Past monsoons : A review of proxy data and modelling

Recent modelling studies have given insight into the role of internal feedback processes among components of the climate system on the evolution of monsoon strength since the Last Glacial Maximum (21,000 years ago). Here we present an overview of these modelling studies related to the summer monsoon over India and northern Africa. These studies indicate that the seasonal insolation changes alone do not explain the observed extent of hydrological changes during the early and middle Holocene over northern Africa. To simulate the extent of observed changes during this period incorporation of vegetation as an active component in climate models appears to be necessary. Over the Indian region, model results show that precipitation-soil moisture feedbacks play an important role in determining the response of the monsoon to changes in insolation and glacial-age surface boundary conditions. Indian monsoon strength from proxy records during the early and middle. Holocene have also been used in conjunction with coupled ocean atmosphere general circulation model experiments to refute the suggestion that semi-permanent warm surface conditions prevailed over equatorial Pacific ocean from 11 to 5ka.

Climate-Driven Dietary Change on the Colorado Plateau, USA, and Implications for Gender-Specific Foraging Patterns

Complementary archaeological and paleoenvironmental datasets from North Creek Shelter (Colorado Plateau, Utah, USA) are analyzed using the diet breadth model, revealing human dietary patterns during the early and middle Holocene. Abundance indices are derived from botanical and faunal datasets and, along with stone tools, are used to test the prediction that increasing aridity caused the decline of high-return resources. This prediction appears valid with respect to botanical resources, given that high-ranked plants drop out of the diet after 9800 cal BP and are replaced with low-ranked, small seeds. The prediction is not met, however, with respect to faunal resources: high-ranked artiodactyls are consistently abundant in the diet. The effects of climate change on dietary choices are also examined. Findings show that increased aridity coincides with greater use of small seeds and ground stone tools but not with increases in low-ranked fauna, such as leporids. The patterns observed from the North Creek Shelter botanical and faunal datasets may reflect different foraging strategies between men and women. This would explain why low-ranked plant resources became increasingly abundant in the diet without a corresponding decrease in abundance of high-ranked artiodactyls. If so, then archaeological records with similar datasets should be reexamined with this perspective.

Early and Middle Holocene Antler Tools With Holes From the Gravel Pits of the Smarhon Area, North-Western Belarus

The present article focuses on artefacts made of antlers with holes drilled for the haft, both those available in physical collections and those known only from archaeological literature. This category of items is held by a number of central and regional museums in Belarus, as well as in private collections. Such ‘dispersion’ of the items makes their study problematic. Until now, no comprehensive study of antler artefacts with drilled holes from gravel pits located in Smarhon has been conducted. Publications have so far considered only the specimens that are most representative from the point of view of comparative typology. Michal Chernyavskiy and Piotr Kalinovskiy invariably associated tools with drilled holes with the Mesolithic period. However, this group of tools is more diverse and chronologically complicated than previously thought. The authors of the present article propose a new typological scheme for this item category which is part of a pan-European cultural and chronological context based on a complex analysis of antler artefacts with drilled holes.

TERMINAL PLEISTOCENE THROUGH MIDDLE HOLOCENE OCCUPATIONS IN SOUTHEASTERN MESOAMERICA: LINKING ECOLOGY AND CULTURE IN THE CONTEXT OF NEOTROPICAL FORAGERS AND EARLY FARMERS

Data from rock shelters in southern Belize show evidence of tool making, hunting, and aquatic resource exploitation by 10,500 cal b.c.; the shelters functioned as mortuary sites between 7600 and 2000 cal b.c. Early Holocene contexts contain stemmed and barbed bifaces as part of a tradition found broadly throughout the neotropics. After around 6000 cal b.c., bifacial tools largely disappear from the record, likely reflecting a shift to increasing reliance on plant foods, around the same time that the earliest domesticates appear in the archaeological record in the neotropics. We suggest that people living in southern Belize maintained close ties with neighbors to the south during the Early Holocene, but lagged behind in innovating new crops and farming technologies during the Middle Holocene. Maize farming in Belize intensified between 2750–2050 cal b.c. as maize became a dietary staple, 1000–1300 years later than in South America. Overall, we argue from multiple lines of data that the Neotropics of Central and South America were an area of shared information and technologies that heavily influenced cultural developments in southeastern Mesoamerica during the Early and Middle Holocene.

Always delayed? Holocene and current evolution of Pasterze Glacier, Austria

<p>The glaciers in the Alps are currently shrinking, in some cases dramatically, due to progressive warming. At some glaciers this recession has made it possible to find tree remains and other organic material at or near the termini. At Pasterze Glacier, such findings have been made since about 1990, allowing new insights into the Holocene evolution and variability of this glacier. Initially, only relocated wood and peat boulders were collected, but around 2010 an in-situ locality became ice-free. Tree remains and other organic material from this site have mainly provided dates for a period of more than a thousand years in the middle Holocene (around 6 ka) proving a continuously smaller extent of this glacier during this period compared to today. Furthermore, a comparative interpretation of all available, some 80 radiocarbon and dendro dates suggests that Pasterze Glacier was probably at least from about 10.2 ka to about 3.5 ka continuously shorter compared to the extent around 2010 AD. For the last nearly 2800 years there is no similar evidence of comparable small glacier extents. Finally, after the early- to mid-Holocene retreat phase, a relatively delayed increase of Pasterze Glacier during the early Neoglacial (in the Alps after about 4 ka) can be deduced. Other glaciers almost reached or even exceeded the later LIA dimensions already during this period.</p><p>Moreover, Pasterze Glacier is also lagging behind the current climatic changes, i.e., its extent is not in equilibrium with the current warming. This circumstance is not only proven by the rapid recession during recent years, but also by simulations with the glacier model OGGM. The simulation results show on the one hand that Pasterze glacier has to melt back for several more kilometres to reach equilibrium with the climatic conditions of 1980-2010. On the other hand, this also documents that the recent climate conditions are already sufficient to allow a recession comparable to the early and middle Holocene stages of this glacier. Both the delayed increase in extent during the early Neoglacial and the considerably delayed current recession can be explained by the size of the glacier and the topographic conditions.</p>