Using CADGAP to Climatically Contextualize Ancient Cultures

8/2/2019 Using CADGAP to Climatically Contextualize Ancient Cultures

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USING CADGAP (CLIMATIC ANALOGS DATA-

GATHERING PROJECT) TO ENVIRONMENTALLY

CONTEXTUALIZE ANCIENT CULTURES

by

Lewis C. Messenger, Jr. (Skip)

Department of Anthropology

Hamline University

SAA 2012 Session on the Pedagogy of Archaeology and Heritage

Sponsored Electronic Symposium:

Lessons from the Trenches: the Pedagogy of Archaeology and Heritage

(Sponsored by Heritage Values Interest Group, Committee on Ethics)

Saturday, April 21, 2012


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ABSTRACT: To understand a culture's "history" involves understanding the climatic and

environmental contexts in which people lived, how these changed over time,

and if such changes tended to result in structural and perceptual

reorganizations, essentially, ancient cultural change. This paper describes a

team-based data-analysis project called "Climatic Analogs Data-Gathering

Project" (CADGAP) used in undergraduate prehistory and cultural ecology

classes. Students use on-line meteorological databases to create spreadsheets

to generate climatic scenarios for past times and regions. By seeing and

evaluating such changes and comparing them with archaeological sequences,

students also develop a greater capacity to relate cultural change to climatic

and environmental change.


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How do we get students excited about the history of peoples those others, the

ancestors of todays descendent communities? To understand lives of those in the past, both of

recent history as well as of great archaeological depth, we must understand and situate them in

their environments to create scenarios that reflect what life was like back then. The quest to

understand and illuminate ancient lifeways also involves what people had to contend with during

their own individual lives, but also in terms of the long haul the ancient ups and downs that

helped shape cultures the way they were. Among these are climatic and environmental changes.

Understanding a cultures history involves understanding the environmental contexts within which

they lived, how these changed over time, and if such changes tended to result in structural and

perceptual reorganizations, essentially, ancient cultural change. The natural environment and

climate must not be simply viewed as a backdrop to human affairs, but as something we recognize

as an interdependent dynamic system, constantly in flux, and sometimes offering hints of causal,

and at least possibilistic explanations for those punctuations experienced by cultural changes in the

past.

My purpose here is not to try to describe what I believe to have transpired climatologically

in the past, but to provide a rationale for doing such research as part of understanding site

heritage. Just as the Dust Bowl phenomenon is integrally related with the history and heritage of

peoples of the early twentieth-century American Great Plains, so too is it becoming increasingly

evident that changing climatic precipitation patterns in the eighth-century Yucatan Peninsula may

have had some bearing on the dramatic cultural changes that affected the Maya people there.

The Climatic Analogs Data-Gathering Project (CADGAP) is one tool to help students see

and evaluate such cultural/ climatic/environmental changes. Therefore, as the trials and

tribulations of an ancient people constitutes a major part of what we see as part of their

heritage, then understanding their changing climatic contexts also leads us to a deeper

understanding of their heritage.

PROLOGUE TO CADGAP

As a researcher, I have had a long-standing interest in paleoclimatology and paleoecology

as part of hypothesizing living scenarios of past peoples and cultures. While not viewing climate

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and environmental change as directly causing particular cultural changes in ancient times, at the

same time, I believe, it clearly is counterintuitive to deny any dynamic relationship between the

two.

My first research foray into these topics was during my graduate research in 1978 when I

began writing research papers considering the possibility of employing meteorological

teleconnections between the ancient Maya area and the British Isles. I was intrigued and inspired

by the writings of Reid Bryson, whose Climates of Hungerintroduced me to the idea of linking

past human affairs to climate change, as well as providing me with bibliographic references

concerning additional research results, discussions of methodology, and other relevant information

(Bryson and Murray 1977), all of which added to my desire for more.

