Early postglacial hunter-gatherers show environmentally driven 'false logistic' growth in a low productivity environment

Bibliographic Data

ID2082452
AuthorsM A Manninen (0000-0002-8906-6502, University of Helsinki, corresponding author), Guro Fossum, Guro Haugen Fossum (0000-0002-3895-2280, University of Oslo), Therese Ekholm (0000-0002-9124-6289, Uppsala University), Per Persson (0009-0007-4490-2494, University of Oslo)
Year2023
Volume70
Pages101497
Publication date2023-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Anthropological Archaeology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0278-4165 • E-ISSN: 1090-2686
PublisherElsevier BV (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1016/j.jaa.2023.101497
OpenAlexW4323052066
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited66

Studies that employ probability distributions of radiocarbon dates to study past population size often use exponential increase in radiocarbon dates with time as a standard of comparison for detecting population fluctuations. We show that in the case of early postglacial interior Scandinavia, however, the summed probability distribution of radiocarbon dates has best fit with a S-shaped logistic growth curve. Despite the logistic growth model having solid grounding in ecological theory, we further argue that what our data indicate is not logistic growth in the population ecological sense but “false logistic” growth that mainly follows from climatic and environmental forcing. In the initial postglacial phase, 9500–7500 BCE, human settlement was located almost exclusively along the Scandinavian Atlantic coast and the use of the mountainous interior remained low. Thereafter the formation of separate inland adaptations resulted in population growth in tandem with increasing climatic warming and environmental productivity. Some millennia later, when environmental productivity started to decrease after the Holocene Thermal Maximum, hunter-gatherer population size in interior Scandinavia reached a plateau that lasted at least 2000 years. Lowering productivity prevented any population growth that would be detectable in the available archaeological record

Archaeology · Biology · Climate change · Environmental change · Geography · Holocene · Physical geography · Population · Population growth · Productivity · Radiocarbon dating · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies · Demography · Geology and Paleoclimatology Research · Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology · Ecology

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