Human adaptation to changing coastal landscapes in the Eastern Adriatic: Evidence from Vela Spila cave, Croatia

QUATERNARY SCIENCE REVIEWS

卷:244

Article

Dean, Silas¹  Pappalardo, Marta¹  Boschian, Giovanni²  Spada, Giorgio³  Forenbahe, Staso⁴  Juracic, Mladen⁵  Felja, Igor⁶  Radic, Dinko⁷  Miracle, Preston T.⁸ 

[1] Univ Pisa, Dept Earth Sci, Pisa, Italy

[2] Univ Pisa, Dept Biol, Pisa, Italy

[3] Univ Urbino Carlo Bo, Dipartimento Sci Pure & Applicate, Urbino, Italy

[4] Inst Anthropol Res, Zagreb, Croatia

[5] Croatian Acad Sci & Arts, Zagreb, Croatia

[6] Univ Zagreb, Fac Sci, Dept Geol, Zagreb, Croatia

[7] Centar Za Kulturu, Vela Luka, Croatia

[8] Univ Cambridge, Dept Archaeol, Cambridge, England

关键词: Sea-level change;    Environmental change;    Human settlement patterns;    Bathymetry;    Prehistoric Archaeology;    Late Pleistocene-Holocene;    Central Adriatic coast;    Croatia;   

DOI  :  10.1016/j.quascirev.2020.106503

来源: Elsevier

【 摘 要 】

In this paper new palaeogeographic and archaeological data from the prehistoric cave Vela Spila on the island of Korcula in Croatia are combined with new realizations of two glacial isostatic adjustment models in order to present relative sea-level change scenarios confronting the inhabitants of the cave at different time slices and to show how they experienced and adapted to sea-level and climate change from the Late Pleistocene through the Holocene. Our results show that from the Late Upper Palaeolithic until the Mesolithic, humans in the study area would have experienced tens of metres of sea-level rise, at rates in some cases up to 12 mm per year, and, owing to the relatively flat morphology of the now submerged plains, hundreds of meters of horizontal coastline change in the plains to the north and south of the island. This evidence supports the hypothesis that the rapid loss of these plains likely contributed to the human abandonment of the cave after the Palaeolithic for about five thousand years, followed by significant changes in lifestyle and diet in the Mesolithic. Our results have important implications for the study of how past human groups, especially in vulnerable coastal areas, were affected by sea level, climate, and other environmental changes. Vela Spila represents a case study of how changing environment and rising seas can force significant alterations in human societies, even when there is no risk of inundation to settlement sites. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

【 授权许可】

Free