The University of Southampton
University of Southampton Institutional Repository

Environmental determinism in Holocene research: causality or coincidence?

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.
0004-0894
303-311
Coombes, P.V.
e2f6aa5f-b6a6-4186-94a3-90bc5f6669f6
Barber, K.E.
83d1acae-326d-4cb5-94b6-3d1dc78d64e9
Coombes, P.V.
e2f6aa5f-b6a6-4186-94a3-90bc5f6669f6
Barber, K.E.
83d1acae-326d-4cb5-94b6-3d1dc78d64e9

Coombes, P.V. and Barber, K.E. (2005) Environmental determinism in Holocene research: causality or coincidence? Area, 37 (3), 303-311. (doi:10.1111/j.1475-4762.2005.00634.x).

Record type: Article

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.

Text
Area_9-2005.pdf - Other
Restricted to Registered users only
Download (161kB)

More information

Published date: 2005

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 17404
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/17404
ISSN: 0004-0894
PURE UUID: 90608445-7441-4d95-bcd6-8de82070c09e

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 07 Sep 2005
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 05:59

Export record

Altmetrics

Contributors

Author: P.V. Coombes
Author: K.E. Barber

Download statistics

Downloads from ePrints over the past year. Other digital versions may also be available to download e.g. from the publisher's website.

View more statistics

Atom RSS 1.0 RSS 2.0

Contact ePrints Soton: eprints@soton.ac.uk

ePrints Soton supports OAI 2.0 with a base URL of http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/cgi/oai2

This repository has been built using EPrints software, developed at the University of Southampton, but available to everyone to use.

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue without changing your settings, we will assume that you are happy to receive cookies on the University of Southampton website.

×