Palaeoclimate

Sediment geochemistry is a powerful tool to investigate earth surface processes because sediments record geochemical signatures of their provenance, generation, transport, deposition, and environmental conditions. A significant advancement in the technology of analytical geochemistry has made geochemical analyses of sediments more rapid and precise, which together provided an impetus to the study of sediment system. As a result, high-quality research papers on sediment geochemistry have been published during the last five years from India. A foreseeable growth of research and an increase in the publication are likely in the future because of the new setups of state-of the-art analytical instruments for geochemical research at various research and academic institutions in India. Here we are presenting the published important work on sediment geochemistry under three categories, i.e., weathering, erosion, deposition and provenance determination; sediment geochemistry as palaeoclimate proxy; and environmental geochemistry.

This November, the Institute of Ancient History at the Department of Ancient Civilizations (University of Basel/Switzerland) is hosting an international conference, linking the discipline of Ancient History
with the Environmental and Climate Sciences.

Intl. Conference on "Climate Science & Ancient History.
Decoding «Natural» and «Human» Archives", November 27–28, 2018, Kollegienhaus, Regenzzimmer 111, Petersplatz 1, 4001 Basel, Switzerland

The conference bridges the traditional gap between the Humanities and the Natural Sciences: Researchers from Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Sweden, Great Britain and the United States will illustrate with
interdisciplinary contributions, to what extent the different sciences are capable of assisting and complementing each other in the exploration of
past times, regions and cultures.

We warmly invite you to participate in our conference. To register, please send an email to [email protected]. For all informations regarding program and location, please see our website
https://altegeschichte.philhist.unibas.ch/de/forschung/forschungsprojekte/climate-science/
and the program below.

In the “calamitous” 14th century, as Barbara Tuchman called it in her classic „A Distant Mirror“ (1978) , the medieval world entered a period of severe crisis in demography, economy, politics and religion. This crisis took hold in all regions, ranging from China in the East to England in the West. Even before the catastrophic pandemic of the Black Death (1346-1352), deteriorating climatic conditions had ended the period of demographic and economic expansion that began in the 10th century.
The local and regional impacts and consequences of these general potentially crisis-laden conditions may have differed; outcomes ranged from actual societal collapse to the emergence of powerful new polities – while Byzantium´s power dwindled away, Hungary entered a period of strong rulership and external power in the reign of Louis I of Anjou (1342-1382), for instance. But these conditions provide a framework for global perspective on this period and allow us to use the 14th century-crisis as a field of “natural experiments of history”, as Jared Diamond and James A. Robinson have called them ; accordingly, we analyse how similar crisis phenomena influenced the development of societies with different (or similar) traditions, religions, institutions, geographies or ecologies.
In order to be able to capture the local variations and complexities, we adopt concepts and tools provided by the field of complexity science. Mono-causal or linear explanations are inadequate for the analysis and the description of crisis, transformation or collapse of pre-modern polities. Within this framework, complex systems are understood as large networks of individual components, whose interactions at the microscopic level produce “complex” changing patterns of behaviour of the whole system on the macroscopic level. In the last decades, historians and social scientists who became interested in complexity theory tried to use its concepts and terminology for the conceptualisation and description of phenomena in their own fields, but often only in a “metaphoric” way. Less frequently, though, historians have tried to make use of the mathematical foundations of complexity theory or of quantitative tools provided by this field. Recent scholarship has implemented some of these tools especially for the construction of macro-models of socio-economic development. While these studies help us construct analytical tools for the macro-level of our own research, they run the same risk as earlier scholarship of neglecting complex variations at the local and regional levels.
Therefore, we combine complexity theory with the analytical framework of „systems theory“ developed by the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann in order to capture the interveawements between politics, economy and religion within a polity and with the political, economic and ecological environment. In addition, we employ the methods and tools of network analysis, which allow us to capture, analyse and model linkages and cause-effect correlations in society, economy, politics and religion on the macro- and micro-level down to groups and individuals.
Overall, as a complement to earlier studies our analytical
approach shall allow us to capture the “diversité véritable” of our period without losing track of essential commonalities (the “strange parallels”, as Victor Liebermann has called them in his remarkable study on Southeast Asia in Global Context, 2009 ) of this “first world crisis” across all cultures and societies. The scientic value of this approach will be demonstrated for some specific cases.

