Quaternary International 545 (2020) 119–127

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Quaternary International
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/quaint

Is the past key to the present? Observations of cultural continuity and T

resilience reconstructed from geoarchaeological records
Kathleen Nicolla,∗, Andrea Zerbonib
a
Department of Geography, Carolyn & Kem Gardner Commons Building, 260 Central Campus Dr., Room 4627, Salt Lake City, UT, 84112, USA
b
Università degli Studi di Milano, Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra “A. Desio”, Via L. Mangiagalli 34, I-20133, Milano, Italy

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: “Collapse” is an engaging buzzword that captivates public interest; as such, the notion of demise remains a
Geoarchaeology dominant theme in studies of ancient civilizations. Our textbooks teach that the Roman Empire and Han dynasty
Environmental crisis (to name a few oft-cited examples) crumbled, and some, like the Maya and the Harappan suddenly – if not
Societal collapse mysteriously – disappeared. In this manner, studying archaeology is promoted as a basis of prognostication for
Cultural continuity
our modern Anthropocene, the timeframe when human agency became ascendant and affected global change.
Resilience
Well established models of collapse suggested that cultural downfall was predicated by hydroclimate-driven
ecological and environmental crises that were both unavoidable and insurmountable, and resulted in finite end-
points like abandonments and disappearances. Such deterministic or apocalyptic notions of societal collapses are
appealing and tidy, but incomplete narratives. Emerging research has moved beyond simplistic and linear in-
terpretations of antiquity, invoking anthropological paradigms of continuity, social resilience and transforma-
tion, as well as new methodological approaches for resolving how cultures may have assimilated, or coped by
strategic adaptation, migration, socio-political reorganization or technological innovation. Interpretations of
geoarchaeological records in context of environmental reconstructions underscore themes raised by post-pro-
cessual anthropologists, such as the need to view cultural change as a continuum through environmental
changes. With these themes in mind, we link selected examples of modern studies of many regions with a special
focus on North African drylands with archaeological records that provide contexts for reconstructing how cul-
tures coped. Formal resilience theory, built on concepts that were originally borrowed from ecology, offers more
realistic frameworks for reconstructions of the past that enable us to ask nuanced questions about sustainability
strategies during political transitions, socio-political crisis events like warfare and disease, crop collapse, soil
loss, extreme weather (including hurricanes, floods, droughts), and resource availability. Resilience and per-
sistence of cultures is a given, and is inherent in the progressive study of ancient cultures and modern societies
living in marginal environments, and facing hydroclimate change, overpopulation, and scarcity of resources. As
such, geoarchaeological studies are vital for unpacking the Anthropocene.

1. Introduction disastrous and terminal societal collapse is elevated in relevance today,

Collapse remains a trendy theme in studies of ancient civilizations
and how archaeology is presented in the media. Commencing with the
historical interpretation of the decline and fall of Rome (Gibbon, 1776),
certain events have been interpreted as iconic societies that have
“collapsed” and people who have “disappeared” – to name a few ex-
amples: the deforestation of Easter Island (Rapa Nui), the abandoned
Norse colony in Greenland, the migration of ancestral Puebloans away
from Chaco Canyon in the U.S. southwest, the crisis in the Lowland
Maya kingdom, the demise of the ancient Khmer in Cambodia, the
faltering of nineteenth-century China (Diamond, 2005). The concept of
with strong interest about the connections between people and the
sustained habitability of their living environments. In present day cases,
as well as for archaeological and historical ones, hydroclimate and
environmental changes are considered the main drivers of societal
collapse.
This deterministic narrative is so embedded in our cultural background
that, for instance, in the recently approved subdivision of the Holocene
epoch, the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) established at c.
4.2 ka BP a new Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP), thus
marking the transition between the Northgrippian and Meghalayan stages
(International Commission on Stratigraphy, 2018). This newly-ratified (and

∗
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: kathleen.nicoll@gmail.com (K. Nicoll), andrea.zerboni@unimi.it (A. Zerboni).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2019.02.012
Received 17 October 2018; Received in revised form 2 February 2019; Accepted 7 February 2019
Available online 15 February 2019
1040-6182/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved.
K. Nicoll and A. Zerboni
most recent) unit of the ICS Geologic Time Scale began with a ∼200-years-
long and abrupt drought and cooling that some workers suggest may have
impacted agricultural societies between the western Mediterranean and the
Yangtze River (see: http://www.stratigraphy.org/index.php/ics-news-and-
meetings/119-collapse-of-civilizations-worldwide-defines-youngest-unit-of-
the-geologic-time-scale). The decision to adopt a chronostratigraphic
marker presumes there was a worldwide climatic crisis affecting humans;
this notion is questionable and is not fully supported by geological data,
which has invigorated robust debates among experts (e.g., see: Lewis and
Maslin, 2018; Maslin and Lewis, 2018.).
The cross-disciplinary fields of anthropology and geoarchaeology
contribute to such studies, because we aim to better understand the
human society in the context of culture and the hydroclimate-en-
vironment nexus over time. Documenting the diversity of human re-
sponses and adaptations to climate, landscapes, ecosystems, disasters,
hazards and changing availability of natural resources in various re-
gions and different climatic contexts on our planet provides valuable
opportunities to learn from the past. In modern times, climate change
poses profound ecological, social and political crises, but also presents
opportunities to re-imagine our responsibilities to one another and the
natural world. How can strategies of human resilience, persistence and
innovation in the deeper past inform our current strategies for ad-
dressing the challenges of the emerging Anthropocene (sensu
Ruddiman, 2018; Ellis, 2018; Waters et al., 2016; Lewis and Maslin,
2015), a time frame dominated by human modulation of hydroclimate
and surface geomorphological processes?
