Environmental determinism in Holocene research: causality or coincidence?
Environmental determinism in Holocene research: causality or coincidence?
The past decade has seen a revival of environmental determinism in palaeoenvironmental research, with palaeoclimatic shifts implicated in the collapse of many past civilizations. Implicit in these studies is a belief that the observed cultural transitions can be causally related to the magnitude of climatic change. However, examination of the processes of these declines suggests that many exhibit patterns characteristic of complexity cascading within self-organized systems. If so, the nonlinear nature of these systems' responses to external forcing means that the assumption of causality in many of these cases should be considered questionable.
303-311
Coombes, P.V.
e2f6aa5f-b6a6-4186-94a3-90bc5f6669f6
Barber, K.E.
83d1acae-326d-4cb5-94b6-3d1dc78d64e9
2005
Coombes, P.V.
e2f6aa5f-b6a6-4186-94a3-90bc5f6669f6
Barber, K.E.
83d1acae-326d-4cb5-94b6-3d1dc78d64e9
Abstract
The past decade has seen a revival of environmental determinism in palaeoenvironmental research, with palaeoclimatic shifts implicated in the collapse of many past civilizations. Implicit in these studies is a belief that the observed cultural transitions can be causally related to the magnitude of climatic change. However, examination of the processes of these declines suggests that many exhibit patterns characteristic of complexity cascading within self-organized systems. If so, the nonlinear nature of these systems' responses to external forcing means that the assumption of causality in many of these cases should be considered questionable.
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Published date: 2005
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Local EPrints ID: 17404
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/17404
ISSN: 0004-0894
PURE UUID: 90608445-7441-4d95-bcd6-8de82070c09e
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Date deposited: 07 Sep 2005
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 05:59
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Author:
P.V. Coombes
Author:
K.E. Barber
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