Following the death of my Ph.D. advisor, Dennis Puleston, and unsuccessful attempts to

acquire funding to finish my part of his archaeological research agenda in northern Belize, my

growing interest in what paleoclimatology could offer Mayanists like myself led me to resubmit a

totally revised Ph.D. research proposal, this time focusing on ancient climate change and its

possible relationships to the collapse of Classic Maya civilization. In retrospect, a dissertation on

climate change would have placed me on the leading edge in such research, but an offer to be part

of a reconnaissance and excavation program in central Honduras was hard to pass up, so I back-

burnered my paleoclimatology research.

When I began teaching at Hamline University in the mid 1980s I once again began to try

to understand the nature of the interface between ancient peoples and the dynamic environmental

changes they experienced. I was especially inspired by the work of Sanchez and Kutzbach (1974)

where they looked at historical data on precipitation and temperature departures of the warm and

cool decades prior to the 1960s as sources of analogs for earlier Pleistocene through more

recent climatic patterning. The temperature and precipitation departure maps they produced for

the American tropics contained the area of Maya civilization and this became a research focus of

mine. Fundamentally following Sanchez and Kutzbachs methodologies, I gathered more detailed

and geographically focused data primarily for southern Mesoamerica. This allowed me to create

temperature and precipitation scenarios for various parts of southern Mesoamerica, comparing

globally cool to warm decades. These scenarios could then be integrated into a Holocene

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chronological sequence. Using the same chronological scales, I integrated a chart representing

the known archaeological sequences for the Maya area.

What emerged was a correlation between hypothesized ancient climatic scenarios and past

archaeological cultural trajectories. Research on recent meteorological departures for the region

had shown a fairly significant complexity, with the Yucatan Peninsula exhibiting localized and

regionalized differences. Climatological series data for the twentieth century indicated that for the

Yucatan Peninsula the pattern of a relatively arid northwest with increasing precipitation as one

headed south and east, as is essentially the case today, was seen to have flip-flopped historically.

Thus this kind of patterning may have occurred in ancient times as well.

This suggested that during some phases of global cooling, the core area of ancient Maya

civilization may have been experiencing below-normal rainfall, possibly even drought. Based

upon my methodology and data, it appeared that periods of pronounced drying would have

occurred in the core area of ancient Maya culture beginning around the same time as many of the

centers there were beginning to show evidence of collapse. As a matter of fact, the correlations

comparing the northwest, versus center, of the Yucatan peninsula suggested that ancient Maya

civilization in the core would have begun to experience stress, while at the same time the

northwest area the Puuc region would have begun to experience a more benign, moister

regimen.

This led to a number of opportunities to research and present talks in a variety of venues

including local organizations like the Maya Society of Minnesota (Messenger 1989), a Hamline

University Faculty Seminar (Messenger 1990a), and the Center for Ancient Studies at the

University of Minnesota (Messenger 1990b). I was asked to contribute an article on my research

to the journalAncient Mesoamerica (Messenger 1990c) and also a chapter in The Formation of

Complex Society in Southeast Mesoamerica (Messenger 1991b). Feedback sent to me by

archaeologists in the field also tended to support my findings.

I have used this approach in my personal research for Mesoamerica, Central America, and

Southeast Asia. It has also been successfully employed in Senior Honors projects for two Hamline

students Karl Kotval (Kotval 1993) and Catalina Salas (Salas 1994). During summer 1993 Karl

Kotval and I presented the methodology for this kind of research at the International Congress of

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Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences in Mexico City (Messenger and Kotval 1993). It was

met with considerable approval and has led to other invited presentations: Campeche, Campeche,

Mexico in 1996 leading to a published paper in 1997 (Messenger 1996, 1997), Akumal, Quintana

Roo, Mexico where another Hamline student co-authored a paper with me (Messenger and

Bowie 2005) that was later submitted to Climatic Change. A variation of this same paper was

presented in Merida, Yucatan in January 2006 (Messenger, Bowie, and Callaghan 2006). Put

another way, you might say that this approach, looking at relatively recent climatic patterning to

suggest more ancient one, has been "road tested" and is growing in recognition!

