RISE – Climate Change Resilience and Vulnerabilities of Bronze Age Waterfront Communities (2200–800 BC)

Abstract

The archaeology of waterscapes enables us to gain a unique long-term perspective on climate change resilience and vulnerabilities of waterfront communities, when facing droughts and floods. Throughout time effects of climate change on the hydrology of landscapes have repeatedly threatened settlement areas but we still know little about the different respective social capabilities of resonating with them. Here the archaeology of submerged prehistoric sites in lake and seashore areas around the world can offer new insights. With the SNSF-Ambizione project RISE (2023-2026) we take that opportunity by researching the rich, but in this respect understudied submerged Bronze Age lakeshore settlements of the Alpine Space. The wide application of dendrochronology allows to approach the local settlements’ histories on an annual, and regional dynamics on a decadal scale. A major focus is on how cultural diversities as well as politics influenced social resilience capabilities to seasonal lake level fluctuations, but also climate-driven long-term lake level rises for higher magnitudes. While failed settlement attempts and settlement interruptions at the lake shores indicate the settlements’ vulnerabilities, architectural measures, spatial mobility, and the recurring re-occupation of the shores speak for the communities’ resilience. In parallel to climate, socio-political and economic causes must be factored in for settlement interruptions at lake shores. We are currently elaborating a new methodology to climate change vulnerabilities and resilience capabilities, that combines qualitative and quantitative methods of social archaeological and geoarchaeology for analysing sediments, archaeological features and finds as well as paleoclimatic proxy data. Furthermore, the chosen socio-spatial theoretical focus on ‘vulnerability’ and ‘resilience’ will re-centre agency and social practice in human-environmental relations to omit climate determinism and monocausal explanations. For more see: https://data.snf.ch/grants/grant/208840.