As scholars who focus on arid land geomorphology and records of
ancient cultures in landscapes of the Sahara and northern Africa, we
have observed long-term archives and recognize that people have be-
come desert-adapted as they have co-evolved and coped with rapid
hydroclimatic changes such as droughts, as well as aridification over
millennial timescales. Comparable kinds of adaptations may have
happened in archaeological and traditional cultural context within any
part of the world. Studying such resilient coping mechanisms that en-
abled continuance, rather than a finite collapse or terminal abandon-
ment, is critical for evaluating the successful strategy of humans during
the Quaternary (and possibly even before). Given these rationales, in
this paper we propose our viewpoint on the concept of hydroclimate-
driven effects on societies. We discuss some theoretical assumptions
and observations from selected case studies. Our approach merges
concepts developed in the field of ecological studies with archae-
ological and geoarchaeological information, and contextualizes a fur-
ther elaboration of human ecology as originally proposed by Karl
Butzer (1982) and later refined by him (Butzer, 2012).
2. Theories of civilizations and landscape ecology
In his mid-1700s correspondence with Voltaire (aka, François-Marie
Arouet), Jean-Jacques Rousseau was likely the first to suggest that
disasters like the 1755 Lisbon earthquake are social constructs defined
by existing norms. The importance of any disruptive event depends on
the stature of the affected people and the relative location within the
sphere of influence. Rousseau wrote, “…But we do not speak of them
(i.e., an earthquake occurring in wilderness instead of within a city),
because they do not cause any harm to the Gentlemen of the cities, the
only men of whom we take account.” (Masters and Kelly, 1990). As
such he was pointing out that disasters are only deemed as devastating
when they affect important people. Even today, in fact, the effects of an
environmental crisis are considered as the convergence of environ-
mental hazards and social vulnerability to disasters (Cutter, 1996; UN
ISDR Working Group on Environmental Disaster, 2016).
Through the lens of theories by such prominent historians, archae-
ologists, and anthropologists, critical examination of diverse archae-
ological records reveals how civilizations and societies have re-
organized, relocated, revitalized and changed over time. Two primary
schools of thought have dominated the late 20th century to modern
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Quaternary International 545 (2020) 119–127
notions of environmental change and ecological disasters as they relate
to the decline and collapse of cultures and civilizations:
1) A neo-Malthusian model drawing on concepts from population
ecology and island biogeography, in which collapse is forced by
overshoot (Catton, 1980; Tainter, 2006), the overexploitation of
environmental resources (like water, animal stocks, pasture, forests,
soil, metals, landscapes) and may be triggered by rapid climatic
changes, resulting in irreversible changes such as coups d’état, ex-
tinctions, depopulation, and rapid population relocation (Diamond,
2005).
2) An adaptive cyclicity in which landscapes, societies and belief sys-
tems persist through multiple equilibria, and social collapse is very
rare (or non-existent), because cultures demonstrate socio-economic
and demographic resilience and transformation (Gunderson, and
Holling, 2002; Walker et al., 2004).
Many scholars now view culture as a continuum, persisting through
disasters and cycling through phenomena of collapse and reorganiza-
tion (Fig. 1). These “ups and downs” are transitions and are essential
and integral components of dynamically evolving, complex societies
and ecological systems. This is a critical distinction from the traditional,
established notion that societies are a static construct that fails irre-
versibly, literally breaking down into ruins as a function of historical,
climatic and environmental stressors in context of social and political
factors. Determinism, as championed in recent books written by Jared
Diamond (1997, 2005), presents interpretations of human history in
context of integrated, idealized concept models. However, determinist
models cast people as passive respondents, lacking agency and crea-
tivity, and overlook the strategic human potential to move beyond or
adapt to changes incurred by catastrophes, environmental changes and
disasters.
Many hypotheses that link hydroclimate change, evolution, health
and human behavior relate how large-scale shifts or sudden variations
in climate (e.g., Nicoll and Küçükuysal, 2013) altered the landscape
ecology, which, in turn, affected culture – by presenting specific
adaptive or speciation pressures leading to genetic selection, adapta-
tion, and innovation (see Nicoll, 2012). A “crisis” may result if a society
Fig. 1. The Adaptive Cycle is an integrative theory of how natural and social
systems change and build resilience: “a system's ability to adjust to stresses and
disturbances, both internal and external, and to adjust to new equilibria, in
order to remain functional and productive” (after Gunderson and Holling,
2002). The phases include: release/collapse (Ω); reorganization (α), when the
system restructures itself after a catastrophic stimulus through innovation and
social memory, during a period of greater resilience and less vulnerability;
exploitation (r); and conservation (K), which represents a rigid or entrenched
system that lacks flexibility to change.
K. Nicoll and A. Zerboni
fails to adapt. Looking at examples of disaster crisis response, resistance
and resilience in the modern (Fig. 2) and (pre)-history may be in-
structive to identify tipping points and coping strategies that were ef-
fective solutions (or not).
