Doctoral Dissertation Research: Reconstruction of Environmental Conditions and Human Occupancy Associated with Semi-Polar Settlements

University Of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst MA

Investigators

Abstract

This doctoral dissertation research project will investigate why previously thriving Norse settlements in Greenland collapsed or were abandoned in the early 15th century. The project will provide new insights into the regional paleoenvironment of southwest coastal Greenland as well as how past societies responded to environmental change. It will provide a test of competing hypotheses, some of which posited that the settlements collapsed because of deteriorating climatic conditions associated with the onset of Little Ice Age cooling, but others have argued that the Norse Greenlander settlements were victims of cultural and socioeconomic factors unrelated to environmental conditions. More broadly, the project will enhance understanding of societal fragility in the face of ecological change, and it may provide new knowledge that can be employed by the Danish and Inuit residents of this region as well as residents of other semi-polar environments in the U.S. and elsewhere. The project will provide an excellent education and training opportunity for an undergraduate research assistant. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award also will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career. The project will seek to identify what environmental conditions may have contributed to the collapse of the Norse settlements in Greenland. The doctoral student will analyze high-resolution records of human occupancy, temperature, and precipitation using organic geochemical proxies, also known as biomarkers, which were extracted from lacustrine sedimentary archives adjacent to Norse ruins at three locations in southwestern Greenland. He will reconstruct the history of human occupancy and paleoenvironmental conditions at a multi-decadal scale for the past 1,500 to 2,000 years. He also will analyze human biomarkers to reconstruct shifts in dietary patterns as a response to changing environmental conditions. The project will blend geography, geology, archaeology, and geochemistry to produce findings that include the integration of paleoenvironmental and human occupancy reconstructions.