Climate Change and Human Responses: A Zooarchaeological Perspective

241 Pages·2017·10.314 MB·English

by  Gregory Monks (eds.)

Vertebrate Paleobiology and Paleoanthropology Series
Gregory G. Monks Editor
Climate Change
and Human
Responses
A Zooarchaeological Perspective
Climate Change and Human Responses
Vertebrate Paleobiology
and Paleoanthropology Series
Edited by
Eric Delson
Vertebrate Paleontology, American Museum of Natural History
New York, NY 10024, USA
[email protected]
Eric J. Sargis
Anthropology, Yale University
New Haven, CT 06520, USA
[email protected]
Focal topics for volumes in the series will include systematic paleontology of all vertebrates (from agnathans to humans),
phylogeny reconstruction, functional morphology, Paleolithic archaeology, taphonomy, geochronology, historical bioge-
ography, and biostratigraphy. Other fields (e.g., paleoclimatology, paleoecology, ancient DNA, total organismal com-
munity structure) may be considered if the volume theme emphasizes paleobiology (or archaeology). Fields such as
modeling of physical processes, genetic methodology, nonvertebrates or neontology are out of our scope.
Volumes in the series may either be monographic treatments (including unpublished but fully revised dissertations) or
edited collections, especially those focusing on problem-oriented issues, with multidisciplinary coverage where possible.
Editorial Advisory Board
Ross D.E. MacPhee (American Museum of Natural History), Peter Makovicky (The Field Museum), Sally McBrearty
(University of Connecticut), Jin Meng (American Museum of Natural History), Tom Plummer (Queens College/CUNY).
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/6978
Climate Change and Human
Responses
A Zooarchaeological Perspective
Edited by
Gregory G. Monks
Department of Anthropology, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB, Canada
123
Editor
Gregory G.Monks
Department ofAnthropology
University of Manitoba
Winnipeg, MB
Canada
ISSN 1877-9077 ISSN 1877-9085 (electronic)
Vertebrate PaleobiologyandPaleoanthropology Series
ISBN978-94-024-1105-8 ISBN978-94-024-1106-5 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-024-1106-5
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To Janet, with gratitude, and to Denise, Reed, Abigail,
Benjamin and Eden with love
Foreword: The Essential Past
LifewasmuchsimplerwhenIwasastudent.Pastclimatechangewasamatterofoscillations
from warm to cold and back again, at the rather gradual pace that the palynological record
seemedtoshow.Animalsrespondedbylatitudinalshiftsofdistribution(reindeer)orbygoing
extinct(mammoths)(Evans1975;West1968;Zeuner1959,1961).Andpeopledidmuchthe
same, adjusting their distribution and lifeways as climate and environmental change dictated,
atleastuntilthe‘revolution’oftheNeolithicallowedman(sic)tomakehimself(Childe1936;
Clark and Piggott 1970). Anthropogenic climate change had yet to hit the agenda, and even
Marine Oxygen Isotope Stages were little more than a rumour (Shackleton et al. 1977).
Palaeozoology was something rather outré practised by a few palaeontologists, whilst field
zoology was carried out in the real world. Those two research communities seldom met,
let alone communicated.
Today’s students of palaeozoology and zooarchaeology (collectively the ‘palaeo record’,
forbrevity)haveafarmorecomplexknowledgebasewithwhichtocontend.Proxyrecordsin
marine oozes and polar ice show that global climates have swung from one state to another
withremarkablerapidity,insertingbrieftemperateinterstadialsintoourbelovediceages,and
acute cold snaps even into the Holocene (Thomas et al. 2007). Our understanding of the
responseofanimalcommunitiestothoseclimatechangesisstillonlypartial,thoughwehave
learnedthatcommunitydisequilibriummayhavebeensignificant(Wolvertonetal.2009),and
that some species successfully habitat-tracked, whilst others did not (Dalén et al. 2007). The
timingandrateofextinctioneventshasbeenre-thought,withmammothssurvivinginSiberia
as the pyramids were under construction in Egypt (Guthrie 2004), and the palaeo record has
forced a re-think of biogeographical assumptions, for example regarding the past distribution
of elephants in Island Southeast Asia (Cranbrook et al. 2007). And rapid climate change has
become a topic for the present and future, not only for the past, as atmospheric and climate
data accumulate to confirm Arrhenius’s theories about global warmth (Arrhenius 1896).