Furthermore, because we know that societies can respond to, and
even rebound after a catastrophe (e.g., Schwartz, 2006; McAnany and
Yoffee, 1988; 2010), we must interpret transitions and consider culture
in a less fatalistic, nonlinear manner that is informed with theories of
resilience — the ability of organisms to adjust and adapt to dis-
turbances, both internal and external, in order to remain functional and
productive. Notions of resilience in context with geoarchaeological and
cultural observations critiques and expands environmental de-
terminism, as well as the centrality of disasters and depopulation in
models of societal “collapse” as a linear process. Although the material
record of human society is known to be problematic for reconstructing
populations and political systems of the past, particularly during pre-
history (Cowgill, 1975; Boone, 2002), geoarchaeology can provide va-
luable insights about long-term trends in sustainability and cultural
continuity (e.g., Butzer, 2012).
3. Styles of adaptation, present and past
One general working definition for adaptation is the adjustment
process to actual or expected hydroclimate, and its effects on both
human and natural systems within their environment (IPCC, 2014).
Adaptation can moderate, prevent or avoid harm, and may even
leverage benefits and opportunities. With respect to systems, ecosys-
tems, humans and environments may actively intervene to facilitate
adjustment to expected climate and related effects. Human agency is in
fact a key hallmark of the Anthropocene, the modern timeframe when
people became dominant and are regarded as agents of global change
(Lewis and Maslin, 2015).
The nature of adaptation is either incremental or transformational.
Incremental adaptation involves action(s) that maintain the essence and
integrity of an existing or developing system or process at a specific
scale. Transformational adaptation may involve more “out of the box”
(i.e., non-standard) approaches to change the fundamental attributes or
working mechanisms of a system in response to hydroclimate and its
effects (e.g., Kates et al., 2012).
These adaptation-style “end members” may be viewed within a
continuum. Incremental adaptation continues the existing function-
ality, or may enhance the resilience of existing systems or processes.
Modes of incremental adaptation may involve strategies and measures
to reduce losses or enhance benefits. Incremental adaptation may sy-
nergize with approaches or active strategies that increase the resilience
of a society with respect to hazards and hydroclimate change.
Transformational adaptation may involve radical changes to, or
even the replacement of, existing systems and practices with others that
provide greater benefits, or shifts in the baseline conditions (Kates
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Quaternary International 545 (2020) 119–127
Fig. 2. A relevant example of “a modern
management model” of disasters and resi-
lience called the Disaster Resilience Of
Place (DROP) model (Cutter et al., 2008). It
presents the relevant framework of vari-
ables in modern hazards at the local or
community levels, relating their societal
response to hazard disasters as a cycle re-
lated to mitigation and preparedness.
et al., 2012). Transformation may result from actions taken after the
recognition that existing systems and practices are inappropriate; these
are effective when the status quo processes are not viable or practical
under emerging or anticipated conditions. Many examples recorded
from archaeological sites indicate practices that ancient societies ap-
plied to prevent or solve emergencies. For instance, since the first
centuries BCE, various cultures settling within dryland regions adopted
sophisticated systems for water management that enabled them to cope
with water scarcity and persist through drought. Ancient Assyria built
extensive canal systems that enabled agricultural activities (Morandi
Bonacossi, 2018, and citations therein). Across the landscape between
Persia and Spain, underground water gathering and management sys-
tems were developed; these were called qanat, karez, falaj, or foggaras
(e.g., Wilkinson, 1983; Lightfoot, 2000; Mattingly, 2003; Stinson et al.,
2016). At least in the case of Oman, falaj were introduced to increase
the efficiency of a pre-existing surface irrigation system, after func-
tionality declined as a consequence of rainfall shortage (Cremaschi
et al., 2018).
One modern example of transformational adaptation: in 2016, the
US Department of Housing and Urban Development announced $1
billion in financial grants to help communities in 13 states adapt to
climate change by building stronger levees, dams and drainage systems
(Davenport and Robertson, 2016). An important consideration is whe-
ther such incremental approaches can effectively keep pace with
changes in climate, either due to the rapidity or magnitude of change. If
hydroclimate-forced environmental change results in the crossing of
critical thresholds beyond which existing systems or practices cannot be
sustained, then it is necessary to effect transformational adaptation.
In modern society, most adaptation initiatives and actions are in-
cremental in nature (Park et al., 2012) and limited in scope and scale.
Some contemporary examples of transformational adaptation strategies
making news headlines include the relocation of settlements and po-
pulations from low-lying coastal areas and in small island states where
adaptation is impractical and outpaced by rising sea-levels and coastal
flooding from global warming, as well as extreme weather events and
increasing storm intensities (IPCC, 2014). In 2005, the U.N. Environ-
ment Programme reacted to detrimental sea-level rise and facilitated
the inland movement of nearly 100 coastal villagers in the province of
Tegua in northern Vanuatu, citing these Pacific Islander people as the
world's first contemporary ‘climate change refugees’ (Campbell and
Barnett, 2010).