Around this time, in the early 1990s, the chair of my department, Cynthia Cone, strongly

suggested that I find a way to integrate my own research into my curricular offerings; to share my

research methodologies, techniques, and results with students in my classrooms fundamentally

in line with the growth of Hamlines student-professor collaborative research agenda.

Initially I had reservations about involving undergraduate students in such collaborative

projects. While I was extremely fortunate in having supportive and helpful advisors throughout

my Masters and Ph.D. careers, I was also keenly aware that I did not want to create projects that

could end up merely exploiting cheap student labor.

BIRTH OF CADGAP

I decided to develop course work that would engage an entire class with a regional

research goal; that the regions would change each time the class was offered; that students would

work in pairs of two; and that their research experiences (pros and cons) along with the results of

their research would be shared with the rest of the class. As part of this curricular development I

came up with the acronym CADGAP, standing for Climatic Analogs Data-Gathering Project.

Our first class, CADGAP I, was in fall 1991; in fall 2011 we completed CADGAP XXVII

(Messenger 1991a, 2011). Figure 1 is a color-coded world map locating all the previous

CADGAP locations (See Appendix A for a full list of CADGAPs from 1991-2012).

Since its inception CADGAP has undergone several incarnations. It was initially designed

to be the main class research project for my Prehistory of the Non-Mediterranean World

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(Anthropology 3470) class, with a clear focus on understanding the human/climate interface in

terms of retrodicted scenarios within archaeological time frames.

While keeping the same acronym and trend analysis methodology, the CADGAP research

goals for Cultural Ecology (Anthropology 3480) differ in having a future orientation. Its focus is

on contemporary ecology, land-use patterns, and, using the same methodology to develop trend

analyses for global warming versus cooling, to speculate on predicted future climatic scenarios.

For both courses this strategy involves students doing collaborative research with their

peers and with my feedback input as well mostly in the capacity of a coach. There are

individual responsibilities as well as group ones. Individual students research and write up basic

climatic and ecological profiles for a location designated for a particular semesters class. They

then focus on meteorological documentation for those twentieth-century decades reflecting both

prominent globally cool and globally warm periods.

For my Cultural Ecology CADGAP course this information is later applied to develop

regional climatic predictions that can then be used to speculate on associated impacts on local

ecologies, land-use patterns, and so on in future times, given alternating scenarios of global

warming, compared with global cooling. This is a course that students majoring in Environmental

Studies also take and it is offered it at least once a year.

Prehistory of the Non-Mediterranean Worldis generally offered in alternate years.

Instead of trying to predict future climatic scenarios, this class focuses on retrodiction of climatic

scenarios and investigating possible correlations with ancient cultural changes.

CADGAP applications for Prehistory of the Non-Mediterranean World is the focus of

discussion in the following pages.

CADGAP FOR PREHISTORY OF THE NON-MEDITERRANEAN WORLD

As mentioned above, with only a small number of repeats, each class CADGAP has

focused on a new, different region of the world. Both types of CADGAP require a considerable

amount of research and time devoted to the preparation of two instructional student manuals

revised for each semesters geographic focus.

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For graduation, Hamline students must take a distribution of courses designated as

fulfilling a set of intensive requirements. Both Cultural Ecology and Prehistory of the Non-

Mediterranean Worldhave been developed to meet the Computing-Intensive requirement.

Both courses rely upon students learning how to acquire meteorological data and then be able to

analyze it to develop climatic trend analyses. Each completed CADGAP is worth 40% of the

course grade.

