DATE2016-05-31 18:31:42
IDABSTRACT20160531183142-0969
CONTACTs.l.jones@pgr.reading.ac.uk
PRESENTATIONORAL-PLENARY
INVITED0
IDSESSION5
TITLEA CRITICAL EVALUATION OF THE 4.2 KA BP EVENT USING NEW HIGH RESOLUTION EVIDENCE FROM STALAGMITES IN TURKEY
AUTHORSSarah L. Jones (1,2), Dominik Fleitmann (1,2), Stuart Black (1,2), Pascal Flohr (1,2), Hai Cheng (3,4), Lawrence Edwards (3), Okan Tüysüz (5)
AFFILIATIONS
  1. Department Of Archaeology, School Of Archaeology, Geography And Environmental Sciences, University Of Reading Reading (United Kingdom)
  2. Centre For Past Climate Change, University Of Reading Reading (United Kingdom)
  3. Department Of Earth Sciences, University Of Minnesota Minneapolis (United States)
  4. Institute Of Global Environmental Change, Xian Jiaotong University Xian (China)
  5. Eurasia Institute Of Earth Sciences, Istanbul Technical University Istanbul (Turkey)
ABSTRACTThe 4.2 ka BP event occurs during an episode of rapid climate change (RCC), characterised by widespread low-latitude aridity. Although this event has been identified in a large number of different palaeoenvironmental archives, its precise nature, extent and chronology remains controversial. This is mainly attributable to the paucity of precisely dated and highly resolved palaeoenvironmental records, which are essential when considering the nature and impact of the 4.2 ka BP event which may have only persisted for several decades. The use of records with few dates and therefore poor chronologies means that the synchronicity between events occurring during the RCC period (between 4.2 and 3.8 ka BP) and the nature and extent of climatic events are difficult to resolve. Therefore, high resolution records with precise and accurate chronologies are imperative to reduce the uncertainties when attempting to identify distinct events in palaeoclimatic records. This research presents two highly resolved and well dated speleothem records from Sofular Cave in northern Turkey and Kocain Cave in southern Turkey, to investigate the timing, duration and magnitude of the 4.2 ka BP event in unprecedented detail. These sequences currently have 10 U-Th dates, with minimum dating uncertainties of ±31 years, covering a 1000 year period; combined with stable isotope analysis at resolutions of ~0.8 and ~2.8 year(s) respectively. This detailed approach is essential to examine the evidence for the impact of the 4.2 ka BP event on past societies. It has been argued that this event was responsible for a collapse of a number of Bronze Age societies in the Middle East and the Mediterranean including: the Akkadian empire, the Indus civilisation, the Old Kingdom of Egypt, the collapse of the Anatolian trade network and the depopulation of settlements in mainland Greece. This research suggests that a mosaic of impacts, dependent upon regional conditions and topography is likely, and that the ‘widespread’ aridity was only regional. This is currently supported in the archaeological record as the impact of this 4.2 ka BP event seems to vary regionally. These results have important ramifications considering current arguments concerning the global extent of the 4.2 ka BP event. In addition, these datasets also question the validity of the use of the 4.2 ka BP event as a chronostratigraphic boundary to divide the Middle and Late Holocene Sub-series/Sub-epoch.
PAGE121
STATE1