Disaster or Catastrophe: Human Adaptation to High-and Low Frequency Landscape Processes--A Reply to Ensor, Ensor, and De Vries (original) (raw)
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Surviving Sudden Environmental Change: Answers from Archaeology
In Surviving Sudden Environmental Change, case studies examine how eight different past human communities—ranging from Arctic to equatorial regions, from tropical rainforests to desert interiors, and from deep prehistory to living memory—faced, and coped with, the dangers of sudden environmental change. Many disasters originate from a force of nature, such as an earthquake, cyclone, tsunami, volcanic eruption, drought, or flood. But that is only half of the story; decisions of people and their particular cultural lifeways are the rest. Sociocultural factors are essential in understanding risk, impact, resilience, reactions, and recoveries from massive sudden environmental changes. By using deep-time perspectives provided by interdisciplinary approaches, this book provides a rich temporal background to the human experience of environmental hazards and disasters. In addition, each chapter is followed by an abstract summarizing the important implications for today’s management practices and providing recommendations for policy makers.
2019
Liritzis, I.; Westra, A., and Miao, C., 2019. Disaster geoarchaeology and natural cataclysms in world cultural evolution: An overview. Journal of Coastal Research, 35(6), 1307-1330. Coconut Creek (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208. Human records of short-term, catastrophic, geological processes, mainly in coastal or fluvial environments, and related phenomena in historic and prehistoric times have to be considered as functions of event intensities and impacts (and damages) caused on ancient human settlements and lives. Catastrophic events, such as, floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, and the collapse of ancient cultures, in particular, those allied to the birth of myths and legends, are the subject of long-lasting, vivid debate. Longer-term, more-or-less consecutive, geological processes and climatic fluctuations have a more pronounced effect on human history. Historical accounts provide many descriptions about cultural evolution in a recurrent manner. The geoarchives (geology, sedimentology, and geomorphology) and the human record (archaeology and history) are considered documentary evidence of these past events. Astronomical causes have introduced severe phenomena (warming, heavy precipitation, monsoons, droughts) imposed on ancient societies, including catastrophic meteor impact. Terrestrial upheavals and astronomical impacts have introduced a nonlinear character of a quasiperiodic nature in transforming human cultural evolution and reshaping the earth's surface. The transient nature of geological, geophysical, and proxy climatic indices, as well as, astronomical phenomena within the solar system, exhibit a wide spectrum of quasiperiodic frequencies as variable and effective environmental factors, which, in addition to anthropogenic factors, reshape the human context. Several conspicuous examples have been reported on mythological deluges and their relation to natural catastrophes. The Anthropocene sea level rise and climatic episodes have had a decisive and prominent role on coastlines and human settlements. Alluvial sediments, sedimentary deposits, and land modifications have drastic effects on settlements. These effects were memorized as floods, deluges, and fallen sky. World examples of disasters derived from the coastal Mediterranean, the Great Flood of Gun-Yu in China, and those from South America, Mesopotamia, and the Middle East and others, were critically assessed with scientific methods.
Quaternary International
Collapse" is an engaging buzzword that captivates public interest; as such, the notion of demise remains a dominant theme in studies of ancient civilizations. Our textbooks teach that the Roman Empire and Han dynasty (to name a few oft-cited examples) crumbled, and some, like the Maya and the Harappan suddenly-if not mysteriously-disappeared. In this manner, studying archaeology is promoted as a basis of prognostication for our modern Anthropocene, the timeframe when human agency became ascendant and affected global change. Well established models of collapse suggested that cultural downfall was predicated by hydroclimate-driven ecological and environmental crises that were both unavoidable and insurmountable, and resulted in finite endpoints like abandonments and disappearances. Such deterministic or apocalyptic notions of societal collapses are appealing and tidy, but incomplete narratives. Emerging research has moved beyond simplistic and linear interpretations of antiquity, invoking anthropological paradigms of continuity, social resilience and transformation, as well as new methodological approaches for resolving how cultures may have assimilated, or coped by strategic adaptation, migration, socio-political reorganization or technological innovation. Interpretations of geoarchaeological records in context of environmental reconstructions underscore themes raised by post-processual anthropologists, such as the need to view cultural change as a continuum through environmental changes. With these themes in mind, we link selected examples of modern studies of many regions with a special focus on North African drylands with archaeological records that provide contexts for reconstructing how cultures coped. Formal resilience theory, built on concepts that were originally borrowed from ecology, offers more realistic frameworks for reconstructions of the past that enable us to ask nuanced questions about sustainability strategies during political transitions, socio-political crisis events like warfare and disease, crop collapse, soil loss, extreme weather (including hurricanes, floods, droughts), and resource availability. Resilience and persistence of cultures is a given, and is inherent in the progressive study of ancient cultures and modern societies living in marginal environments, and facing hydroclimate change, overpopulation, and scarcity of resources. As such, geoarchaeological studies are vital for unpacking the Anthropocene.
Disaster Geoarchaeology and Natural Cataclysms in World Cultural Evolution: An Overview
JOURNAL OF COASTAL RESEARCH, 2019
Human records of short-term, catastrophic, geological processes, mainly in coastal or fluvial environments, and related phenomena in historic and prehistoric times have to be considered as functions of event intensities and impacts (and damages) caused on ancient human settlements and lives. Catastrophic events, such as, floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, and the collapse of ancient cultures, in particular, those allied to the birth of myths and legends, are the subject of long-lasting, vivid debate. Longer-term, more-or-less consecutive, geological processes and climatic fluctuations have a more pronounced effect on human history. Historical accounts provide many descriptions about cultural evolution in a recurrent manner. The geoarchives (geology, sedimentology, and geomorphology) and the human record (archaeology and history) are considered documentary evidence of these past events. Astronomical causes have introduced severe phenomena (warming, heavy precipitation, monsoons, droughts) imposed on ancient societies, including catastrophic meteor impact. Terrestrial upheavals and astronomical impacts have introduced a nonlinear character of a quasiperiodic nature in transforming human cultural evolution and reshaping the earth's surface. The transient nature of geological, geophysical, and proxy climatic indices, as well as, astronomical phenomena within the solar system, exhibit a wide spectrum of quasiperiodic frequencies as variable and effective environmental factors, which, in addition to anthropogenic factors, reshape the human context. Several conspicuous examples have been reported on mythological deluges and their relation to natural catastrophes. The Anthropocene sea level rise and climatic episodes have had a decisive and prominent role on coastlines and human settlements. Alluvial sediments, sedimentary deposits, and land modifications have drastic effects on settlements. These effects were memorized as floods, deluges, and fallen sky. World examples of disasters derived from the coastal Mediterranean, the Great Flood of Gun-Yu in China, and those from South America, Mesopotamia, and the Middle East and others, were critically assessed with scientific methods.