Institut Méditerranéen de Biodiversité et d'Ecologie marine et continentale (IMBE), Aix-Marseille Université, CNRS, IRD, Avignon Université, Aix-en-Provence, France.
Groupement de recherche en économie quantitative d'Aix-Marseille (GREQAM), Aix-Marseille Université, Aix-en-Provence, France.
PLoS One. 2018 Dec 12;13(12):e0207622. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0207622. eCollection 2018.
Holocene climate variability in the Mediterranean Basin is often cited as a potential driver of societal change, but the mechanisms of this putative influence are generally little explored. In this paper we integrate two tools-agro-ecosystem modeling of potential agricultural yields and spatial analysis of archaeological settlement pattern data-in order to examine the human consequences of past climatic changes. Focusing on a case study in Provence (France), we adapt an agro-ecosystem model to the modeling of potential agricultural productivity during the Holocene. Calibrating this model for past crops and agricultural practices and using a downscaling approach to produce high spatiotemporal resolution paleoclimate data from a Mediterranean Holocene climate reconstruction, we estimate realistic potential agricultural yields under past climatic conditions. These serve as the basis for spatial analysis of archaeological settlement patterns, in which we examine the changing relationship over time between agricultural productivity and settlement location. Using potential agricultural productivity (PAgP) as a measure of the human consequences of climate changes, we focus on the relative magnitudes of 1) climate-driven shifts in PAgP and 2) the potential increases in productivity realizable through agricultural intensification. Together these offer a means of assessing the scale and mechanisms of the vulnerability and resilience of Holocene inhabitants of Provence to climate change. Our results suggest that settlement patterns were closely tied to PAgP throughout most of the Holocene, with the notable exception of the period from the Middle Bronze Age through the Early Iron Age. This pattern does not appear to be linked to any climatically-driven changes in PAgP, and conversely the most salient changes in PAgP during the Holocene cannot be clearly linked to any changes in settlement pattern. We argue that this constitutes evidence that vulnerability and resilience to climate change are strongly dependent on societal variables.
全新世地中海盆地的气候变化常被认为是社会变革的潜在驱动因素，但这种潜在影响的机制通常很少被探究。在本文中，我们整合了两种工具——潜在农业产量的农业生态系统建模和考古定居点模式数据的空间分析——以检验过去气候变化对人类的影响。我们聚焦于法国普罗旺斯的一个案例研究，采用农业生态系统模型来模拟全新世期间潜在的农业生产力。我们对过去的作物和农业实践校准了这个模型，并采用降尺度方法从地中海全新世气候重建中生成高时空分辨率的古气候数据，以此来估算过去气候条件下的现实潜在农业产量。这些数据为考古定居点模式的空间分析提供了基础，我们在其中研究了农业生产力和定居点位置之间随时间变化的关系。我们将潜在农业生产力 (PAgP) 作为气候变化对人类影响的衡量标准，重点关注以下两个方面：1）气候驱动的 PAgP 变化，2）通过农业集约化实现的生产力增长潜力。这些方面共同提供了一种评估普罗旺斯全新世居民对气候变化脆弱性和弹性的规模和机制的方法。我们的研究结果表明，在全新世的大部分时间里，定居模式与 PAgP 密切相关，只有从中石器时代到早期铁器时代的一段时间例外。这种模式似乎与 PAgP 的任何气候驱动变化无关，相反，全新世期间 PAgP 最显著的变化也不能与任何定居模式的变化明确相关。我们认为，这表明对气候变化的脆弱性和弹性在很大程度上取决于社会变量。
