Aridification and Socio-Economic Reconfiguration as the Cause of Transformed Human-Environmental Relationships. The Crisis of the Calcolithic-Bronze Age Southern Iberian Peninsula

Hinz, Martin; Schirrmacher, Julien; Kneisel, Jutta; Weinelt, Mara (7 September 2018). Aridification and Socio-Economic Reconfiguration as the Cause of Transformed Human-Environmental Relationships. The Crisis of the Calcolithic-Bronze Age Southern Iberian Peninsula (Unpublished). In: 24th Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists. Barcelona. 5.-8. September 2018.

rchaeologically the turn from the 3rd to the 2nd millennium BCE is characterized by the transition from the Copper Age to the
Bronze Age social and economic configuration (not only) on the Iberian peninsula. This goes hand in hand with a social restructuring
from a society that is to some extent characterized by increasing complexity and hierarchy to a society that clearly shows a social
stratification and unequal access to resources.
This transition is accompanied climatologically by the 4.2 ky BP event, an aridification event likely to last from the 24th to the 22nd
century BCE and which, in its effect on past cultural developments, is considered to be one of the most severe of the Holocene.
Today, Mediterranean coastal regions are characterised by a dry to semiarid climate, with some regions receiving less than 200 mm
of precipitation per year. The southern Iberian Peninsula in particular is vulnerable to desertification and droughts, and the climate
has a strong impact on local society and economies.
Based on combined archaeological and climatological investigations we can show how climate change has affected the population
development of this period and how settlement foci and preferences have changed in the course of two successive droughts. As
a result of the aridification, the Copper Age societies were forced to develop strategies of evasion and resilience, which in turn
enabled them to locate and colonize places that had hitherto been unfavourable for settlement. These new strategies in turn led to
a significant transformation of the Mediterranean region of the southern Iberian Peninsula through human impact (deforestation, El
Argar).
We present this development as an early example of a trajectory in which the reciprocal influence of man and the environment inter-
twined has had a lasting influence on the further development of both spheres.

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