Inmanyrespectsweliveinexcitingtimes.Methodologicaladvancesandrefinementsallow
ustoaskquestionsthatwouldhavebeenunanswerabletwentyyearsago.Advancesintheuse
of the stable isotope record stratified into datable sediments, shells and skeletal tissues have
simply revolutionized our investigations of climate changes, animal migration and transhu-
mance, and diet (Gil et al. 2011; Schwarz et al. 2010). Our chronologies have become more
refined. Individually characterized volcanic tephras provide marker-horizons on a regional
scale(Laneetal.2011).Dendrochronologicalsequenceshavebeenpushedfurtherback,tothe
Pleistocene/Holocene boundary (Kromer 2009), and developed for new parts of the world
(Gou etal. 2008; Turney et al. 2010). Even that oldworkhorse, radiocarbon dating, has been
givenanewleaseoflifeasAMSdatingandnewsamplepreparationmethodshavesqueezed
± errors down to a few decades even on dates in the Late Pleistocene (Higham et al. 2006).
Rather pleasingly, the other advance in radiocarbon dating, Bayesian calibration, uses a sta-
tistical technique first published in 1763 (Bayes and Price 1763; Bronk Ramsey 2009),
reminding us that old tools can be put to new uses. We now have better resolution on dates
vii
viii Foreword:TheEssentialPast
back to MIS3 than ever before. Our resolution has also been enhanced with regard to tax-
onomy. We are no longer restricted to asking whether a particular species survived a climate
change event, but whether the same genomic clades of that species did so (Hornsby and
Matocq2012).Foratleastsomespecies,theresponsetoclimatechangecannowbestudiedat
thepopulationlevel,andsomeofthesoft-tissuephenotypicattributesofthoseanimalscanbe
inferred (Pruvost et al. 2011).
What impact have all of these advances had on the dialogue between neo- and palaeozo-
ology? On the palaeo side of that uneasy relationship, we have been accustomed to think in
terms of whole organisms, populations of individuals and communities of species. People in
the past acted as populations within vertebrate communities, and it was that relationship that
underpinned much of our research. The individualistic, selfish politics of the 1980s bred a
trend towards the individual within archaeology, one aspect of the ‘post-processual critique’
(e.g., Earle and Preucel 1987), steering us away from the generalizations of processual
archaeology that lent themselves so well to comparison and integration with the generaliza-
tions of community ecology. Meanwhile, technical developments within the biological sci-
ences focussed interest at the sub-organism level, to details of biomolecular variation and, of
course, to genomic research (Strasser 2008), with particular consequences for studies of the
evolutionaryrecord(e.g.,Hackettetal.2008).Biomolecularresearchisexpensiveandquickly
came to attract a high proportion of available research funds, thus drawing in more bright
young researchers in a positive feedback loop. This has somewhat changed the dialogue
between palaeo and neozoology.
There have been remarkable advances in our understanding of ancient populations of
animals,andevenextinctspecies(e.g.,Edwardsetal.2010),withneozoologistsquarryingthe
palaeorecordforDNAandotherbiomoleculestogivetime-depthtothepresent-dayresearch
questions,andmeanwhilereadingapalaeorecordfromthepresent-daygenomicarchive(e.g.,
Leonardi et al. 2012; Searle et al. 2009). Certainly, the palaeo record is an archive, and a
precious and complex one at that. But more than that, it has its own research questions and
agenda. It is a common criticism of the palaeo record that it lacks the precision of real-time
neozoology. Even with advances in dating methods, our chronological resolution still cannot
match that of a field experiment, and our data are often patchy in their temporal and geo-
graphical distribution. Furthermore, we arelimited inourcapacityfor replication:if there are
only two known assemblages of MIS3 date from a given region, then we cannot simply
increase our inadequate sample size by doing more field research. However, the value of the
palaeo record has to be seen as clearly as its weaknesses. As Lyman (2011) points out with
exemplary precision, it is precisely the longer perspective of the palaeo record that makes it
valuableasasourceforconservationresearch,encompassingevolutionarytimescalesandpast
periods of rapid climate change.
