20,000 years of societal vulnerability and adaptation to climate change in southwest Asia

Matthew D. Jones (1) , Nizar Abu-Jaber (2) , Ahmad Alshdaifat (3) , Douglas Baird (4) , Benjamin I. Cook (5) , Mark O. Cuthbert (6) , Jonathan R. Dean (7) , Morteza Djamali (8) , Warren Eastwood (9) , Dominik Fleitmann (10) , Alan Haywood (11) , Ola Kwiecien (12) , Joshua Larsen (13) , Lisa A. Maher (14) , Sarah E. Metcalfe (3) , Adrian G. Parker (15) , Cameron A. Petrie (16) , Nick Primmer (3) , Tobias Richter (17) , Neil C. Roberts (18) , Joe Roe (19) , Julia C. Tindall (20) , Ezgi Ünal-İmer (21) , Lloyd Weeks (22)

1 School of Geography, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK
2 Center for the Study of Natural and Cultural Heritage, German Jordanian University, Amman, Jordan
3 School of Geography, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom
4 University of Liverpool
5 GISS - NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies
6 School of Earth and Ocean Sciences [Cardiff]
7 School of Environmental Sciences, University of Hull, Hull, UK
8 IMBE - Institut méditerranéen de biodiversité et d'écologie marine et continentale
9 School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham
10 Department of Archaeology and Centre for Past Climate Change, University of Reading, Reading, UK
11 SEE - School of Earth and Environment [Leeds]
12 Institute for Geology, Mineralogy and Geophysics
13 School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham
14 LBNL - Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory [Berkeley]
15 Oxford Brookes University
16 Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
17 Center for the Study of Early Agricultural Societies
18 SoGEES - School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences [Plymouth]
19 UCL - University College of London [London]
20 University of Leeds
21 Department of Geological Engineering, Hacettepe University, Ankara, Turkey
22 School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, University of New England, Armidale, New South Wales, Australia

The Fertile Crescent, its hilly flanks and surrounding drylands has been a critical region for studying how climate has influenced societal change, and this review focuses on the region over the last 20,000 years. The complex social, economic, and environmental landscapes in the region today are not new phenomena and understanding their interactions requires a nuanced, multidisciplinary understanding of the past. This review builds on a history of collaboration between the social and natural palaeoscience disciplines. We provide a multidisciplinary, multiscalar perspective on the relevance of past climate, environmental, and archaeological research in assessing present day vulnerabilities and risks for the populations of southwest Asia. We discuss the complexity of palaeoclimatic data interpretation, particularly in relation to hydrology, and provide an overview of key time periods

Domains: Environmental Sciences

Matthew D. Jones, Nizar Abu-Jaber, Ahmad Alshdaifat, Douglas Baird, Benjamin I. Cook, et al.. 20,000 years of societal vulnerability and adaptation to climate change in southwest Asia. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Water, 2019, 6 (2), ⟨10.1002/wat2.1330⟩. ⟨hal-02087013⟩