In 2016, Gulf Coast residents of Isle de Jean Charles in Louisiana,
USA received the first allocation of $48 million in federal tax dollars to
move all residents of their community from the severe impacts of cli-
mate change. Such a resettlement was deemed a necessary transfor-
mational adaptation due to intense coastal flooding and erosion; since
1955, more than 98% of the island's original land mass has literally
washed away. Inlet channels cut by oil companies intensified erosion
across the island, and decades of flood control efforts have kept once
K. Nicoll and A. Zerboni
free-flowing rivers from replenishing the wetlands' sediments.
Significant parts of the island were eroded away by hurricanes, and
more frequent storms have been flooding the coast, roads, and people's
homes (Stein, 2018). According to estimates by the United Nations
University Institute for Environment and Human Security and the In-
ternational Organization for Migration, climate change and sea level
rise could possibly displace between 50 million and 200 million people
— mainly fishermen and subsistence farmers — by the year 2050
(Davenport and Robertson, 2016).
The archaeological record offers good examples related to humans
facing prehistoric sea level changes and variations of resource-rich
coastline environments. For instance, between the 4th and 5th millen-
nium BCE, human groups were sustained by the high productivity of the
mangrove ecosystems and fished for mollusks along the coastline of
northern Oman. After this timeframe, a possible fall of the sea level
coupled with the decrease of freshwater supplied from rainfall asso-
ciated with the Indian Ocean monsoon triggered the increase of salinity
in coastal lagoons and, soon after, their rapid desiccation (Hoorn and
Cremaschi, 2004; Cremaschi et al., 2015). These dramatic ecosystem
changes caused productivity to crash, and the disappearance of natural
resources affected the local human population, and forced their re-
location (Berger et al., 2013).
In addition to hydroclimate changes, societal and economic stresses
are presently creating scenarios of sociopolitical and economic conflict
(see the review by Connolly-Boutin and Smit, 2016). In Tanzania, for
example, current pressures from more politically powerful settlers are
displacing the Hadza, one of Africa's last hunter-gatherer indigenous
cultures, from their ancestral territory in the eastern Sahel (Gibbons,
2018). Although they have been quite resilient, the Hadza now face an
intense convergence of threats from pastoralists whose cattle drink their
water and graze on their territorial grasslands, farmers clearing
woodlands to grow crops, and climate change that dries up rivers and
stunts growth of grasses. All these pressures drive away the antelope,
buffalo, and other wildlife that the Hadza hunt, creating food in-
security. There is a high likelihood that the Hadza culture will soon
assimilate, without leaving a specific record of its transition.
Developing models for societal transformation in complex societies
include the economic theory of declining marginal returns, general
systems theory (GST), political cycling, and themes of agency, eventful
archaeology and collective action (Faulseit, 2016a,b). Political, cultural
and interactive variables affect the emergence and persistence of so-
cieties. Since societies typically have factions and coalitions with dif-
ferent interests, goals and agendas, there is variability as to whether
societies collectively function or make decisions that solely determine
their fate as a whole.
4. What can we learn from the past?
Instead of viewing collapse as an irreversible catastrophe and as-
sessing “what went wrong?”, Tainter (2016) argues that it would be
“more productive and less biased to situate collapse within the broader
anthropological question: What causes societies to vary and change in
complexity?” This line of inquiry transcends weighty and value-laden
assessments of success and failure, and views cultural frameworks in a
more dynamic and nuanced framework. Learning how societies in the
past have been successful is the practical inverse of the failure models
proposed by Diamond (1997, 2005).
Because it has been studied for centuries, the classical example of
ancient Rome provides a valuable context for assessing long-term re-
silience, and the metanarratives deriving from assessment of the cul-
ture. The Roman civilization changed over time; a flourishing empire
disaggregated, but there has never been a notion that the Romans
themselves disappeared. The history of Rome was first divided into
periods during the Renaissance; the period “before” the decline lasted
until the 4th century CE (AD) and the adoption of Christianity as the
state religion. The period “after” the “decline” was described as the
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Quaternary International 545 (2020) 119–127
“Middle Ages” (Gibbon, 1776). Until the early 20th century, scholars
discussed the causes of the “fall”, or the “decline” or “collapse” of the
idealized state of classism as it was apparent in the diminished status of
the city of Rome and the Empire, which was alternately and collectively
blamed on the Church, Barbarians, invaders, and even Muslim ex-
pansionism (Pirenne, 1937; Frank, 1993).
Many modern historians view the apparent decline of Rome as a
continuum – the Imperium Romanum still persisted after the 5th century
CE, but the rule transferred from Romans to Byzantines, and then it was
the Holy Roman Empire. “The Imperium was conceived as an idea and
an ideal that can be transformed and altered. It was a process rather
than a geographical entity” (p. 257, Ellenbaum, 2012). Between the 3rd
and 8th centuries CE, the classical civilization of Rome did not collapse;
this was a period of impressive cultural innovation (Grant, 1999).
Events during this period nurtured the development of new intellectual
centers (e.g., Iberian Peninsula) and cultures (e.g., Sunni Islam in
Baghdad), and shifted the geographic center of ideas and activities
(Ellenbaum, 2012; Haldon et al., 2014). The traditions of classical
heritage that persisted became more resilient over time. The much-
discussed, “collapse” of the eastern Mediterranean a bit later
∼950–1072 CE probably resulted from concurrent disasters and en-
vironmental changes that occurred in three typically independent ad-
jacent zones in nearby northeast Africa, central Asia, and other areas of
the Mediterranean.