One issue that afflicts both neo- and palaeozoology is the shifting baseline syndrome
(Papworthetal.2009;Pauly 1995). Whenstudies oftoday’sfauna seektoquantifyachange
in distribution or abundance, we have to make comparisons with some baseline: numbers of
Monks’ Porpoise have fallen 80% since 1990, for example. Why 1990? Is that when sys-
tematicrecordsbegan,orwhenthecurrentpopulationfluctuationseemstohavebegun?Ifthe
latter, do we have really good data to show that the 1990 population was typical of the
preceding few centuries? Hardly ever, and more often the chosen baseline is defined by the
previoushigh(or,lessoften,low)peakinarathershortrunofrecords,orbythebeginningof
thattime-seriesofdata. Whendogoodrecordsofanimaldistributionandabundanceactually
begin; that is, what is the baseline against which we assess the current state of the world’s
fauna? Even a very generous estimate would put that baseline somewhere late in the nine-
teenth century, acknowledging the pioneering, but region-specific, work of Humboldt and
Wallace(e.g.,VonHumboldt1849;Wallace1895).Amorerealisticglobalbaselinewouldbe
well into thetwentiethcentury,long after the consequences of human population growthand
industrialization had wrought substantial changes to most global biomes. It is little wonder,
ix Foreword:TheEssentialPast
then, that the palaeozoology and zooarchaeology records often produce surprises, such as
tigers on Palawan (Ochoa and Piper 2013).
These baseline issues are a cause for concern. Neozoology alone will consistently under-
state changes in terrestrial faunas on anything other than very short (i.e., decadal) timescales.
For example, without the palaeo record, the devastating reduction in avian biodiversity
throughoutthePacificoverthelastmillenniumorsowouldnotbeapparent(Steadman1995).
Wewouldnotetheextinctionsandextirpationsofthelast50–100years,andprobablybemoan
theimpactthat‘westernization’seemstohavehadonthisislandEden.Wewouldcertainlynot
appreciate the damage that had already been done before the first Europeans sailed into the
region (Boyer 2008).
Looking forward, too, there is a challenge for palaeozoology. Despite the potential for
understatement of the human impact on faunas, we are aware of, and concerned about, that
impact,andonereactionhasbeentotrytorepairthedamage.Restorationecologyseekstogo
one step beyond mitigating the worst consequences of human impact by ‘restoring’ habitat
patchesandlargerenvironmentsthroughcarefullyplannedreintroductionofsomespeciesand
extirpationofothers(foranoverview,seeSuding2011).Butwhatisthebaselinestatetowards
whichthatecologyisbeing‘restored’?Ifrestorationecologyistohaveafirmevidentialbasis,
a high-quality palaeo record is essential. The alternative is to limit ourselves to restoring
damaged and degraded environments only to a previous state that happens to be our first
detailedrecordofthatenvironment.Itisquitelikelythatrecordwillbeofanenvironmentthat
was already impacted, perhaps degraded, and quite possibly in a state of disequilibrium.
Withoutagoodlong-termrecord,restorationecologymayberebuildingcommunitiesthatare
inherently unstable and of low resilience. The same applies to National Parks and other
attempts at conservation of landscapes and their biotas. The wild places that John Muir and
others sought to preserve may have been dynamic systems already undergoing processes of
rapid change, so that at least some of our conservation efforts may be seeking to impose
stability on inherently unstable systems.
At its most intrusive, restoration ecology grades into rewilding, with the objective of
returning some environments to their supposed condition before human perturbation and
management became dominant (Brown et al. 2011; Meyer 2010). That issue in itself begs a
numberofquestions.Allspeciescausesomedegreeofdisturbancetotheecosysteminwhich
they live. How dominant does the human impact have to be in order for the ecology to be
‘wild’ no longer? To put that another way, could rewilding accept restoration to a biota that
includesco-existinghumans?Rewildingproposalsincludereplacingextinctspecieswiththeir
closest extant ecological equivalents. Applying these principles to the Great Plains of North
America, some have suggested trying to put back the megafauna that greeted the first Ber-
ingian human migrants. As mammoths, Smilodon and Arctodus have, regrettably, quit the
scene, the proposed rewilding would populate the Plains with elephants, lions and bears (oh
my!) (Donlan 2005; Donlan et al. 2006). Given that many contemporary Americans find it
unacceptabletosharespaceevenwithcoyotesandbobcats,onecanonlysupposethatthisnew
megafauna would be extirpated even more quickly than its predecessor.