One of the rapid climate change (RCC) events, which had lesser impact on the environmental conditions of the Northern Hemisphere but had stronger impact on the micro regional scale, is 7.1 ka BP event. Cooler and wetter conditions at its onset seem to have accompanied initial dispersal of the central European LBK from its core area to the regions, among other, of western Transdanubia and beyond, populating the area south of the Drava River. In the local chronology, this change in the material culture is marked by the appearance of the Middle Neolithic around 5400 BC. The end of this climate event is, however, marked by initial stage of dry and warmer conditions around 5000 BC which enabled settlement formation in the lowlands of the Eastern Slavonia. after this initial phase and the formation of the Late Neolithic tell settlements, over a period of about 500 years change in humidity and temperature occurred, eventually leading to the abandonment of most of the tell sites. Human adaptation to the changes in environmental conditions in both micro regions and archaeological contexts is discussed in this paper.

Stratigraphic exposures, fluvial archives and borehole data have been allowed to reconstruct the alluvial history of Late Pleistocene to Late Holocene and climate changes in the monsoonal wet – dry region of lower Damodar Basin (West Bengal, India). The facies architectures and climate proxies suggest that five to six climate changes occurred in between ~ 14 ka and 6 ka. Supporting evidence from the floodplain of Damodar River demonstrates that the successive phases of aggradation and incision were linked to the south-west monsoonal variability of Late Quaternary period. The onset of semi-arid climate was associated with caliches, pond and backswamp deposits of wanning low energy floods. The relatively warm-humid climate was associated with sandy bedforms, valley fills, slack water deposits and ferruginous nodules. This paper presents a synthesis of the available palaeoclimatic records from the lower Ganga Basin and the rivers of western and central India for the palaeoenvironmental significance of Late Quaternary deposits and discusses the influence of palaeoclimatic controls on the fluvial architectures and archives that developed below the floodplain of Damodar River. We have taken some representative studies from the region to reveal the spatial variability in fluvial successions in response to climate changes during this period.

In any discussion of hominin dispersal it is possible, and important, to examine the event at many different scales. This paper examines the initial dispersal out of Africa at the scale of populations rather than species, looks at dispersal between ecological zones rather than continents, and considers dispersal within Africa prior to any dispersal out of Africa. Before hominins could disperse out of Africa they needed to disperse out of their likely area of endemism in sub-Saharan Africa to North Africa, the most likely departure point for Eurasia. Prior to the Middle Pleistocene, successful long term colonizations of North Africa by hominins were very rare, and apparently less successful than their colonizations of Eurasia. The Early Pleistocene hominin dispersal into Eurasia was most probably along the western coast of the Red Sea. The ability of hominins to successfully disperse into Eurasia and successfully colonize northern continents was made possible by the ecological and climatic diversity within Africa.

This is the first part of a special issue on the impact of Upper Pleistocene climatic and environmental change on hominin occupations and landscape use. In this part there are six contributions:
• Davies, W., and Nigst, P.R.: An Introduction to Part 1 of the Special Issue
• Maier, A., Ludwig, P., Zimmermann, A., and Schmidt, I.: The sunny side of the Ice Age: Solar insolation as a
potential long-term pacemaker for demographic developments in Europe between 43 and 15 ka ago
• Golovanova L.V., Doronichev V.B., Doronicheva E.V., and Nedomolkin A.G.: Dynamics of climate and human
settlement during the Middle and Upper Paleolithic in the northwestern Caucasus
• Taller, A. and Conard, N.J.: Were the technological innovations of the Gravettian triggered by climatic change?
Insights from the lithic assemblages from Hohle Fels, SW Germany
• Fontana, L.: Is the Solutrean linked to climatic and environmental changes of the Upper Pleniglacial? Searching
for the drivers of the changes in the economy and mobility of Solutrean groups in Southwestern France
• Kuijjer, E.K., Haigh, I.D., Marsh, R., and Farr, R.H.: Changing tidal dynamics and the role of the marine environ-
ment in the maritime migration to Sahul
The session “The impact of Upper Pleistocene climatic and environmental change on hominin occupations and landscape use” was organized as part of the XVIIIth UISPP congress at Paris, France, in June 2018. This special issue is guest-edited by William Davies (Centre for the Archaeology of Human Origins, Archaeology, Faculty of Humanities, University of Southampton) and Philip R. Nigst (Department of Prehistoric and Historical Archaeology and Human Evolution and Archaeological Sciences Research Network, University of Vienna).

