Impact: The Effect of Climatic Change on Prehistoric and Modern Cultures in Texas (First Progress Report)
- UNCG Author/Contributor (non-UNCG co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
- Joel D. Gunn, Lecturer (Creator)
- Institution
- The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG )
- Web Site: http://library.uncg.edu/
Abstract: The pages of this report contain an assortment of materials which reflect the
status of climatic change studies at The University of Texas at San Antonio.
The effort is interdisciplinary, drawing on'the talents of persons trained in
geography, prehistory, anthropology, and mathematics and other fields. The
goals of the project include (1) efforts to understand how prehistoric and modern
economies respond to significant climatic changes and (2) the application of such
understanding to our own time and nation.
Long-term climatic change as an important factor in the everyday life of 20th
century people is a relatively recent issue. With notable exceptions, attitudes
toward climate during the last century have been fostered by increasingly warmer
and more comfortable winters, longer growing seasons and consequently higher
agricultural productivity. Only in the last decade have the energy
crisis and increasingly severe winters combined to create a general public
awareness of the instability of global climate. Public awareness has risen to
the point that there is a best-selling book on the topic, entitled CZimates of
Hunger by Bryson and Thomas. One can hardly open a newspaper today without
seeing an article on the impact of climates.
By contrast, prehistorians are often brought face-to-face with evidence of
cataclysmic climatic shifts. The climatic concerns expressed in the following
pages originated out of prehistoric archaeology where climatic change is often
a direct mechanism affecting cultural change. For instance, an article Wenland
and Bryson published in the journal Quaternary Research demonstrates that most
of the prehistoric cultures identified by archaeologists started and ended
during recognized periods of radical climatic change.
Although our research interests started with prehistory, we very soon widened
the scope to include problems of modern climatic change. The reason was that
ideas which explain prehistoric relationships between climate and culture are,
at least in part, most easily tested by examining weather data carefully collected
by the weather services of various nations over the last few years. The
realization that the past could be studied through the present, and vice-versa,
eventually led to expanded research into historic and modern records for climatic
patterns. Also, our sense of the usefulness of these efforts has grown. In the
context of a growing demand for practical applications from all fields of research,
we feel that our research will lead to a better understanding of the climatic
forces affecting our own times, and to direct assistance to those responsible
for planning our future national needs.
Impact: The Effect of Climatic Change on Prehistoric and Modern Cultures in Texas (First Progress Report)
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Additional Information
- Publication
- University of Texas- San Antonio Center for Archaeological Research Special Publication. (2,6)
- Language: English
- Date: 1979
- Keywords
- climatic change studies, response to climate change, economies, prehistory, modern climate change