HR: 16:00h
AN: PP22C-01    [PDF]
TI: Work More? The 8.2 kaBP Abrupt Climate Change Event and the Origins of Irrigation Agriculture and Surplus Agro-Production in Mesopotamia
AU: * Weiss, H
EM: harvey.weiss@yale.edu
AF: Harvey Weiss, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520 United States
AB: The West Asian archaeological record is of sufficient transparency and resolution to permit observation of the social responses to the major Holocene abrupt climate change events at 8.2, 5.2 and 4.2 kaBP. The 8.2kaBP abrupt climate change event in West Asia was a three hundred year aridification and cooling episode. During this period rain-fed agriculture, established for over a millennium in northern Mesopotamia, suddenly collapsed. Irrigation agriculture, pastoral nomadism, or migration were the only subsistence alternatives for populations previously supported by cereal dry-farming. Irrigation agriculture was not, however, possible along the northern alluvial plains of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, where incised riverbeds were several meters below plain level. Exploitable plain-level levees were only accessible in southern-most alluvial plain, at the head of the present-day Persian Gulf. The archaeological data from this region documents the first irrigation agriculture settlement of the plain during the 8.2 kaBP event. Irrigation agriculture provides about twice the yield of dry-farming in Mesopotamia, but at considerable labor costs relative to dry-farming. With irrigation agriculture surplus production was now available for deployment. But why work more? The 8.2 kaBP event provided the natural force for Mesopotamian irrigation agriculture and surplus production that were essential for the earliest class-formation and urban life.
DE: 1620 Climate dynamics (3309)
DE: 1812 Drought
DE: 1842 Irrigation
DE: 3344 Paleoclimatology
SC: Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology [PP]
MN: 2003 Fall Meeting