An independent proxy record of the historical fluctuations of Rome
was recently reconstructed from a continuous, sub-annually resolved,
and precisely dated ice core from Greenland (McConnell et al., 2018).
An 1100 BCE to 800 CE record of estimated lead pollution preserved in
the Arctic ice, combined with atmospheric modelling, was linked to
mid-latitude emissions from ancient lead–silver mining and smelting.
This was interpreted to infer the performance of ancient economies,
including comparisons of economic productivity and growth during the
Roman Republican and Imperial periods. The archive of emissions
tracked with historical events, including imperial expansion, wars, and
major plagues. Emissions rose coevally with Phoenician expansion and
accelerated during periods when there was expanded Carthaginian and
Roman lead–silver mining. The paleorecord suggested that emissions
fluctuated synchronously with wars and political instability, particu-
larly during the Roman Republic, and reached a sustained maximum
during the Roman Empire before plunging in the second century co-
incident with the Antonine Plague, and remaining low for less than 500
years. This coincided with a decline in bullion and silver coinage,
paralleling the importance of lead–silver mining and resources in an-
cient economies (see, e.g., Sverdrup et al., 2013).
The persistence of Rome is a cultural continuum. Since it is rarely
“one event” that completely and rapidly breaks a society – factors are
multi-causal, complexly interconnected and cascading, it is difficult to
reconstruct causes and effects in the past. Political-economic, demo-
graphic, and sociocultural as well as environmental-relational aspects
such as structural deficits, inherent social antagonisms, and political
dynamics made complex societies vulnerable to extreme climate events
(O'Connor and Ford, 2014; Knapp and Manning, 2016). Historical
analog studies of environmental and ecological change are a well-es-
tablished methodology for examining vulnerability to the impacts of
climate change; historical analogies of social transformations can si-
milarly illuminate what factors are conducive to adaptation (e.g.,
Parsons and Nalau, 2016).
5. Relevance for arid northern Africa
Modern arid and semi-arid regions of Africa, and in particular the
Sahel, are among the globe's most vulnerable regions to hydroclimate
change (IPCC, 2014). These are marginal environments that are dis-
turbance-prone areas, and sensitive to drought and overgrazing pres-
sures; settlers in these areas are highly dependent on rain-fed and ir-
rigated agriculture, and they face significant desertification challenges
K. Nicoll and A. Zerboni
and a limited adaptive capacity of existing socio-economic systems.
Warming temperatures and changing precipitation regimes are pro-
jected to exacerbate natural hazards, accelerate desertification, increase
exposure to infectious diseases, compromise food and water security
and intensify ecosystem degradation (World Bank, 2010; Patt et al.,
2010; Costello et al., 2009; Speranza and Scholz, 2013; Krätli, 2015).
Recent climate policy in Sub-Saharan Africa has prioritized adap-
tation, and funds were disbursed through the UN Framework
Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) for various endeavours
(Biagini et al., 2014). Many of the funded development projects in
Africa address adaptation and a large body of emerging scholarship
examines elements of vulnerability, and offers suggestions for adapta-
tion efforts, reducing vulnerability to projected changes, and for in-
itiating interventions that address underlying determinants (Mannke,
2011; Berrang-Ford et al., 2011). In addition to the UN, non-govern-
mental organizations (NGOs) and donors are undertaking community-
level projects and effecting changes in policy, legal or administrative
means to decrease vulnerability and promote large-scale, trans-
boundary adaptations.
In the modern African drylands, people have transitioned their food
production strategies based on shortages (e.g., Grant, 1999), politics
and opportunism (e.g., Thébaud and Batterby, 2001); farmers and
pastoralists across the region have adapted to significant environmental
changes (e.g., Mortimore and Adams, 2001; Van der Geest and Dietz,
2004; Jones and Thornton, 2009; Krätli et al., 2013). A few more ex-
amples are as follows. In Mali, people shifted from aquatic livelihoods
(i.e., fishing) to livelihoods based on livestock and forest products
within the area formerly occupied by the freshwaters of Lake Faguibine,
which dried up and became a forested area (Djoudi et al., 2013). In
northern Nigeria, pastoralists shifted away from cattle to more drought-
tolerant sheep and goats; populations migrated from homesteads and
rural villages to urban centers; businesses were established to exploit
new markets; and new crops and planting practices were adopted by
independently-operating farmers without external interventions
through development projects (e.g., see Rickards and Howden, 2012).
Further reviews of various examples of modern adaptation in re-
sponse to changing climate and environment across North Africa in-
clude those by Anwar and Liu (2013) and Rippke et al. (2016) Such
examples provide valuable analogs for interpreting the deeper past,
especially the timeframe when the Sahel zone expanded during the so-
called African Humid Period (AHP) during the early and mid-Holocene
“climatic optimum”, a timeframe when the Sahara region experienced
more rainfall and was more habitable (Fig. 3).
Across the drought-prone region of North Africa, rapid hydrocli-
matic changes (“wet-dry” cycles) played a key role in landscape ha-
bitability and resource availability throughout Antiquity. As water
sources waned during episodes of Holocene drought, and as the AHP
waned, prehistoric people were resilient. Cultures developed various
subsistence strategies, including opportunistic hunting of small animals
and food production such as gathering, transhumance, and livestock
rearing (di Lernia, 2002; Cremaschi and Zerboni, 2009, 2011; 2013;
Nicoll, 2012; di Lernia et al., 2013).
