist episode can be deined ca. 6,200–6,300 BP, followed by alternating episodes of drier and more humid climate. Bar-Matthews and Ayalon (2004) calculate rainfall luctuations (based partially on the relationship between modern rainfall patterns and isotopic variation) to be of the order of 75–100 mm rainfall per year for the ‘average’ luctuations and as high as 150–300 mm yr−1 for the larger-scale luctuations. According to their analyses, rainfall during the end of the 5th millennium BP seems to have declined to as little as 300 mm yr−1 , in an area now receiving roughly 500 mm annually. The general trends toward increased aridity near the end of the mid-Holocene, as well as some of the luctuations, are relected in other proxies. The land snail δ 13 C data (Goodfriend 1988) show a northward shift of the C3 vegetation boundary, although the luctuations are not readily evident. In fact, the short span of these ameliorating episodes may have been inadequate for vegetation distribution to change signiicantly; the vegetation communities indicated Environment and Society in Holocene Prehistory in the C3/C4 communities may be relecting only longer-term trends (Goodfriend 1990, 1999). Analysis of Dead Sea sediments (Migowksi et al. 2006) suggests lower lake levels at 8.1 ka. Subsequently, levels apparently luctuated between around 410 m below mean sea level (bmsl) and 420 m bmsl, somewhat below early Holocene levels, but somewhat above sub-modern levels (prior to the artiicial reduction of the lake level in the late twentieth century). In the mid-6th millennium BP, lake levels probably began rising again. These luctuations are evident in other studies, but interpretations vary as to whether the period should be interpreted as a fundamentally dry one (e.g. Migowski et al. 2006) or a moist one (e.g. Frumkin et al. 1991). The middle Holocene is generally a period of stream alluviation and active loodplain build-up, but all the alluvial terraces of this period are attributed to the second half of the period. This indicates either incision or relative hydrological stasis in the 7–8 ka phase. The palaeohydrology of such streams as Nahal Beer Sheva, Nahal Shiqma, and Nahal Lachish, all in the loess area (Crouvi et al., Chapter 53 of this volume) of southern Israel, suggest that these modern ephemeral drainages were intermittently perennial streams at 6–4 ka (Rosen 1986a, 1986b; Goldberg 1987; Goldberg & Rosen 1987). The pollen cores are again chronologically contentious in this period, although the Dead Sea pollen diagram (Litt et al. 2012) is more reliable chronologically than that of the Hula, since it was dated by relict terrestrial vegetation. The sequence shows decreased arboreal pollen following the early Holocene, but then indicates an increase in 6.5 ka, dominated both by oak (Quercus ithubernensis) and olive (Olea sp.). Even given the possibility that olives were being cultivated, the rise of oak most likely relects the moist episode seen in other proxies, although we cannot rule out the possibility of human management of woodland zones. The Ghab diagram (Niklewski & Van Zeist 1970; Yasuda et al. 2000) suggests a replacement of deciduous oak by its evergreen cousin, and a general decrease in pine, although still a woodland environment. The Hula diagram shows an expansion of oak and pistachio (Pistachia sp.) at 5.5 ka, perhaps corresponding to the Dead Sea diagram and attributable to a humid episode in the speleothem sequence (Baruch & Bottema 1999). Similarly, the Kinneret diagram shows expanded forest in the second half of the middle Holocene (Baruch 1986). In general, the pollen diagrams seem to relect forested regions at least during the second half of the middle Holocene (Rossignol-Strick 1995), probably relecting the general humidity of the period, in spite of the relative decline after the early Holocene. Ultimately, however, given that suggested chronological calibrations range from 500 to 5,000 years, the pollen data can be applied only very cautiously. 85.3 LEVANTINE SOCIETY AND ENVIRONMENT The changes in Near Eastern society that occurred at the end of the Pleistocene and the irst half of the Holocene were neither continuous nor linear; they comprise a mosaic of differential social evolution over the landscape, and they occurred on a demographic scale not seen earlier in the human career. This period saw major tech- 763 nological and social developments, which in some ways enhanced human adaptive capabilities and in others reduced human resilience to environmental changes, as populations grew. Humans increasingly managed and engineered their environments, more than in any previous period. These practices resulted in an ever-greater reliance on food production rather than food collection, with a shift from early village foraging and low-level cultivation of cereals to more complex village societies that were more fully committed to and dependent upon agriculture and food production systems. The increased mobility of Late Natuian society can be seen as an adaptation to the changed resource systems effected by the Younger Dryas. The expansion of Late Natuian society into the arid zones of the central Negev (given the absence of evidence for Early Natuian as a source culture (Goring-Morris 