Extracting wealth from a land of starvation by creating social complexity: A dialogue between archaeology and climate?

Arid areas are often considered as places where the emergence of complex societies and economies is unlikely to happen, due to the environmental restrictions they impose on land use, food production and settlement patterns. Archaeological data collected during 30 years in the Oman peninsula are used to analyze the relationship between human societies and climate change during the Early Bronze Age (3rd millennium BC/5th millennium BP). It is suggested that establishing a direct chronological correlation between indicators of climatic change and social evolution is unrewarding and a deterministic approach irrelevant. Societies perceive climatic change and react to it according to their representations of nature and to their history. Modeling social evolution in conjunction with environmental changes by using non-linear multi-agent models is a much more fruitful way to understand the relationship between Man and climate. To cite this article: S. Cleuziou, C. R. Geoscience 341 (2009). (C) 2009 Published by Elsevier Masson SAS on behalf of Academie des sciences.