Different societies appear to have responded in different ways to the
comparable stresses during the mid-Holocene (Mercuri et al., 2011) and
evinced diverse adaptations to various landscape units, including
marginal and fragile environments across North Africa. Responses de-
pended on their geographical contexts, lifeways and resilience strate-
gies. Aridification is traditionally associated with transitions from
farming to herding; increased climatic marginality compromised rain-
fed agriculture but allowed extensive grazing, and transitions pro-
gressed from herding to irrigated agriculture along rivers and in other
refugia where rainfall fell below thresholds of viability for mobile
pastoralism (Brooks, 2006; Clarke et al., 2016), that is, below
∼200 mm mean annual precipitation (Nicoll, 2004). However, the re-
lationship between these hydroclimatic and environmental changes and
related changes in subsistence strategies was not deterministic, linear or
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unidirectional. In general terms, we may find a parallel with present-
day adaptations to increasing aridity, as in the case studies previously
mentioned. For instance, we may consider that across the Sahara the
mid-late Holocene climate and environmental change triggered the
transition from cattle and ovicaprines-pastoralism to husbandry of more
drought-resistant sheep and goats (di Lernia et al., 2013), as well as the
development of (proto-)urban centers (Mori, 2013). Obviously, this is a
deterministic oversimplification, as illustrated by the analyses by sev-
eral archaeological contexts.
Geoarchaeological records of Neolithic people at Nabta Playa
∼100 km west of the Nile Valley, preserve evidence that people dug
wells to access water (Nicoll, 2014). People and their animals con-
gregated around water sources, remaining at “oases” or refugia where
water availability was reliable or more abundant (Nicoll, 2001;
McDonald, 2009). Cultures were highly mobile across this landscape
(Gallinaro and Biagetti, 2016; Gallinaro, 2018), which enabled people
to exploit sparsely distributed resources and different ecological niches
across the aridifying landscape. Evidence suggests that the early occu-
pants of the Nabta Playa—Bîr Kiseiba area migrated seasonally to the
Second Cataract region of the Nile Valley (Usai, 2005, 2008).
Recent review of the botanical and fragmentary faunal data in-
dicates that there is no conclusive evidence for the presence of habi-
tually or morphologically domesticated cattle in the early Holocene of
northeast Africa; semi-sedentism and storage strategies indicative of
delayed-return economies emerged later, around or after 6300 BCE in
the Libyan Sahara and Western Desert of Egypt (di Lernia, 2013; Brass,
2018). Brass (2018) writes: “The (strategy) change laid the ideological
foundations for the subsequent integration of at first low numbers of
caprines (i.e., goats, sheep) and later cattle into the broad-spectrum
economies of the Western Desert at different times. The spread was
made possible and facilitated by trade links stretching from the Western
Desert to the Red Sea, evidenced by the appearance of cowrie beads.”
Because records across the region of northeast Africa are spotty,
there are limits to what we can infer about these economic transitions.
The lack of well-dated contexts complicates any assessments about
shifts in husbandry practices from cattle to more drought-tolerant sheep
and goats. By 5900 BCE, caprines are likely present at Nabta Playa,
while the earliest verifiable occurrence of domesticated cattle there is c.
5600 BCE, but both are dated later at other Western Desert sites west of
the Egyptian Nile (Brass, 2018). In the central Sahara ∼3000 BCE,
adaptive strategies emerged in parallel at different locations, depending
on local variables, and these continued to coexist for millennia. Mobi-
lity increased through a shift from herding cattle to sheep and goats,
while in oasis areas, mobility reduced due to more sedentary cattle
herding (di Lernia, 2002). Over time, subsistence strategies became
more diverse, and agriculture emerged. The specific practices of sub-
sistence and the exploitation of vegetation resources are certainly quite
complicated; the emerging records demonstrate early evidence of wild
cereals, and exploitation of every available ecological niche as popu-
lations faced the necessity of food production (e.g., Madella et al., 2014;
Mercuri et al., 2018).
Across the Saharan landscape, there is significant zoogeomorphic
evidence of opportunistic pastoralism, animal husbandry and extensive
trade networks (Zerboni and Nicoll, 2019). Along specific landscape
units, the presence of trapping or tethering stones, stone artefacts with
notches or grooves that have been interpreted as hunting devices on the
basis of rock art engravings in southwest Libya (di Lernia et al., 2008;
Gallinaro and di Lernia, 2018), represent a diverse assemblage from
which we can interpret past land use and subsistence strategies in these
marginal environments. These artefacts also suggest a deep knowledge
of the landscape during Neolithic times, when people exploited mar-
ginal, less watered, remote areas to hunt animals across their range or
to follow game migrations over greater geographic distances. Ground-
level hunting features, tools and structures are known for the Neolithic
of many deserts of North Africa, as well as in the adjacent Levant,
Arabian Peninsula and central Asia (e.g., Pachur, 1991; Riemer, 2009;
K. Nicoll and A. Zerboni
Fig. 3. Paleoenvironmental records: the Nile and the Sahara. The African Humid Period (AHP) occurs during the Holocene Climatic Optimum (ca. 12–5 ka BP) and
corresponds to the so-called “Green Sahara”; this timeframe is often regarded as the apex of Saharan prehistoric civilizations (Nicoll, 2004). This figure compiles a
depth profile of Ti/Al and 87Sr/86Sr ratios from offshore core S-21 located east of the Nile Delta, plotted versus calibrated 14C age; interpreted changes in paleoclimate
within the catchment; the state of the Nile flood during Antiquity; and the Egyptian chronology in calendric years (Nicoll, 2012).