In the present paper five significant late medieval drought events, occurred in Hungary (4 cases) and Croatia (1 Dalmatian case), are discussed based on contemporary documentary evidence. Information on long-term lack of precipitation, severe annual (or multiannual) water shortage, extreme low water levels of major rivers or bad harvest and severe food shortage in 1362, 1474, 1479, 1494 and 1507, often accompanied or followed by locust invasions, were documented both in narratives, account books, charters and letters. Apart from causing food shortage or difficulties in transportation (e.g. of salt), these greatest known documented drought events of medieval Hungary were blamed for weakening the country's military defence (e.g. low water-levels) and providing good opportunities for Ottoman-Turkish attacks. These great drought events sometimes occurred one year later than those of the neighbouring areas in Central Europe – a fact that can be probably explained by the bi- or multi-annual nature of dry spells (e.g. in and around 1474, 1479, 1507) that does not necessarily fit the frame of a calendar year.

Palynological et sedimentological studies in the Chad Basin and paleoclimatological studies of north tropical Africa during the last 30,000 years to the contemporary period. Fine study of Holocene time and variations of Lake Chad during the last millénium.

This paper provides a brief overview of the most common dating techniques applied in palaeoclimate and palaeoenvironmental studies including four radiometric and isotopic dating methods (radiocarbon, 230Th disequilibrium, luminescence, cosmogenic nuclides) and two incremental methods based on layer counting (ice layer, varves). For each method, concise background information about the fundamental principles and methodological approaches is provided. We concentrate on the time interval of focus for the INTIMATE (Integrating Ice core, MArine and TErrestrial records) community (60e8 ka). This dating guide addresses palaeoclimatologists who aim at interpretation of their often regional and local proxy time series in a wider spatial context and, therefore, have to rely on correlation with proxy records
obtained from different archives from various regions. For this reason, we especially emphasise scientific approaches for harmonising chronologies for sophisticated and robust proxy data integration. In this respect, up-to-date age modelling techniques are presented as well as tools for linking records by age equivalence including tephrochronology, cosmogenic 10Be and palaeomagnetic variations. Finally, to avoid inadequate documentation of chronologies and assure reliable correlation of proxy time series, this paper provides recommendations for minimum standards of uncertainty and age datum reporting.

Little is known about the Pleistocene climatic context of northern Australia at the time of early human settlement. Here we generate a palaeoprecipitation proxy using stable carbon isotope analysis of modern and archaeological pandanus nutshell from Madjedbebe, Australia’s oldest known archaeological site. We document fluctuations in precipitation over the last 65,000 years and identify periods of lower precipitation during the penultimate and last glacial stages, Marine Isotope Stages 4 and 2. However, the lowest effective annual precipitation is recorded at the present time. Periods of lower precipitation, including the earliest phase of occupation, correspond with peaks in exotic stone raw materials and artefact discard at the site. This pattern is interpreted as suggesting increased group mobility and intensified use of the region during drier periods.

The western margin of Australia has migrated over 30° northward in the last fifty million years. As it progressed, it carried evidence of greenhouse to icehouse climate and ocean transitions in the sedimentary sequences. In the last ten million years Australia collided with the Asian plate to the north, leading to the uplift of the Indonesian archipelago and Papua New Guinea highlands and restricting the interchange between the Indian and Pacific oceans. This created the near “modern” oceanography of the region with the onset of the Indonesian Throughflow and related Leeuwin Current. It also resulted in the ongoing crustal stress along the North West Shelf causing substantial seismicity and faulting. Recent sediment coring by the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) and RV Sonne has yielded superb palaeoclimatic and palaeoceanographic archives that will uncover details of the evolution of this margin through the late Neogene to Recent. Knowledge of the past evolution of Australia’s western margin is essential if we are to better predict the consequences of ocean/climate variability for future climate change.

