Energy regimes help tackle limitations with the prehistoric cultural‐phases approach to learn about sustainable transitions: Archaeological evidence from northern Spain

Abstract

ABSTRACTHuman societies face challenges in transitioning towards low‐carbon economies and sustainable management of land use and natural resources. Documenting and learning from past transitions helps policy‐makers cope with such challenges. The agricultural revolution in Cantabrian Spain (ca. 7000 cal a bp) was one major adaptation of hunter‐gatherers to a changing environment that started with the Last Glacial Maximum (ca. 24 000 cal a bp) and lasted until the Mid‐Holocene (ca. 5300 cal a bp). Classic approaches to documenting prehistoric cultural timelines are based on manufacturing and technology, thus limited in their ability to describe the sustainability of past societies. Energy regimes, a functional societal approach independent from time, investigate and consider patterns of resource and energy use in various cohabiting and cooperating cultural phases. To examine past energy regimes, a database of archaeological remains was compiled to document four indicators: mobility, economy, overexploitation and societal complexity. Statistical analyses were conducted to elucidate trends, changes and continuity in subsistence strategies by hunter‐gatherers and sedentary societies. Results show that energy regimes act as a complement to cultural phases, adding novel functional analyses of past societies to cultural stratigraphy units common in archaeology, shedding light on the sustainability of past societal transitions.