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Harald Meller , Helge Wolfgang Arz , Reinhard Jung and Roberto Risch , eds. 2200 BC--Ein Klimasturz als Ursache für den Zerfall der Alten Welt? / 2200 BC: A Climatic Breakdown as a Cause for the Collapse of the Old World? (7. Mitteldeutscher Archäologentag vom 23. bis 26. Oktober 2014 in Halle (Saale), Tagungen des Landesmuseums für Vorgeschichte Halle 12. Halle : Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie Sachsen-Anhalt, Landesmuseum für Vorgeschichte , 2015, 2 vols, 861pp., numerous figs and tables, hbk, ISBN 978-3-944507-29-3 )
Book Reviews
These magnificent volumes, the latest in the series of conference publications emanating from Halle, cover a topic--climate change around 2200 bc as a potential cause of cultural change--which is perhaps less well known to students of later prehistoric Europe than some other ancient environmental disasters. In many areas of the Old World there were striking developments in the later centuries of the third millennium bc, but they have not usually been attributed to changes in climate. The undertaking of studying it in these terms was therefore a challenging one, but one to which the articles in these volumes have contributed in exemplary fashion.
Forty-two chapters, several with multiple authors, and an Appendix showing a 'Table of Events', are included here; as a consequence, a short review can only point to some major themes that emerge from the volumes, rather than provide a full critique. Nine of the contributions are in German, the rest in English; the contributors come from almost all the major countries of Europe as well as North America. To have published such large and complex volumes within a year or two of the conference in question is itself a major achievement; and the usual high standards of Halle publications are evident in the excellent presentation of the books.
The 4.2 ka bp event, as the environmental change around 2200 bc is more correctly termed, is something familiar to students of ancient climate, less so to archaeologists (Andrew Fitzpatrick's contribution on Britain and Ireland, for instance, shows some bafflement about it). As Reinhard Jung and Bernhard Weninger explain, the most obvious aspect of it in the environmental record is evidence for widespread and persistent drought in many...