PRIMARY METEOROLOGICAL DATA ASSEMBLY AND ANALYSIS PROCEDURES

I research online resources for each region to be sure that there is sufficient long-series

meteorological data for enough individual locations per region. Class size often determines the

number of meteorological observation stations that will be used, but I try to make sure that there

are enough to allow for later investigation of possible trend patterning. While online data

presented in matrix format is increasingly common, in past CADGAPs I have had to find ways to

convert different presentation formats into rows and columns. This is a necessary step prior to

importing data into an Excel spreadsheet. It is also why I produce my own student manuals

giving instructions on how to (1) locate online databases, (2) reformat the data for ease of

importation, (3) import the ASCII data sets into the spreadsheet and then reformat them into rows

and columns, (4) sort and label the rows and columns, and, (5) insert repeated formulas to

average data by 12-month periods, by month for entire series, by decade, and by twentieth-

century pivotal warm versus cold decades (1930s-1950s versus 1960s). Finally, I show students

how to insert graphs that will visually respond as they analyze their data and will later provide

illustrations for their final individual CADGAP site write-ups.

GENERAL REGIONAL CHARACTERISTICS AND POTENTIAL RESEARCH ISSUES

In addition to the above data background research and how-to manual creation, I write an

additional manual that provides some general CADGAP historical background information,

general regional ecological, archaeological, and heritage characteristics, and examples of several

region-specific research issues. It includes a section on the rationales for the current CADGAP

regional focus and discussions of methodology. This is where I also provide suggestions for ways

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of analyzing their data using their trend analyses to create retrodicted climatic sequences that

can then be compared with archaeological sequences they have located. This manual also

contains appendices showing the names and locational characteristics for potential meteorological

stations to be used in that particular CADGAP research (latitude, longitude, elevation, beginning

and ending of meteorological data series). Using Excel, I plot the latitudes and longitudes of each

site to illustrate evenness of geographical regional coverage. I create bibliographies of some

relevant references, plus some briefly annotated website lists. Finally, while the ecology, current

land use patterns, and archaeological history will vary according to each specific location, I

provide a brief writeup showing how weather conditions can impact an example of an idealized

cropping calendar, in this case reflecting the work of Hayao Fukui in Don Daeng, Thailand

(1993). This helps students consider what, and when, one might find a subsistence vulnerability

a soft underbelly that might have indicated a mechanism for some kind of cultural tipping

point, or put another way archaeologically observable cultural discontinuities.

IMPLEMENTING CADGAP

Assignment 1: the Graphs. While students have access to a how-to manual containing

detailed step-by-step instructions on how to create a complete CADGAP spreadsheet for their

data, it can initially appear overwhelming. I begin by setting aside three classroom sessions to be

conducted in a computer lab where I do a dry run to demonstrate the individual steps they will

need to follow to complete their first assignment, creating and developing their spreadsheet. This

is necessary to make sure they know how to create the following set of five precipitation graphs:

Graph #1 Average monthly precipitation for their site

Graph #2 Average yearly precipitation (for all years of complete annual records)

Graph #3 Average decade precipitation (with one bar representing each decade record)

Graph #4 Pivotal decade precipitation (4-bar graph for 3 warm decades plus the cool

one)

Graph #5 Pivotal decade precipitation averages (2-bar graph with average for the 3 warm

decades vs. the cool one compared)

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For the following example I am using graphs created by one of my students in a CADGAP

study focusing on Dakar Yoff, Senegal (Mans 2010). Graphs 1 and 2 provide students with

information that will be used in their description of contemporary environmental conditions.

Graph 1 (Figure 2) illustrates what the 12-month precipitation sequence looks like; Graph 2

(Figure 3) shows how the entire period of recorded average yearly precipitation appears (1900-

2005). With their apparent rambling, these types of graphs often demonstrate how difficult it can

be to discern long-term trends.

Graphs 3, 4, and 5 help the students visually narrow down their data to the point that they

can see how their graphed precipitation trends might correlate, or not, with the major warm

versus cool twentieth-century decades. Graph 3 (Figure 4) breaks the precipitation data for the

entire period of record for Dakar Yoff down into decadal units. Graph 4 (Figure 5) selects only

those decades originally indicated by Sanchez and Kutzbach (1974) as globally warm decades

(1930s through 1950s) and the succeeding cool 1960s. Determining correlative trends looking at

the grouping of the three warm decades in Graph 4 (Figure 5) continues to be somewhat elusive.

