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Medieval Climatic Anomaly and Punctuated Cultural Evolution in Coastal Southern California

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

L. Mark Raab  and
Daniel O. Larson
L. Mark Raab
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, California State University, Northridge, CA 91330
Daniel O. Larson
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, California State University, Long Beach, CA 90840
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Abstract

Only in the last few years have high-resolution paleoclimatic data become available from coastal southern California. Recent research in the California Channel Islands, drawing on some of these data, attributes settlement disruptions, disease, and violence to maritime subsistence distress attendant to elevated sea temperatures in the period from A.D. 1150 to 1300. A broad range of paleoenvironmental, archaeological, and human osteological data suggest that these stress indicators are more convincingly correlated with severe late Holocene drought episodes during a portion of the medieval climatic anomaly (ca. A.D. 800 to 1400). Based on these data, cultural changes in coastal southern California, including violence, declining health, and emergent social complexity, are similar to events documented in the American Southwest. Cultural adaptations in both regions appear to have been responding to persistent drought conditions during the late Holocene.

Datos paleoclimáticos de aha resolución para la costa sur de California han aparecido solamente en los últimos años. Investigaciones recientes en Channel Islands, California, utilizan algunos de estos datos para atribuir disturbios, enfermedad, y violencia a los desastres en la subsistencia marítima ocasionados por altas temperaturas marinas en el periodo de 1150 a 1300 d.C. Un amplio rango de datos paleoambientales, arqueológicos, y osteológicos humanos sugieren que estos indicadores están más bien relacionados a episodios de sequía severa en el Holoceno tardío durante una porción de la Anomalía Climática Medieval (ca. 800 a 1400 d.C). En base a estos datos, cambios culturales en la costa sur de California, incluyendo violencia, enfermedad, y complejidad social emergente, son eventos similares a aquéllos ocurridos en el Suroeste norteamericano. Adaptaciones culturales en ambas regiones parecen haber respondido a condiciones de sequía persistentes durante el Holoceno tardío.

Type
Reports
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 62 , Issue 2 , April 1997 , pp. 319 - 336
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 1997

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References

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