A bioarchaeology of climate and environmental change
- UNCG Author/Contributor (non-UNCG co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
- Gwen Robbins Schug, Visiting Professor (Creator)
- Institution
- The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG )
- Web Site: http://library.uncg.edu/
Abstract: Climate change is already having an impact on global public health, human security (including food and water security), and migration flows (IPCC, 2014). Governments and non-governmental organizations are considering potential future impacts and creating plans for managing natural disasters, global warming, and associated environmental changes (DoD, 2015; EPA 2016a; b; c; d). The ability to understand global warming and predict and plan for the future relies on historical sciences. Paleoclimate science uses proxies to infer climatic and environmental fluctuations in the past, examining correlations among CO2 levels, mean global surface temperatures, ice coverage, sea-level rise, and paleoecology to develop models for prediction (Bender, 2013). Historical social sciences, including anthropology and archaeology, are also uniquely situated to contribute to these conversations based on our examinations of past human perceptions of and responses to climate and environmental change. For many decades, archaeologists and bioarchaeologists—who study human remains as a source of archaeological evidence—have been conducting scientific research on human-environmental interactions in the past and studying phenomena that will be highly valuable for contemporary planning and policymaking. Our scholarship addresses the socio-cultural-political dimensions of climate change over the last 12,000 years. Our data allow for nuanced interpretations of short-term strategies and long-term trajectories of human responses to environmental change.
A bioarchaeology of climate and environmental change
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Created on 2/3/2021
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Additional Information
- Publication
- G. Robbins Schug (Ed.), The Routledge Handbook of the Bioarchaeology of Climate and Environmental Change (pp. 1-16). Abingdon: Routledge.
- Language: English
- Date: 2020
- Keywords
- climate change, bioarchaeology, environmental change, human response, sustainability