Graph 5 (Figure 6) then directly compares the average of the warm decades with the cool one.

The takeway from this graph is that Dakar Yoff, Senegal will tend to be moister by 10.58 mm in

globally cool times than in times of global warming.

Students must embed their graphs within their spreadsheets. Their spreadsheets are then

submitted to me electronically where I can go over them and return feedback. This is necessary

as often an error in typing a particular formula in a cell, once copied, can be disastrous for their

analysis. I also look to make sure that the graphs are correctly labeled and utilize the correct data

series. Often this involves my making alterations and then sending the modified spreadsheet back

to the research team.

Assignment 2: Ecology and Culture Current and Ancient. For their second assignment

students must research and provide a description of the current local natural ecology flora and

fauna, plus a discussion of current climate, here utilizing the data and graphs from what they

generated in Assignment 1. This is where they may introduce any additional references and

descriptions from other paleoecological reconstructions at, or as near as possible to their site.

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For the next step students must provide an archaeological chronology for their team's site

and/or area. In addition, they are asked to look for any historical references suggesting past

stressful climatic events, such as famines, plagues, floods, droughts major "ups and downs, as

well as cultural discontinuities phases, periods, etc.

Students may use either a hard copy (Figure 7) or spreadsheet (Figure 8) form of a blank

chart where they can fill in their archaeological chronology information. They may hand-write the

archeological phases directly on their hard copy and then later transfer it to their spreadsheet.

Figure 9 shows a view of a partially filled-in chronological spreadsheet where the colored

Climatic retrodiction column is created using their climatic correlations derived from

comparison of their pivotal decade information. They write in the archaeological phase and

period information in the wide Archaeological Historical Sequence column.

Assignment 3: Analysis, Speculation, Reflections and Suggestions, References Cited.

This is where students essentially put it all together. This is where, using the information on

climatic trending that they created with their CADGAP spreadsheets, along with ecological

characteristics, plus whatever information they can find on local and/or regional archaeological

sequences, they make informed speculations about how their data relates to understanding the

ancient, archaeological cultural dynamics for their site. Samples of some potential questions for

them to consider are:

M Do you see any correlations between archaeological cultural discontinuities and the

global temperature curve?

M During globally warm time what are the local precipitation and temperature

characteristics for your site?

M What is the nature of the paleoclimatic record for your site?

M How does your recreation of precipitation trends using your data correlate (or not)

with the Holocene global temperature curve?

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Also part of this assignment is a section, Reflections and Suggestions for Future Research,

in which they discuss the experience they had doing this CADGAP. Suggested questions include:

M What do you consider as major difficulties you encountered in this project?

M What were the areas you felt you had the greatest success?

M If you had more time for this, what do you wish you could have done?

M What would you suggest for someone taking this project on in the future? What

advice would you give them?

Finally, students must reference their statistical data, ecological descriptions, site history

and archaeological chronology, any ethnographic or ethnohistoric descriptions, and other sources.

in their References Cited (Bibliography) section.

Assignment 4: The Final Edited CADGAP Team Paper. Assignment due dates are

roughly spaced to be one to two weeks apart. Throughout, I provide feedback for each submitted

assignment such that if students are attentive to my suggestions, their final product will be a well-

researched and orchestrated final paper; something potentially of A quality. In addition, the

evaluation sheet that I will use for their final draft is also posted early in the semester on

Blackboard (see Figure 10 for an example).

Assignment 5: CADGAP Powerpoint Team Presentations. At the outset of the course I

get students to try to think of their classmates as part of a learning community of scholars.

Clearly, I am personally interested in the results of their research, but also I want everyone in the

class to know what their peers have done. Student papers are converted to PDF files and put up

on the course BlackBoard site.

