Synchronous Environmental and Cultural Change in the Emergence of Agricultural Economies 10,000 Years Ago in the Levant
Borrell Tena, Ferran (Centre de recherche français à Jérusalem (Jerusalem, Israel))
Junno, Aripekka (University of Helsinki. Department of Philosophy, History, Culture and Art Studies)
Barceló, Juan A.. (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Departament de Prehistòria)

Data:	2015
Resum:	The commonly held belief that the emergence and establishment of farming communities in the Levant was a smooth socio-economic continuum during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic (ca. 12,000-9,000 cal BP) with only rare minor disruptions is challenged by recently obtained evidence from this region. Using a database of archaeological radiocarbon dates and diagnostic material culture records from a series of key sites in the northern Levant we show that the hitherto apparent long-term continuity interpreted as the origins and consolidation of agricultural systems was not linear and uninterrupted. A major cultural discontinuity is observed in the archaeological record around 10,000 cal BP in synchrony with a Holocene Rapid Climate Change (RCC), a short period of climatic instability recorded in the Northern Hemisphere. This study demonstrates the interconnectedness of the first agricultural economies and the ecosystems they inhabited, and emphasizes the complex nature of human responses to environmental change during the Neolithic period in the Levant. Moreover, it provides a new environmental-cultural scenario that needs to be incorporated in the models reconstructing both the establishment of agricultural economy in southwestern Asia and the impact of environmental changes on human populations.
Drets:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, la comunicació pública de l'obra i la creació d'obres derivades, fins i tot amb finalitats comercials, sempre i quan es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original.
Llengua:	Anglès
Document:	Article ; recerca ; Versió publicada
Matèria:	Paleoclimatology ; Archaeology ; Archaeological dating ; Culture ; Holocene epoch ; Agriculture ; Radioactive carbon dating ; Paleobotany
Publicat a:	PloS one, Vol. 10, Issue 8 (August 2015) , p.e0134810, ISSN 1932-6203

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0134810
PMID: 26241310

19 p, 4.5 MB

El registre apareix a les col·leccions:
Articles > Articles de recerca
Articles > Articles publicats