Here, we use 7437 stable oxygen (δ18O) isotope ratios extracted from 192 living and relict Alpine trees to reconstruct trends and extremes in European summer hydroclimate from 8980 before the present to 2014 Common Era. Our continuous tree-ring δ18O record reveals a significant long-term drying trend over much of the Holocene (P < 0.001), which is in line with orbital forcing and independent evidence from proxy reconstructions and model simulations. Wetter conditions in the early-to-mid Holocene coincide with the African Humid Period, whereas the most severe summer droughts of the past 9000 years are found during the Little Ice Age in the 18th and 19th centuries Common Era. We suggest that much of Europe was not only warmer but also wetter during most of the preindustrial Holocene, which implies a close relationship between insolation changes and long-term hydroclimate trends that likely affected natural and societal systems across a wide range of spatiotemporal scales.

• Publikační typ
• časopisecké články MeSH

Multicomponent environmental models have increasingly found their way into archaeological research. Mostly, these models aim to understand human patterns as a result of past climatic and environmental conditions over long-term periods. However, major limitations are the low spatial and temporal resolution of the environmental data, and hence the rather static model output. Particular challenges are thus the number of chosen variables, the comprehensiveness of the explanatory parameters, and the integration of socio-cultural decision-making into the model. Here, we present a novel approach to generate annually resolved landcover variability using a broad variety of climatic, geological, hydrological, topographical, and dendrochronological data composites (Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI)). We analyze land-use and settlement capacity and vulnerability to estimate the socio-cultural transformation processes at Basel (Switzerland) during the Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Our results highlight the potential of the PDSI to predict local river run-off behavior from catchment analyses. The model enables to trace landcover as well as socio-cultural response to climatic variability and subsequent adaptation to trends in environmental vulnerability. This approach further helps to understand population dynamics in the periphery of the Roman administrative boundaries and to revise traditional archaeological narratives of large-scale population replacements during the so-called Migration Period.

• MeSH
• lidé MeSH
• populační dynamika MeSH
• řeky * MeSH
• teoretické modely * MeSH
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• lidé MeSH
• Publikační typ
• časopisecké články MeSH
• práce podpořená grantem MeSH
• Geografické názvy
• Švýcarsko MeSH