Students are required to share their research and findings with the rest of the class through

PowerPoint presentations at the end of the semester. This is a time for them to comment on and

ask questions about the results of their peers efforts. It also provides the class, and myself, an

opportunity to take a broader geographic view by comparing results from all the observation

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stations covered by student projects. This potentially allows us to detect regional paleoclimatic

trends that may relate to and shed light upon the ancient cultural trajectories of individual sites

and regions.

CADGAP STUDENT TAKE AWAYS PEDAGOGIC OUTCOMES

Since its inception in 1991 each successive CADGAP has changed and, I hope, matured.

The fundamental research methodology, something that began with Sanchez and Kutzbach (1974)

and that became central to my own investigation of possible relationships between climate change

and ancient Maya cultural dynamics, still seems to work. The positive reception I have received

from my presentations and publications (Messenger 1990c, 1996, 1997, Messenger and Kotval

1993) has made it possible to present the CADGAP assignments as something that students can

have some confidence in. They are more than just assignments and students can feel good about

their efforts resulting in actual contributions to knowledge. They are producing viable data, while

at the same time, acquiring new research techniques and knowledge.

How can the relative success of CADGAP be measured? One of the projects fundamental

pedagogical goals has been for students to learn to apply and reflect upon clearly holistic,

interdisciplinary approaches toward understanding the dynamic human-environment interface.

Pedagogically, its goal is epistemological, as it asks students to apply a variety of approaches to

understand what we know about the diverse contexts, or scenarios, within which people in the

past lived. Furthermore, it empowers students to go beyond the basic classroom learning and ask,

in what other ways might we know more?

Perhaps one of the best ways to consider the take-aways of CADGAP research is to look

at student examination responses. Examinations in Prehistory of the Non-Mediterranean World

are take-home exams. The following question complete with original wording and question

instructions is generally found in my final examinations

The following question is potentially free-form, but nonetheless a serious one. Read the

question carefully (if chosen, or if you end up choosing it) and be sure to answer it

thoughtfully and show me your thinking and logical progression in your essays. Pats on

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the back may be appreciated in some situations, but this is not one of them. I want your

sincere thoughts on this constructive thoughts, but no platitudes, please! In this

question choose either (A) or (B).

(A) For those of you coming out of another discipline (e.g., not anthropology):

Specifically (i.e. with examples) define what you found in this class that

should prove of most use or impact to (e.g., that should be integrated into)

your non-anthropological discipline? Provide an example.

(B) For those of you perceiving yourselves as anthropologists: Specifically (i.e.

with examples) define what you find of greatest value in this class that you

feel strongly should be integrated in the research of other disciplines you

are aware of. Provide an example.

Following are examples excerpted from student responses to this question (note, brackets

are mine). One student wrote,

As the class proceeded through the semester, I found the CADCAP project to be

most valued by me when pertaining to other disciplines. It allowed one to really

delve into the substance of what a research project really calls for, . . . The

environmental research and spreadsheets we were required to put together in

anthropology class allowed me to take into account multiple variables when

[developing] a final analytical assignment.

Another student wrote:

I think the CADGAP project was of the most value in this class in terms of not

only anthropology- archaeological, biological, and cultural, but also the sciences or

any other discipline that requires the in depth look at people and behavior as a

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result of their changing environments. This project taught us how to infer as to

what climatic changes have occurred over time, in a particular area. From the

information that was gathered it became possible to compare and contrast our

findings with the cultural chronological record, to see if cultures fluoresced,

adapted, or collapsed in cold/dry/warm/wet periods.

This information would be beneficial for a biological anthropologist if there

were environmental stresses that caused famine or disease markers on skeletons.

Cultural anthropologists could look at the changes over time in comparison with

people's reactions to their changing environments today. Archaeologists could use

this information as explanation for possible cultural collapses, in terms of evidence

of squatter populations in later periods. The Sciences could use this information

for meteorological purposes, environmental studies, or for a number of different

reasons. Integrating this portion of our course into another discipline/sub discipline

would be beneficial and interesting on so many different levels.

