Climate Change in Pictish Scotland: Changing Views on Scale, Frequency, Intensity and the Human Context

Abstract

First paragraph: Interest in the physical environment surrounding past human communities has waxed and waned over the last few years as archaeologists have sought to answer questions that derive from anthropological rather than geographical concerns (Thomas 1990; Tilley 1994; Evans 1999). Climate is one of those physical variables that archaeologists and historians have been occasionally intrigued by (Huntington 1915; Parry 1978; Harding 1982; Lamb 1995; Burroughs 1997; Mclntosh et al 2000), but increasingly the two disciplines of palaeoclimatology and archaeology/history have diverged rather than coalesced. My principal concern in this paper is to act as a 'bridge' between the two disciplines, and to focus attention on some important new work that is redefining the significance of climate change in human action. In particular, I will review the recent recognition of a series of major climatic events of hemispheric scale, and one within the first millennium AD that may have relevance for understanding society in Pictish Scotland.