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1 results

  • Ice-cores, sediments and civilisation collapse: a cautionary tale from Lake Titicaca

  • Michael J. Calaway
  • Journal:
    Antiquity / Volume 79 / Issue 306 / December 2005
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    10 March 2015, pp. 778-790
    Print publication:
    December 2005

  • The temptation to equate environmental change with archaeologically observed events is always with us, and matching a climatic downturn with civilisation collapse is perhaps more attractive then ever. The archaeologically observed collapse of the Tiwanaku civilisation in the twelfth century AD has been specifically related to a prolonged drought which would have affected the people’s ability to produce food. However, a careful scrutiny of the data from ice cores and lake sediments persuades the author that no such drought can be inferred: the evidence for climatic change is of quite a different scale and order to the archaeological changes and cannot be used as an explanation of social events.