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REVIEW ARTICLE Climate change and its consequences in the past Carleton Jones School of Geography and Archaeology, National University of Ireland Galway, Ireland (carleton.jones@nuigalway.ie) JOHN L. BROOKE. Climate change and the course of global history—a rough journey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014; xxi + 631pp, 49 illustrations, 3 maps, 7 tables. ISBN 978-0-521-69218-2. Paperback £25.99 (€31). Also available as an e-book. HERAUSGEBER H. MELLER, HELGE W. ARZ, REINHARD JUNG and ROBERTO RISCH (eds). 2200 BC—a climatic breakdown as a cause for the collapse of the old world? 7th Archaeological Conference of Central Germany, October 23–26, 2014, in Halle (Saale). Saale: Landesmuseum für Vorgeschichte, 2015; 2 volumes, 861pp, maps, tables and illustrations. ISBN 978-3-944507-29-3. Hardback €109. JIM LEARY. The remembered land—surviving sea-level rise after the last ice age. Debates in Archaeology. London: Bloomsbury, 2015; ix + 164pp, 10 illustrations. ISBN 978-1-47424-590-6. Paperback £18.99 (€22). Also available as an e-book. Recent and cumulative advances in the study of past environmental and climatic conditions have produced multi-proxy, and therefore increasingly robust, models. Palaeoclimate researchers now have at their disposal a range of data sources, including the measurement and analysis of such proxy records as tree rings, lake sediments, ice cores, seabed sediments and temperature anomalies in the earth’s crust. Methodologies include innovative analyses such as observations on changes in the structure of ancient pine needles (preserved in peats and lake sediments) that can be related to the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere when the pine trees were growing, as a proxy for past temperature changes (Kouwenberg et al. 2005). At the same time, archaeologists are now working with progressively more precise chronologies. This has come about not only because of the ever-increasing body of archaeological research and data accumulation but also through the acquisition of typically more precise dates, owing to improved AMS radiocarbon dating techniques, and the widespread application of Bayesian statistical analyses to radiocarbon datasets, allowing further refinement of probable date ranges. Although studies analysing archaeological data in the context of past environmental and climatic conditions have had a prominent role in archaeology since the middle of the twentieth century, these recent advances in the quantity and precision of both palaeoclimatological and archaeological datasets are ushering in a new era of research focused on human responses to past climate change. This body of literature The Journal of Irish Archaeology Volume XXIV, 2015 is expanding rapidly and three recent contributions are reviewed here. Each of these books approaches the fascinating question of how past humans and societies responded to climate change from a very different perspective. Climate change and the course of global history—a rough journey by John Brooke is a wideranging work starting with our pre-human and early human ancestors and ending with a consideration of future trajectories; 2200 BC—a climatic breakdown as a cause for the collapse of the old world? by Herausgeber Meller et al. is a conference proceedings volume focused on analysing the effects of a single specific climatic downturn on a range of contemporary societies from western Europe to the Middle East; and, finally, The remembered land—surviving sea-level rise after the last ice age by Jim Leary is a post-processual ‘reimagination’ of what it may have been like for the Mesolithic inhabitants of what is now the North Sea to experience the drowning of their lived-in landscape in the Early Holocene. First up is Climate change and the course of global history—a rough journey. The author, Professor John Brooke, is a historian at Ohio State University, but in this wide-ranging analysis of human–climate interactions he goes far beyond the familiar datasets of historians, incorporating palaeoclimatological, anthropological, archaeological and genetic evidence. The guiding aim of Brooke’s study is, in his own words, to explore how the ‘history of the earth system shaped the history of the human condition’. This aim will, of course, raise the red flag of ‘environmental determinism’ in many scholars’ minds. Brooke 179–185

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REVIEW ARTICLE

Climate change and its consequences in the past Carleton Jones School of Geography and Archaeology, National University of Ireland Galway, Ireland (carleton.jones@nuigalway.ie)

JOHN L. BROOKE. Climate change and the course of global history—a rough journey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014; xxi + 631pp, 49 illustrations, 3 maps, 7 tables. ISBN 978-0-521-69218-2. Paperback £25.99 (€31). Also available as an e-book.

HERAUSGEBER H. MELLER, HELGE W. ARZ, REINHARD JUNG and ROBERTO RISCH (eds). 2200 BC—a climatic breakdown as a cause for the collapse of the old world? 7th Archaeological Conference of Central Germany, October 23–26, 2014, in Halle (Saale). Saale: Landesmuseum für Vorgeschichte, 2015; 2 volumes, 861pp, maps, tables and illustrations. ISBN 978-3-944507-29-3. Hardback €109.

JIM LEARY. The remembered land—surviving sea-level rise after the last ice age. Debates in Archaeology. London: Bloomsbury, 2015; ix + 164pp, 10 illustrations. ISBN 978-1-47424-590-6. Paperback £18.99 (€22). Also available as an e-book.

Recent and cumulative advances in the study of past environmental and climatic conditions have produced multi-proxy, and therefore increasingly robust, models. Palaeoclimate researchers now have at their disposal a range of data sources, including the measurement and analysis of such proxy records as tree rings, lake sediments, ice cores, seabed sediments and temperature anomalies in the earth’s crust. Methodologies include innovative analyses such as observations on changes in the structure of ancient pine needles (preserved in peats and lake sediments) that can be related to the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere when the pine trees were growing, as a proxy for past temperature changes (Kouwenberg et al. 2005). At the same time, archaeologists are now working with progressively more precise chronologies. This has come about not only because of the ever-increasing body of archaeological research and data accumulation but also through the acquisition of typically more precise dates, owing to improved AMS radiocarbon dating techniques, and the widespread application of Bayesian statistical analyses to radiocarbon datasets, allowing further refinement of probable date ranges.

Although studies analysing archaeological data in the context of past environmental and climatic conditions have had a prominent role in archaeology since the middle of the twentieth century, these recent advances in the quantity and precision of both palaeoclimatological and archaeological datasets are ushering in a new era of research focused on human responses to past climate change. This body of literature

The Journal of Irish Archaeology Volume XXIV, 2015

is expanding rapidly and three recent contributions are reviewed here. Each of these books approaches the fascinating question of how past humans and societies responded to climate change from a very different perspective. Climate change and the course of global history—a rough journey by John Brooke is a wideranging work starting with our pre-human and early human ancestors and ending with a consideration of future trajectories; 2200 BC—a climatic breakdown as a cause for the collapse of the old world? by Herausgeber Meller et al. is a conference proceedings volume focused on analysing the effects of a single specific climatic downturn on a range of contemporary societies from western Europe to the Middle East; and, finally, The remembered land—surviving sea-level rise after the last ice age by Jim Leary is a post-processual ‘reimagination’ of what it may have been like for the Mesolithic inhabitants of what is now the North Sea to experience the drowning of their lived-in landscape in the Early Holocene.

First up is Climate change and the course of global history—a rough journey. The author, Professor John Brooke, is a historian at Ohio State University, but in this wide-ranging analysis of human–climate interactions he goes far beyond the familiar datasets of historians, incorporating palaeoclimatological, anthropological, archaeological and genetic evidence. The guiding aim of Brooke’s study is, in his own words, to explore how the ‘history of the earth system shaped the history of the human condition’. This aim will, of course, raise the red flag of ‘environmental determinism’ in many scholars’ minds. Brooke

179–185

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