The Holocene RCCs ("Rapid Climatic Changes"): an increasing debate on relationships with human societies during Prehistory and History, with examples from Anatolia

This conference will present and discuss the records of Rapid Climate Changes (RCC) signals recorded in Anatolia, on the basis of a downscaling state of the art about these signals (1) on the global and Eastern Mediterranean (regional) scales, and (2) on the sub-regional to local Anatolian scales. In continental areas, climate variations during the Holocene are reconstructed from proxies recording variations in water vs temperature conditions, as well as human impact if any. These climate proxies (physical, chemical, lithological and biological characteristics and contents of the sediments) are analyzed and dated in local sequences which have a more or less regional to global significance. The resulting sequences are compared to regional trends and global signals. There is however a very important clue to the comparability of these sequences: the local context (and space-and-time dynamic) of the environmental records must be taken into account, in order to understand how local scaled influences intervene in the climatic changes observed. One of these “local-scaled” elements of the systems studied is increasingly important during the Holocene: man’s activities. Once identifying the changes due to local conditions, the resulting time-organized palaeo-climatic sequences easily point to changes which are, in turn, comparable to global climatic curves. Applying the downscaling approach presented above, the conference will discuss and present the palaeoclimatic records of central to western Anatolia in the frame of the increasingly vivid debate about the relationships between (i) the “Rapid climate changes” (RCC) that occur ca every 1000 years on the global scale during the last 12000 years, (ii) some records of rapid changes in Anatolia, comparable to global RCCs and/or influenced by regional vs local conditions, and (iii) human societies on the local to regional scales (Neolithic to Iron Age cultures and populations in central to western Anatolia).