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Conceptualising climate change archaeology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Robert Van de Noort
Robert Van de Noort*
Affiliation:
Department of Archaeology, University of Exeter, Laver Building, North Park Road, Exeter EX4 4QE, UK (Email: r.van-de-noort@ex.ac.uk)
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Extract

Archaeology claims a long tradition, going back to the middle of the nineteenth century, of undertaking both palaeoclimate research and studies on the impact of past climate change on human communities (Trigger 1996: 130–38). Such research ought to be making a significant contribution to modern climate change debates, such as those led by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); but in practice this rarely happens (e.g. McIntosh et al. 2000). This paper will attempt to conceptualise a ‘climate change archaeology’, which is defined here as the contribution of archaeological research to modern climate change debates (cf. Mitchell 2008). Irrespective of whether climate change poses the greatest challenge in the twenty-first century or whether it is just one of many challenges facing humanity (cf. Rowland 2010), the absence of an archaeological voice diminishes the relevance and impact of the debate as a whole.

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Debate
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Antiquity , Volume 85 , Issue 329 , September 2011 , pp. 1039 - 1048
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 2011

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