1987), and the consequent evolution of the Hariian culture, relects a counterintuitive demographic increase in a marginal zone during a period of climatic deterioration. This culture confounds expectations of direct correlations between climatic variables and demography and cultural complexity. Notably, relative to the north, the Negev was always a marginal environment (e.g. Enzel et al. 2008), regardless of trends in the desert itself. Explanation for this apparent anomaly lies at the larger scale, where the increased mobility of Late Natuian society in the Mediterranean zone of the Levant seems to have resulted in expanded territories, colonization of both the better watered and marginal zones, and ultimately an autonomous adaptation to these zones. The virtual absence of PrePottery Neolithic A societies in the Negev (as well as eastern Jordan and north Arabia) during this apparently climatically ameliorated period (Kuijt & Goring-Morris 2002) is again counterintuitive, and may also require a larger-scale explanatory perspective, the pull of the Mediterranean-zone climatic optimum and the spatial contraction of populations around settlement aggregates. The reabsorption of marginal-area populations into the Mediterranean zone is indicative both of the increased carrying capacity due to environmental amelioration, and to the increased resource base, as human populations shifted to ever-greater intensities of cultivation and ultimately agriculture. Rosen and Rivera-Collazo (2012) suggest that human adaptations to climate and environmental changes during the terminal Pleistocene/Early Holocene episodes can be best described as repeating cycles of programmatic adaptations that shift from sets of dry-period adaptations to complexes of moist-period adaptations. The dry-phase adaptations consisted of greater mobility (GoringMorris & Belfer-Cohen 1998; Bar-Yosef & Belfer-Cohen 2002), exploitation of a wide range of plants that might be low-ranked in moister periods, including cereals and small-grained grasses (Weiss et al. 2004; Rosen 2010), less energy investment in the capture of fast-escaping fauna (such as hares and partridges) (Stutz et al. 2009), and intensive exploitation of wetland environments (Rosen 2013). Adaptations to moist periods included more sedentary settlements, the concentrated exploitation of high-value plant resources such as nuts or large-seeded grasses and cereals, and the hunting of lower-ranked small game that could be found close to human settlements. These systems were in place throughout the late Pleistocene and into the Early Holocene, cycling from one to another with shifting environmental conditions. A.M. Rosen and S.A Rosen The development of Pre-Pottery Neolithic A villages in the Jordan Valley and along the western foot slopes of mountain ranges in Jordan and Israel may relect the stabilization of wild resources. These resources included grass grains such as wild oats and wild barley, and wetland lora and fauna that thrived with the increased discharge of springs and streams, by which so many Pre-Pottery Neolithic A sites seem to have been located. Increased rainfall lengthened the growing season, and generally increased resource stability. This may have been the incentive or ‘pull-factor’ that encouraged and allowed increasingly reliable cultivation of wild grains (Weiss et al. 2006; Rosen & Rivera-Collazo 2012). By all accounts, the transition from Pre-Pottery Neolithic A to Pre-Pottery Neolithic B, 10.5 ka, corresponds to a period of apparent climatic stability, this in spite of signiicant cultural and settlement discontinuities. The current paucity of Early Pre-Pottery Neolithic B sites in the southern Levant (Kuijt & Goring-Morris 2002) renders explication, let alone explanation, dificult. The chronological heartland of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B, the 10th millennium BP, was both environmentally optimum and climatically stable (relative, of course, to other periods) (BarMatthews et al. 1999; Bar-Matthews & Ayalon 2004). The demographic and cultural lorescence evident in this period was undoubtedly at some level enabled by the environmental contexts, perhaps spurred on by steadily increasing population growth as a ‘push-factor’. Relatively stable rainfall regimes and an expanded Mediterranean zone allowed agricultural colonization beyond the well-watered areas of Pre-Pottery Neolithic A settlement, including settlement of the coastal plain (e.g. Galili et al. 2002). Social and technological trajectories offered means of further exploiting these new environments, expanding the range of domesticates, permitting the intensiication and exploitation of already utilized plants, and in one sense further enhancing human adaptive potentials while at the same time reducing the resilience of these societies to abrupt climatic change. Assuming that the chronologies can be correlated, it is crucial that the demographic peak in the Late Pre-Pottery Neolithic B, expressed most clearly in the rise of the so-called megasites of up to 10 hectares in size, seems to coincide with the beginning of a period of climatic perturbations, speciically a climatic deterioration (cf. Davis 1984). It also cannot be ignored that, by this time, goat pastoralism