Adapting to the Little Ice Age in pastoral regions
An interdisciplinary approach to climate history in north-west Europe
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11253007 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Eugene Costello (0000-0002-1084-7585, University College Cork, corresponding author), Kevin Kearney (0000-0001-5753-4239, University College Cork), Benjamin Gearey (0000-0003-0323-4921, University College Cork) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 56 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 77-96 |
| Publication date | 2023-04-03 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Historical Methods A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0161-5440 • E-ISSN: 1940-1906 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/01615440.2022.2156958 |
| OpenAlex | W4318711673 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
| References cited | 72 |
This paper uses interdisciplinary methods to investigate responses to the Little Ice Age in regions where livestock farming was dominant, a neglected subject due to the scarcity of detailed written records regarding pastoral land use. It argues that landscape-level histories which include pollen evidence and archaeology can address this challenge and reveal local processes of climate adaptation. Here we focus on Ireland and Scotland and a fascinating rise in small-scale cereal cultivation on upland pastures during the Little Ice Age. Bayesian modeling is used to test the chronological resolution of field evidence and compare it with climate reconstructions. We can see that the cultivation emerged in late medieval times, when cattle were facing climate-related stresses, and increased in early modern times during the Little Ice Age’s main phase. We suggest that it started in an indirect adaptation to climate change, supplementing supplies of food and fodder for pastoralists, but increased as rural populations and external market demands grew. There is a need for finer temporal resolution in pollen records and archaeology, as well as greater integration with socio-economic history, if we are to be more certain about changes in the relative significance of climate in pastoral land use
Agriculture · Archaeology · Climate change · Geography · Livestock · Pastoralism · Physical geography · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies · Geology and Paleoclimatology Research · Tree-ring climate responses · Ecology · Forestry
Time to travel
Tracking medieval and early modern expansion of livestock farming in Sweden’s boreal forest
Famines in medieval and early modern Europe—Connecting climate and society
Methodological refinement and cartography of environmental history scholarship
Holocene vegetation and flora dynamics of the west Cork/Kerry region, south-western Ireland
The Agrarian History of Sweden
A New History of IrelandVolume II, Medieval Ireland 1169–1534
Transhumance and the Making of Ireland's Uplands, 1550–1900
The Great Transition
Global Crisis
Old World megadroughts and pluvials during the Common Era
Realising consilience
The ‘little ice age’
Abrupt onset of the Little Ice Age triggered by volcanism and sustained by sea‐ice/ocean feedbacks
Towards a rigorous understanding of societal responses to climate change
Cultural adaptation, compounding vulnerabilities and conjunctures in Norse Greenland
Deposition models for chronological records
Centennial-Scale Holocene Climate Variability Revealed by a High-Resolution Speleothem δ 18 O Record from SW Ireland
The Crisis of the 14th Century
Endlose Kälte
The Danish Resources c. 1000-1550
The significance of climate variability on early modern European grain prices
The jump‐start of the Holland economy during the late‐medieval crisis, c.1350–c.1500 1
Seasonal Settlement in the Medieval and Early Modern Countryside
European summer temperatures since Roman times
Climate change and society in the 15th to 18th centuries
Climate and society in European history
Evidence for the Little Ice Age in upland northwestern Europe
Sensing small-scale human activity in the palaeoecological record
Human impact on the Irish landscape during the late Holocene inferred from palynological studies at three peatland sites
Multi-profile fine-resolution palynology of Late Mesolithic to Bronze Age peat at Cat Stones, Rishworth Moor, Central Pennines, UK
A multi-proxy Holocene palaeoenvironmental record of climate change and prehistoric human activity from Lough Cullin, southeast Ireland
Coping with Risk
Distant impact
Upland agriculture and environmental risk
Making hay while the sun shines? Socio-economic change, cereal production and climatic deterioration in Early Medieval Ireland
Hill farmers, habitats and time
Deserted farms and shealings in the Braemar area of Deeside, Grampian Region
The worst disaster suffered by the people of Scotland in recorded history
Interdisciplinary approaches to a connected landscape
The Colonisation of Uplands in Medieval Britain and Ireland
Recent and Planned Developments of the Program OxCal
Secular Climatic Change and Marginal Agriculture
Lordship and Environmental Change in Central Highland Scotland c.1300–c.1400
Fluctuations climatiques et prix céréaliers en Europe du XVI e au XX e Siècle
Disasters and History
The Great Bovine Pestilence and its economic and environmental consequences in England and Wales, 1318-501
Fine-spatial Paleoecological Investigations Towards Reconstructing Late Holocene Environmental Change, Landscape Evolution, and Farming Activity in Barrees, Beara Peninsula, Southwestern Ireland
Measuring the Impact of Climate on History
Landscapes of Settlement in Northern Iceland
| Unique citing works | 5 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,67 |
| Citation span | 2023 - 2026 (4) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 5 |