Yet another student wrote,

For me, one of the most valuable topics in the class was the CADGAP research

project, as this was my first exposure to the technique. Before CADGAP, I had

given little thought to how civilizations are impacted by their environment,

specifically its change. Our own project, featuring Quito, did not have an

abundance of archaeological data available, but every piece of information that we

discovered fit perfectly in our hypothesis that when conditions became abnormally

cold and dry, people organized and great things came out of the culture. Most

groups in the class seemed to come to the same conclusion, merely proving how

significant environmental change is in the ancient world. I would like to see World

history classes and even art classes of the ancient world incorporate this idea into

their teaching plans. Environmental impact seems to be always left out when

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cultural tensions (and the resulting flourishing of ideas) are discussed; when our

results show that it is one of the most consistently relevant influences.

Clearly, CADGAP research forces students to recognize and think in broad systems terms.

There are a number of lessons to be learned, and this is not lost upon students doing CADGAP

research. For example, they learn that there is a fundamental, meaningful relationship between

weather, climate and land use.

Understanding the climate and environmental settings within which people in the past lived

is equally as relevant as understanding their tool inventory, house form or diet. As climates have

changed, humans have been forced to respond by adjusting their adaptive strategies. There can be

no general rule concerning the benefits or disadvantages of something like increased precipitation.

The impacts of increased precipitation upon humans is multivalent susceptible to many

applications, interpretations, meanings, or values (Oxford Dictionaries 2010). The potential

impacts of precipitation changes upon small-scale hunting-and-gathering foraging societies should

not be assumed to be the same as upon full-scale agricultural societies. Temperature increases

can produce increased precipitation in some places and decreases in others, while some locations

may see relatively little change at all. The relative impacts of rising temperatures in currently hot

desert environments may be minimal, while in the high arctic the effects of an equivalent rise may

be dramatic even catastrophic.

CONCLUSION

Using CADGAP as a computing-intensive assignment in my two courses involves a

considerable amount of work for both my students and myself. At the same time I continue to be

motivated by the fact that my students come to realize through their own research that there exist

complex relationships between human culture and that myriad multifaceted thing that we know as

environment. They discover on their own that this is an ongoing dynamic relationship, and that

climate is one facet that can account for both culture change and continuity. Students learn that

there is no simplistic causal relationship between climate change and particular kinds of

sociocultural adjustments; they do not become environmental determinists, yet at the same time, it

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becomes patently obvious that a changing dynamic environment and landscape simultaneously

impacts and is impacted by human beings. Students find that through their CADGAP experience

they come up with new questions that they had not thought of; they often feel that they are really

just beginning down the road toward their own corner of scientific inquiry.

I am also motivated by the fact that CADGAPs constitute collaborative research, with

entire classes ultimately functioning as a research team a community of scholars some of

whom become conversant in the subject and get to the level of junior colleague. While the efforts

are great (both mine and the students), I find that I look forward to investigating new areas of the

planet. It is a learning experience for me and I hope at some point in the future to coordinate

findings from previous CADGAPs so that we can share our findings with the larger archaeological

community.

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REFERENCES CITED

Bryson, Reid A., and Thomas J. Murray

1977 Climates of Hunger: Mankind and the World's Changing Weather. University of

Wisconsin Press, Madison.

Fukui, Hayao

1993 Food and Population in a Northeast Thai Village. Monographs of the Center for

Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University, English Language Series No 19. University of

Hawai'i Press, Honolulu.

Kotval, Karl J.

1993 CADGAP XXVI: Retrodicting Past Climatic Sequences: Correlations Between Climate

and Precolumbian Cultural Dynamics for Tlaxcala-Puebla and the Highlands of Mexico.

Unpublished honors thesis, Department of Anthropology, Hamline University, Saint Paul,

MN.