Integrated Ocean Drilling Program Expedition 346 " Asian Monsoon " obtained sediment successions at seven sites in the Japan Sea (Sites U1422–U1427 and U1430) and at two closely located sites in the northern East China Sea (Sites U1428 and U1429). The Quaternary sediments of the Japan Sea are characterized by centimeter-to decimeter-scale dark–light alternations at all sites deeper than 500 m water depth. The sedimentary records from these sites allow an investigation of the regional environmental response to global climate change, including changes in the Asian Monsoon and eustatic sea level. However, the discontinuous occurrence of calcareous microfossils in the deep-sea sediments and their distinct isotope signature that deviates from standard marine δ 18 O records do not permit the development of a detailed stable isotope stratigraphy for Japan Sea sediments. Here, we present the tephrostratigraphy for the two southernmost sites drilled in the Japan Sea (Sites U1426 and U1427) and for one site drilled in the East China Sea (Site U1429) along with the benthic δ 18 O isotope stratigraphy for the shallower Site U1427 and the East China Sea Site U1429. Eighteen tephra layers can be correlated between sites using the major-element composition and morphology of volcanic glass shards, and the compositions of grains and heavy minerals. Tephra correlations show that negative δ 18 O peaks in the Japan Sea correspond to positive glacial maxima peaks in the East China Sea. Using this integrated stratigraphic approach, we establish an orbital-scale age model at Site U1427 for the past 1.1 Myr. The correlation of tephra layers between the shallower Site U1427 (330 m below sea level: mbsl) and the deeper Site U1426 (903 mbsl) in the southern Japan Sea provides the opportunity for further age constraints. Our results show that alternations in sediment color at Sites U1426 and U1427 can be correlated for the past 1.1 Myr with minor exceptions. Thus, the stable isotope stratigraphy established at the shallower Site U1427 can be correlated to Site U1426, and in turn to all sites drilled during Expedition 346, based on correlations of dark–light layering.

SPELEOGENETIC AND PALAEOCLIMATIC STUDIES ON STALAGMITES OF THE PIANI ETERNI KARST COMPLEX
(DOLOMITI BELLUNESI, NE ITALY) - A project of dating speleothems from the Piani Eterni Karst Complex
started in 2013 thanks to a collaboration between the University of Bologna (Dept. Biological, Geological and
Environ. Sciences), the National Park of the Dolomiti Bellunesi, the Central Commission for Speleology CAI,
and the Venetian Speleological Federation. To date, several stalagmites were sampled from different paleoepiphreatic
levels in the karst system. The relatively high concentration of uranium in the Bituminous Unit has
allowed to date with high precision up to over 500.000 year old stalagmites.
The two most interesting samples are IS1 (growing from 390.000 to 345.000 years ago) and MN1 (growing
from 105.000 to 85.000 years ago). Both speleothems were collected from paleo-epiphreatic conduits at
different altitudes (respectively, at 1340 and 860 m a.s.l.), registering different flooding events with
sedimentation of silts and sands. These events happened when the conduits were still very close to the
epiphreatic zone, probably related to cool and unstable periods following the interglacial apexes (respectively
MIS11 and MIS5). Indeed, those speleothems formed during the last epiphreatic flooding of the conduits. An
altitude comparison with fluvial terraces and glacial deposits could shed light on the temporal evolution of the deepening.
Other speleothems coming from higher paleo-epiphreatic levels are even older (up to 520.000 years) as
expected, while some speleothems from the highest level of the system (Grotta Isabella) are currently under
study. Furthermore, stable isotopic studies (oxygen and carbon) for palaeoclimatic research are planned on the
collected samples in order to reconstruct the evolution of the climate in the Dolomites during specific intervals
of the Quaternary. The study of speleothems and of their growth in relation with the formation of the hosting
conduits and epiphreatic oscillations could reveal new insights on the evolution of multilevel karst systems like
that of Piani Eterni.

The 116 m deep Fårarp-1 core drilled in the Vomb Trough in southernmost Sweden is dated by integrated terrestrial and marine palynostratigraphy. The lower part of the succession (ca 84 m) encompasses uppermost Jurassic to lowermost Cretaceous (uppermost Tithonian to Valanginian) strata. An unconformity separates the Valanginian strata from an overlying ca 1 m thick interval of upper Albian to Cenomanian Arnager Greensand Formation. The uppermost part of the core is a repetitive succession of lowermost Cretaceous sediments.

During the Jurassic–Cretaceous (J/K) transition NW Europe was located in mid latitudes, and comprised an archipelago of large and small islands separated by deeper grabens and epicontinental seaways that connected the Boreal Sea to the north with the warmer Tethys Ocean to the south. Boundary strata in England, France, the Netherlands and Germany are characterised by relatively prominent climatic change from arid/semi arid to subhumid/humid conditions. Southernmost Sweden was located on the margin of a large landmass comprising most of the Fennoscandian Shield bordering a large epicontinental sea to the west. By combining sedimentology, clay mineralogy and palynofacies the Tithonian to Valanginian cored succession of the Fårarp-1 core provides complementary information on how marginal deposits from the eastern part of the epicontinental sea reflect the climatological and environmental changes observed in other parts of NW Europe.

