Lecture Summaries:  9 December, 2002

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Climate Change and its Impact on Society in the Early Bronze Age Levant
by
Arlene Rosen
Institute of Archaeology, University

The Early Bronze Age societies of the Southern Levant were well adapted to their semi-arid environments. They successfully supported large populations in major urban sites. The eventual collapse of these societies at around 2200 BC coincided with a marked shift toward even drier climatic conditions. However, we cannot assume that the collapse of a social system is an automatic and unavoidable outcome of climatic degradation. This is especially true given that not all of the towns in the Southern Levant were abandoned, and later Middle Bronze Age societies supported large communities in the same dry climatic regime that apparently led to the collapse of the Early Bronze Age towns. This lecture explores some of the explanations for the failure of Early Bronze Age Societies to adapt to the new environmental conditions. These might have included the combined factors of overspecialization in agricultural production, elite control over surplus goods, and the slow perception of and response time to the changing environmental situation.