Climates of History, Histories of Climate: From History to Archaeoscience

Abstract

The new scientific climate history is about more than just the history of climate. It is developing in a new climate of history; it forms one of several leading edges in archaeoscience, the broader transdisciplinary convergence that brings the power of science to bear on the human past. Along with the emergence of archaeogenetics, biomolecular archaeology, and digital humanities—such as geographical information systems (gis) and computational philology (quantitative studies of textual authorship)—climate history is in the process of achieving the long-imagined re-unification of the sciences and the humanities as it unveils historical changes in the environment.