The point, of course, is that the palaeo record must be more than just a species list, a
wish-list of potential reintroductees with which to wage the green campaign. Within Europe,
various EU Species and Habitats Directives build on the 1979 Bern Convention on the
Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats to effectively oblige signatory states
to engage in restorative reintroduction. On what criteria? There has to be evidence that a
specieswasextirpatedfromtheregionconcernedasadirectorindirectconsequenceofhuman
activity. This treaty obligation has justified the reintroduction of red kite Milvus milvus to
England, supported by historical records of the persecution of that species, and zooarchaeo-
logical records of its formerly wide range. What about species for which there is only the
palaeorecord,theirextirpationpre-datingreliabledocumentaryrecords?SurvivaloflynxLynx
lynx into Anglo-Saxon times makes it likely that this species was lost to England through
habitat destruction and, possibly, direct persecution. A case for the reintroduction of lynx to
x Foreword:TheEssentialPast
Englandcanbe,andhasbeen,made(Hetheringtonetal.2008).Howfarintothepastcanwe
extend that principle? That lugubrious cervid the elk Alces alces (i.e., moose in North
America, not the American elk Cervus elaphus) survived into the Holocene in England, and
was certainly hunted by Mesolithic hunter-gatherers (Kitchener 2010). However, it would be
difficult to argue that elk were extirpated through human predation. More likely, habitat
changes and fragmentation following early Holocene warming progressively produced then
replaced the wet woodland environments in which elk could flourish. Flooding of the North
Sea basin, isolating British elk from continental populations, may have contributed to their
vulnerability.Giventhateffectivepopulationsizecannowbeestimatedfromgeneticdiversity
in palaeofaunal assemblages (Hofreiter and Stewart 2009), that possibility could be investi-
gated if enough well-dated elk remains could be assembled and sampled.
There is another challenge for the palaeo record, one that relates directly to modern con-
cerns: how far back in time do conservation efforts extend? National Parks and species
directivesarephenomenaofthelastcenturyorso.However,iftheimpactsofclimatechange
andhumanactivitieshadadiscernibleeffectonthedistributionornumbersofaspeciesdeeper
intothepast,wouldprehistoricpeopleshavetakennoteandresponded?Atitssimplest level,
ofcourse,thatmayonlymeanprey-switchingormovinghome-rangetomatchthemovements
of a favoured prey population. We can certainly detect those responses in the palaeo record
and, at their simplest, see them in terms of logistic optimisation. Crabs are running out – eat
more clams. Does that give prehistoric peoples due credit for their intelligence and forward
planning?Themotivationmight equallyhavebeen‘crabs arerunningout–stop eatingcrabs
so they can recover’. Mobile foragers might simply move to a stretch of coast where crabs
were still abundant, but what of more sedentary foragers, as in the Pacific Northwest? Butler
and Campbell(2004) make the point that theregion shows appreciable stabilityin settlement
and subsistence: to what extent does that stability reflect care in the use, and therefore the
conservation,ofanimalresources?Ourconservationeffortstodaydependuponwrittenrecords
that chart past abundance and distribution, however fallibly. Non-literate societies had the
memories and knowledge of older generations as their shifting baseline. It seems to be a
common human cross-cultural trait that with grey hair comes the mindset that the past was
different,usuallybetter(e.g.,seethebeginningofthisforeword!).Thegrandparentgeneration
mayhavebeencriticalinenablingaforagergrouptodetecttheconsequencesoftheirimpacts
or of some local change in weather patterns or more general climate, and to plan their
response.
In a similar way, neozoology needs the ‘grandparent’ memory of the palaeo record, and
archaeology needs its use of that record to be informed by sound zoology and ecology. We
need to keep the inter-disciplinary conversations going, to keep an integration of ideas and
evidence from the short- to the very long-term, through collaborative projects and through
publications that offer new ideas and information to all researchers concerned with the
response of human and other animal populations to each other and to their climatic context.
Thisvolumeprovidesjustsuchaconversation,demonstratinghowfarourpalaeostudieshave
come since the days of Zeuner, and how much precious synergy results from taking a truly
ecological perspective on the human past.
Terry O’Connor
PALAEO and Department of Archaeology
University of York
UK