Rosen and Rivera-Collazo, 2012; Crassard et al., 2015; Gallinaro and di
Lernia, 2018); tethering stones, game trap structures, and desert kites
reflect sophisticated approaches for exploiting marginal environments.
These cultures adaptively integrated hunting as part of their subsistence
strategies, within their substantially pastoral societies.
Early Holocene Saharan societies have typically been considered as
opportunistic, specialized hunter-gatherer groups. Locally, some groups
also specialized in fishing (hunting-gathering-fishing groups), and re-
cent discoveries are offering further insights about subsistence strate-
gies that include the preservation of food resources. Although several
hypotheses have been proposed about the preservation of meat and fish
through salting, drying, or smoking, the material record has only re-
cently confirmed these practices during Antiquity (Maritan et al., 2018
and references cited therein). A multidisciplinary investigation at Me-
solithic (7th millennium BCE) archaeological sites in central Sudan
revealed the occurrence of anomalous salt concentration on fish bones
and clay vessels. Study results indicate that the practice of salting fish to
preserve food resources cannot be related to post-depositional pro-
cesses, thus suggesting that fishing characterized the economy of that
human population during the time. Salting and storing fish seems to be
closely connected with the culture's nearly sedentary status.
Holocene droughts were likely a “civilizing factor” in northeast
Africa (Nicoll, 2012; sensu Rosen, 2006). Droughts may have motivated
migrations toward water resources, gathered people at reliable resource
areas, and fostered acculturation and social complexity, which is evi-
dent in burials, ceremonial centers, and solar calendars built at loca-
tions across the desert. The ultimate resilience strategy of the desert
dwellers was relocation to areas with reliable water supplies in the Nile
Valley and the transition to agriculture after ∼5300 cal years BP, which
contributed to the efflorescence of Pharaonic Egypt (Nicoll, 2004,
2012).
This deterministic model is supported by a database of published
radiocarbon dates from various sites along the Nile Valley (Macklin
et al., 2015) and its delta (Fig. 3). In Egypt, the Old Kingdom period was
characterized by the construction of monumental royal projects along
the Nile, c. 2686-2181 cal BCE, including Djoser's Step Pyramid at
Saqqara during the 3rd Dynasty, and during the 4th Dynasty, Sneferu's
124
Quaternary International 545 (2020) 119–127
pyramids at Dahshur; Khufu's Great Pyramid at Giza; Khafra's Great
Sphinx. This timeframe ∼2686-2494 cal BCE somewhat unexpectedly
coincides with a long-term shift to drier conditions, which culminated
in the well-documented climate event at 2200 cal BCE that is believed
to be linked to the demise of the Old Kingdom (Macklin et al., 2015 and
references therein). This coincidence suggests that increasing environ-
mental stress resulting from decreasing river water availability did not
significantly diminish the development of pharaonic Egypt until around
2200 cal BCE. During the second half of the 3rd millennium BCE, the
Kingdom of Kush in Nubia emerged as a major rival to Egypt during the
persistent dry phase associated with equatorial Africa's first “Dark Age”
drought (Thompson et al., 2002). Located further upstream along the
River Nile and closer to the influence of the monsoon, Kush flourished
during the First Intermediate Period (c. 2160 - 2025 BCE), despite en-
vironmental stress, and the number of settlements increased between
2050 and 1750 cal BCE (Macklin et al., 2013). Perhaps this population
surge in this part of the Nile Valley was related to an influx of migrant
settlers from drought-stricken areas in the surrounding desert. Both the
people of Kush and the Old Kingdom Egypt floodwater farmers coped
with variable rainwater supply and flashy Nile river flows as they
managed irrigation networks for agriculture over extended periods for
several centuries.
Through examples of adaptation apparent from reconstructing the
archaeological and proto-historic record, we can understand the human
response as semi-arid North Africa transitioned from relatively humid
to the hyperarid conditions of today (Mayewski et al., 2004; Clarke
et al., 2016). During this timeframe, populations living in the northern
hemisphere sub-tropics were resilient and adapted to increased aridity
and a decline in resource availability. Such adaptation may result in
convergent or divergent behaviors in each area, as each ecosystem may
have reacted differently. These strategies, particularly migration to
refugia and intensification of agricultural activities, were likely asso-
ciated with a variety of profound social changes, including increased
social organization based on more hierarchical and unequal societies,
the emergence of specific groups, and changes in social relationships
within and between population groups. These changes in social rela-
tions are echoed in changes in gender relations and in power relations
K. Nicoll and A. Zerboni
between different ethnic backgrounds and livelihood groups associated
with recent transformational adaptation in the Sahel (e.g., Thébaud and
Batterby, 2001).
Saharan prehistory offers particular insights about abrupt and ex-
treme climate fluctuations or alterations that served as catalysts for
change – though not necessarily as “triggers” for demise or collapse.
