Long Term Human Response to Sea Level Change

University Of Texas At Arlington, Arlington TX

Investigators

Abstract

Understanding how human societies respond to large-scale environmental changes has become a critical issue across multiple scientific disciplines. Archaeology is well positioned to study the long-term dynamics of these responses. With the support of the National Science Foundation, Dr. Naomi Cleghorn and an international team of research archaeologists and students will investigate early human responses to drastic shifts in ecosystems and landscapes, and how human-environment interactions during glacial-interglacial cycles shaped modern human behavior. Previous scholarship suggests that human populations may respond to massive environmental shifts through innovations in technology and food-acquisition strategies, as well as through societal re-organization. Southern Africa is a region with some of the oldest evidence for complex technology, symbolic and artistic traditions, and the first evidence for coastal foraging (a strategy that has been linked historically to hierarchical social structures). In this region, it has been proposed that the evidence for these key cognitive developments (which characterize modern human behavior) correlate with peak cold and dry periods, and may be adaptive responses that buffer populations by creating social and subsistence-related safety-nets. However, less is known about how humans coped with the long phases of environmental instability leading up to these periods. This project focuses on those periods of prolonged instability and investigates the related issues of continuity and disruption in human traditions and adaptations. These issues are of relevance today as modern societies in both industrialized and developing contexts struggle to adapt to changing climate. Dr. Cleghorn and her team are investigating site use, subsistence strategies, and technological adaptations in the context of a landscape that, over the past 45,000 years, has fluctuated between a coastal zone with rich marine resources, and a broad plain with terrestrial plant and animal resources. Since 2014, excavations at the site of KEH-1 on the southern coast of South Africa have produced evidence of intensive site use during periods when the relative location of the coastal zone was shifting between 5 and 75 km in distance. This occupational sequence provides a unique opportunity to study responses to large-scale environmental changes that would have presented human foragers with radically shifting foraging opportunities and challenges. With support from the National Science Foundation, Dr. Cleghorn will lead a multidisciplinary team of archaeologists, faunal specialists, geochronologists, and geoarchaeologists in the analyses of materials excavated from KEH-1. The integration of the resulting datasets will contribute to models of human behavioral adaptations to fluctuating resources. The team will implement and build on new analytical methods while creating training and collaboration opportunities for junior scientist and students.