Scientists Turn to Archaeology for Clues to Adapting to Climate Changes

Scientists are using archaeology and anthropology to uncover lessons of the past and help find modern solutions for adapting to global changes.
Global concerns about climate change, economic turmoil and cultural upheaval have often generated worldwide discussion through a variety of forums. For a number of scholars and scientists, some of the answers are being sought by looking at the archaeology of past societies to determine how they coped with change. Two scientists at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Vancouver, B.C., have unveiled their thoughts and research bearing on two very different cultures separated by time and distance, and how their adaptations have implications for modern society.

Learning from the Vikings

Scientists have determined how the Norse have responded to changes in trade, the economy, and technology within the context of a changing climate by analyzing the past environments and archaeological remains of Greenland and Iceland. Their findings, they maintain, will help inform decisions on how our current society can adapt to global changes we face today.

"Our future will in part be shaped by climate change, and to prepare for it we can learn valuable lessons from how societies of the past have adapted and even flourished amid a backdrop of difficult conditions", says Professor Andrew Dugmore of the University of Edinburgh, who is presenting the findings at the symposium. "Most importantly, we can understand how a combination of climate and non-climate events can lead to a 'perfect storm' and trigger unexpected and dramatic social change."

The researchers found that the medieval Norse of Iceland coped with the changes they were facing by entertaining flexibility with their options for long-term sustainability, adapting trade links and acquiring food from new or expanded varieties of sources. By recognizing and dealing with major changes in the economy of Europe, they developed trade in wool and fish to overcome difficult times and built a successful economy. In Greenland, on the other hand, they maintained traditional trading patterns related to goods such as Walrus ivory. The advent of a severe weather climate caused them to become increasingly specialized, and changes in trade and contact with the Inuit led to their downfall.

The Message from the Mimbres

Arizona State anthropologist Michelle Hegmon and ASU colleague Margaret Nelson have conducted studies on the pueblo society of the Mimbres region of southwest New Mexico. They applied an innovative approach using seven dimensions of human security developed by the United Nations Development Program. Their results showed that what scholars and historians have traditionally perceived as the end of the Mimbres culture, based on the disappearance of a characteristic style of pottery, was in actuality a societal reorganization. Climatic change induced the people to leave their large villages and relocate to smaller hamlets across the region. With this fragmentation came the creation and use of new styles of pottery. The people and their basic culture who lived during the time horizon of the study did not disappear, fade away or fuse with other cultures or peoples -- they changed to adapt to their circumstances.

Says Hegmon: "With the right methods and questions, these new methods can humanize our understanding of what it was like to live in other times and places. That knowledge, even if it isn't always rosy, is critical to thinking about and developing solutions for our choices during a time of climate change. Anthropology gives scientists and policy-makers an edge, a new window to learn from the past."

Hegmon and her colleagues are also applying this approach to studying other past cultures in the U.S. Southwest and in the North Atlantic, with an eye toward developing a database and models that can be used to help inform policy decision-makers for coping with current and future changes in the global climate and economy.

Hegmon's findings are detailed in a presentation, "Socially created vulnerabilities and their human costs: Archaeological perspectives".