Environmental Change in Prehistory: An Interdisciplinary Examination of the Impact of the 6th Millennium BP Climate Transition on Human Populations

拟议的网络将汇集具有全新世早期和中期专业知识的考古学家和气候科学家，以调查6000年校准BP（4000年校准BC）之后地中海大部分地区发生的史前史中最有趣但研究不足的文化转变之一。）。在欧洲、近东、塞浦路斯和北非，考古学家记录了定居模式以及社会和经济行为的广泛变化。这些变化的传统解释有利于区域特定的文化解释，但越来越多的考古和环境数据从发掘第6个千年BP网站恢复支持和补充越来越多的气候数据表明，第6个千年BP是一个深刻的和不可逆转的气候变化的时期。因此，如果我们要更好地了解这一具有重要知识意义的新兴领域，一个汇集了辩论的主要贡献者的论坛是及时和必不可少的，随着我们进入21世纪，对过去气候和环境变化及其对人类社会影响的研究将变得越来越重要。辩论中基本上没有讨论对迅速的气候和环境变化的反应，但过去为我们提供了可能在未来证明相关的比较。在距今6000年至5000年之间，地理上广泛的气候和环境变化为我们提供了一个探索气候和环境条件变化对社会的影响的机会，这些社会虽然时间遥远，但与历史和现代社会有许多共同特征。因此，这项研究的结果不仅会引起考古学家和气候科学家的广泛兴趣，也可能是研究现代人类对环境变化的反应的历史学家、艺术史学家、人类地理学家和人类学家。

The proposed network will bring together archaeologists and climate scientists with expertise in the early and mid Holocene in order to investigate one of the most interesting but understudied cultural shifts in prehistory occurring in much of the Mediterranean after 6000 calibrated BP (4000 calibrated BC). In Europe, the Near East, Cyprus and North Africa archaeologists have documented widespread changes in settlement patterns and social and economic behaviour. Traditional interpretations of these changes have favoured regionally specific cultural explanations but increasingly, archaeological and environmental data recovered from excavations of 6th millennium BP sites are supporting and supplementing the growing body of climatic data indicating that the 6th millennium BP was a period of profound and irreversible climatic change. A forum which brings together key contributors to the debate is therefore timely and essential if we are to gain greater understanding of this emerging area of intellectual importance.The study of past climatic and environmental change and its impact on human societies will become increasingly relevant as we move into the 21st century. Discussion of responses to rapid climatic and environmental change is essentially absent from the debate, yet the past provides us with comparisons which may prove relevant in the future. The geographically widespread climatic and environmental changes evident between ~6000 and 5000 BP provide us with an opportunity to explore the impacts of changes in climatic and environmental conditions on societies which, while remote in time, share many characteristics with historical and modern societies.The results of this research will thus be of wide interest, not only amongst archaeologists and climate scientists, but also potentially, historians, art historians, human geographers and anthropologists researching modern human responses to environmental change.