The Fårarp-1 core shows that during the Tithonian to earliest Berriasian deposition took place in a terrestrial but near-marine depositional setting, in coastal lakes or lagoons with little marine influence. A dry climatic regime favoured stagnant water conditions with common algal blooms of primarily Botryococcus and zygnemataceae. Palynofacies and sedimentology indicate limited transport of freshwater and material to the basin. The stagnant depositional environment was terminated by a marine flooding in the early Berriasian. During the remaining Berriasian and the early Valanginian conditions shifted between near marine and marine settings in a dynamic coastal environment, similar to contemporaneous assemblages reported from the Danish Island of Bornholm.

A shift in clay mineralogy, from a dominance of 10 Å minerals to increasing amounts of mixed layer and kaolinite indicates a change to more humid conditions in the latest Tithonian. Cheirolepidacean pollen (Classopollis) are present but never common in the cored succession, and a similar conspicuous decrease of these pollen, as previously reported from England, Germany and France, is not evident in the Fårarp-1 core. Instead a subsequent shift in both palynofacies and palynoflora, marked by an increase in abundance of heavy terrigenous material, i.e. wood and coal particles, upland pollen grains and reworked palynomorphs is also observed in the uppermost Tithonian–lowermost Berriasian interval. At the same level spores and pollen classified as warmer/drier elements decrease in abundance. This is interpreted as representing a shift to more humid climatic conditions with increased runoff from the hinterland. Thus, the combined sedimentological and palynological data from the Fårarp-1 core suggest that climatic conditions in the area changed from more seasonally dry (semi-arid) to more humid (semi-humid) across the J/K boundary (latest Tithonian to earliest Berriasian) and hence earlier than the mid-Berriasian climatic shift recorded from e.g. England and the Netherlands.

An important fossil flora has been collected in the middle-upper Pelsonian mainly marine locality at Kühwiesenkopf (NE-Dolomites, Italy). The fossil plants are briefly described and ecological reconstructions of coastal, lowland, river and upland plant assemblages were made. The composition of the rich and diversified macroflora indicates a typically warm and humid climate. The entire section was also subject of detailed
palynological sampling for biostratigraphy and quantitative analyses. The palynological data confirm the macrofloral reconstructions and also suggest a warm and humid climate for this interval in the Dolomites (probably also on a more regional scale). Moreover, these results were subjected to two different
palynological methods to obtain more detailed palaeoecological and palaeoclimatological data for the whole section. Palynological data suggest, that major oscillations observed in the middle part of the section are related to eustatic oscillations rather than to climatic changes.

The association of macro- and microflora founded in the outcrop from Stan’s Hill is of the Basarabian age. It consists of 12 taxa of macroflora and 66 palynological taxa. There was observed a domination of monocotyledonous angiosperms represented by Typha (among the macrofloristic taxa), the Daphnogene gender being for the first time mentioned in the Sarmatian of the Moldavian Platform. Among the palynomorphs there were identified taxa belonging to the Pinaceae, Taxodiaceae, Fagaceae, Ulmaceae, Juglandaceae families. The palaeoclimate was assumed using the “Coexistence approach” method (Mosbrugger and Utescher, 1997).

Keywords:
palaeoflora, palaeoclimate, Basarabian, Moldavian Platform, Dealul Mare formation, Stan’s Hill

Lake Ohrid is located at the border between FYROM and Albania and formed during the latest phases of Alpine orogenesis. It is the deepest, the largest and the oldest tectonic lake in Europe. To better understand the paleoclimatic and paleoenvironmental evolution of Lake Ohrid a deep drilling was carried out in 2013 within the framework of the Scientific Collaboration on Past Speciation Conditions (SCOPSCO) project that was funded by the International Continental Drilling Program (ICDP). Preliminary results indicate that lacustrine sedimentation of Lake Ohrid started between 1.2 and 1.9 Ma ago. Here we present new pollen data (selected percentage and concentration taxa/groups) of the uppermost ~200 m of the 569 m-long DEEP core drilled in the depocenter of Lake Ohrid. The study is the fruit of a cooperative work carried out in several European palynological laboratories. The age model is based on nine tephra layers and on tuning of biogeochemical proxy data to orbital parameters and ...