Particularly during the Holocene, hydroclimatic oscillations, environ-
mental changes and uncertainties regarding resource availability en-
hanced the resilience of past societies (Zerboni et al., 2016). It is highly
unlikely that Saharan peoples disappeared at the end of the AHP as
aridity intensified toward its modern hyperaridity. Modern traditional
populations are resilient and able to cope with abrupt changes to their
social and natural environments (Mattingly, 2000; di Lernia et al.,
2012; Zerboni et al., 2013). For example, the contemporary Bedouin in
the Mediterranean Coastal Zone of the Western Desert of Egypt have
had to cope with a recent severe 15-year drought, combined with major
changes with tourism, urbanization, and agricultural development.
Research found that the Bedouin people have adaptive processes that
are embedded in their social organization; the Bedouin are flexible and
capable of adopting a wide range of activities, and livestock remain
their main social safety net (Alary et al., 2014).
6. Summary and conclusions
Collapse of a society is rare, and complicated, and we should not
generalize it. Although textbooks still teach that collapse is a pattern,
and speak of the inevitability of the demise of civilizations, empires and
dynasties that once prospered, various emerging records indicate that
antiquity is not simplistic. Records of human-environment interaction
and transitions of society, economy and polity are fragmental, and
cannot always be completely reconstructed in time or space, or at
comparable scales. Ancient culture is best viewed through a lens of
complexity, resilience, adaptability, and transformation. Societies are
not static constructs that fail and are eradicated in apocalyptic sce-
narios. Instead, societies are dynamic, and have naturally reorganized,
revitalized, and changed. Within this paradigm of continuum, cycles of
change, “decline” and rebuilding are essential elements.
Emerging archaeological research must continue to move beyond
simplistic and linear interpretations of antiquity, invoking anthro-
pological paradigms of social resilience and transformation, as well as
new methodological approaches (e.g., Gao et al., 2016). As geoarch-
aeologists, we must question the suitability of determinism, the notion
that human history and Euro-American colonial triumphs were an ac-
cident of geography. Key linkages between hydroclimate and humans
require adaptive synoptic approaches to explore large-scale cultural
patterns, and regional studies for contextualizing social theory beyond
the confines of environmental determinism. Reframing our scholarship
within integrative theoretical approaches like resilience theory offers
different ways to “look back in time” and increases the modern re-
levance of studying the past. We should assess resilience in the face of
societal crises, rather than collapse, as the leitmotif of the human story
from the cradle of culture's earliest societies and the efflorescence of
subsequent civilizations.
Some studies examine how societies were innovative, exhibited re-
silience, transformed without collapse, experienced changes in effective
governance, development of mitigation strategies, and adaptation after
a crisis over short timeframes (for example, Liu, 1996; Casseldine et al.,
2005; Ackermann, 2008; Izdebski et al., 2016; Evans et al., 2018; Guiry
et al., 2018; Riel-Salvatore and Negrino, 2018). We can ask different
questions about what happens in the aftermath of collapse, how to draw
inferences about causality, and what changes we can infer from rituals.
We can explore the rich complexities of culture in context of transitions
and politics, and emphasize how people responded to stresses.
Geoarchaeologists, landscape archaeologists and environmental
historians have long recognized the value of proxy archives and pre-
historic-historical records for reconstructing past hydroclimates,
125
Quaternary International 545 (2020) 119–127
especially because some places lack instrumental data sources (e.g.,
Carey, 2005; Kumar et al., 2006; Endfield, 2008).
More emphasis can be made to assess ecosystem and landscape
thresholds in modern times and during the past, as well as the toler-
ances of people themselves, and their cultural responses to severe and/
or abrupt climate and environmental changes as preserved in the ma-
terial record (Clare and Weninger, 2010). Topics of interest include
defining sustainability thresholds for farming or resource exploitation
and identifying baseline natural vs. human contributions to environ-
mental changes (e.g., soil quality, erosion, landscape degradation, hy-
drological setting). Geoarchaeological insights can inform reconstruc-
tions of such elements in the physical landscape and ecosystem to better
characterize environmental factors that may have influenced humans
and their lifeways throughout Antiquity.
“Lessons of the past” may provide multiple reference frames that are
valuable for informing our future decisions and action plans. But we
should also be critical of our biases while examining the complex so-
ciological and historical relationships of the past. The relevance of
modern notions of societal “success” and “failure” are likely to have
been different in the past. It is questionable whether we can apply
uniformitarianism regarding the modern contexts of societal norms,
wealth, status, race, power and political labels to inferences about the
past. This is especially relevant for reconstructing prehistory, because
site preservation is poor and methodological geoarchaeology ap-
proaches will likely alias or misidentify cultural complexity that oc-
curred in the deeper past.
Acknowledgments
This study was funded by various grants to author KN from the
Smithsonian Institution, NASA Global Change, the Royal Society (UK),
the University of Oxford (UK), and the University of Utah (USA). Part of
this study was supported from Università degli Studi di Milano,
Progetto Linea 2 (2016 and 2017) entrusted to AZ. This work is part of
the activities supported by the Italian Ministry of Education, University
and Research (MIUR) through the project ‘Dipartimenti di Eccellenza
2018–2022’ awarded to the Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra “A.
Desio” of the Università degli Studi di Milano. We thank the anonymous
reviewers of this paper, who offered helpful suggestions.
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