had largely supplanted gazelle hunting as the primary source of meat for the village populations. Keeping goats was a form of resource intensiication, but also came with its own set of requirements, probably in the form of foddering and grazing resources (Horwitz et al. 1999; Martin 1999). The expansion into the arid zones at the beginning of the PrePottery Neolithic B implies abandonment of the incipient agriculture of the Mediterranean zone and ‘reversion’ to immersive hunting-gathering in the arid zones (for there is no evidence for autonomous pastoralism beyond the immediate desert margins until the Pre-Pottery Neolithic C or later). This undoubtedly was enabled by the expansion of an Irano-Turanian steppe zone (with apparent evidence for opportunistic exploitation of cereals in these marginal zones), but should be seen primarily as part of the social reorganization and demographic expansion evident in the Middle and Late PrePottery Neolithic B over the entire Levant. Notably, the apparent 764 presence of domesticated caprines in Wadi Rum, at the site of Abu Nukhayla (Albert & Henry 2004; Henry & Beaver 2014), should perhaps be interpreted as a part of a seasonal round attached to the Mediterranean zone, considerably expanded in the southern Jordan Highlands in this period. It is unlikely that human over-exploitation of the environment caused the ultimate collapse of Pre-Pottery Neolithic B society, given demographic estimates, the absence of evidence for significant environmental degradation, and simulation analyses indicating only localized environmental impacts of small village societies (Ullah 2011; Rosen 2011, per contra Rollefson & KöhlerRollefson 1989; Köhler-Rollefson 1992). The 8.2 ka event is too late to have caused that collapse. However, the Soreq speleothem sequence shows a series of environmental perturbations at the end of the 10th millennium BP. This may suggest an increase in variability of rainfall and temperature, and therefore a profound decrease in predictability, thus signiicantly reducing the sustainability of farming systems in marginal areas of the Levant. This, combined with the loss of resilience due to greater vulnerability of dense population aggregations, might better explain the transition to the reduced population size of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic C. It is also in this interval, following the collapse of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B system, that societies in the deep desert irst adopted goats into their subsistence systems. Herding became an extensive system, lexible enough to be effective in areas of unpredictable climate. The luctuating climates of the middle Holocene must certainly have affected Neolithic and Chalcolithic settlements, but in the wellwatered regions the effects of environmental variability could have been tempered by social and technological adjustments, such as loodwater farming (Goldberg & Rosen 1987; Rosen 1991). It is in the marginal zones, at those environmental thresholds where relatively minor climatic shifts can mean the difference between farming viability or failure, that the relationships between climatic and demographic variability are likely to be most evident. Thus, the abrupt rise of the Ghassulian Chalcolithic along the Nahal Beer Sheva (Gilead 1993, 1994; Burton 2001; Lovell & Rowan 2011), an area today at the boundary of dry farming practicability, offers a case study in the colonization of a marginal zone during an episode of climatic amelioration. This was facilitated by the use of a perennial stream for loodwater farming (Rosen 1987), along with cultivation along the interluves (Katz et al. 2007). The appearance and subsequent disappearance of dozens of villages and hamlets along the streams of the northern Negev several hundred years later (Gilead 1994) is a local phenomenon without parallel elsewhere in the larger region. It corresponds to a rainfall spike and the expansion of C3 vegetation southward. The alluvial stratigraphy demonstrates linkages between stream low and settlement (Goldberg 1987; Goldberg & Rosen 1987), with the streams providing the microenvironment that supported the agricultural subsistence base of the society. Although the alluvial terrace does not provide evidence as to when stream low ceased, in areas farther north the abrupt cessation of settlement is not nearly so evident, leaving the distinct impression that the decreased rainfall that led to a cessation of stream low, with the consequent abandonment of the entire system, was a local or southern phenomenon. Environment and Society in Holocene Prehistory Ultimately establishing the linkages between climate, environment, and ancient cultures requires analyses on the level of the sites and their local environments, landscape surveys incorporating all archaeological features, and ever better chronological reinement, particularly of local environmental and climatic sequences. We are still far from addressing these issues adequately. REFERENCES Albert, R.M. & Henry D.O. 2004. Herding and agricultural activities at the early neolithic site of Ayn Abu Nukhayla (Wadi Rum, Jordan). The results of phytolith and spherulite analyses. 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