Mans, Caitlin

2010 CADGAP XV: Dakar Yoff, Senegal. Unpublished student research paper for

Anthropology 3470: Prehistory of the Non-Mediterranean World, Hamline University, St.

Paul, MN.

Messenger, Jr., Lewis C.

2011 CADGAP XXVII: Present-day Meteorology and Future Cultural Implications for Nations

of the European Mediterranean Drainage. Unpublished instruction guidebook for

Anthropology 3480, Hamline University, Fall 2011, PDF manuscript.


1997 El "Paleo-Evaluacin del Impacto Ambiental": Algunas Perspectivas SobrePaleoclimatologa Con Respecto a Estudios de los Mayas Antiguas. InLos Investigadores

de la Cultura Maya-5. Pp. 328-347. Universidad Autnoma de Campeche, Campeche,

Mxico.


1996 El "Paleo-Evaluacin del Impacto Ambiental": Algunas Perspectivas Sobre

Paleoclimatologa Con Respecto a Estudios de los Mayas Antiguas. Paper presented to the

VI Encuentro: Los Investigadores de la Cultura Maya. Campeche, Campeche, Mxico.

Thursday, November 14, 1996.


1991b Climatic Settings and Prehistoric Social Complexity: the Central American Isthmus. InThe Formation of Complex Society in Southeast Mesoamerica, edited by William Fowler,

pp. 237-275. CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL.

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1991a CADGAP, Climatic Analogs Data-Gathering Project: Student Collaboration in

Archaeological Climatic Research. Unpublished instruction guidebook (Version I) for

Anthropology 146, Department of Anthropology, Hamline University, St. Paul, MN, Fall

1991.


1990c Ancient Winds of Change: Climatic Settings and Prehistoric Social Complexity in

Mesoamerica.Ancient Mesoamerica 1(1):21-40.


1990a Archaeology, the Atmosphere, and the Ancient Maya: Prognostications for the Past.

Presentation to The Hamline University Faculty Seminars, Thursday, January 25, 1990.


1990b Prognostications for the Past: Ancient Weather Patterns and Maya Cultural

Development. Presentation for the Center for Ancient Studies Winter Lunchtime Talk

Series, Wednesday, March 7, 1990, University of Minnesota-Minneapolis.


1989 The Winds of Change: Hurricane Gilbert and Its Archaeological Implications. Paper

presented to the Maya Society of Minnesota, Friday, February 24, 1989.

Messenger, Jr., Lewis C. and Karl J. Kotval

1993 Climatic Retrodiction Using Twentieth-Century Meteorological Analogs: Implications for

Understanding Precolumbian Mesoamerican Cultural Development. Paper Presented at the

XIII Congreso Internacional de Ciencias Antropolgicas Y Etnolgicas In the Session:

Paleoclimatologa, Paleohidrologa Y Niveles del Mar En Amrica, Mexico City, August 4,

1993.

Messenger, Jr., Lewis C. and Haden L. Bowie2005 Site Climatic Sequence Congruencies in Yucatan? Paleoclimatic and Archaeological

Implications. Paper presented at the Workshop:Defining Climate History in the Americas

over the Last 1500 Years and its Connection to Culture and History, Centro Ecolgico de

Akuml, Quintana Roo, Mxico. March 31 - April 2, 2005.

Messenger, Jr., Lewis C., Haden L. Bowie, and James Callaghan

2006 Implicaciones de los hallazgos Proxies sobre la interpretacin del cambio climtico en

Yucatn. Paper presented at the conference: El Cambio Climtico y Sus Consecuencias en

la Pennsula de Yucatn: Pasado, Presente y Futuro, Simposio Permanente:Naturaleza y

Sociedad en el Area Maya. Organized by the: Academia Mexicana de Ciencias and

sponsored by the Centro de Investigacin Cientfica de Yucatn (CICY) and theUniversidad Autnoma de Yucatn (UADY), to coincide with the AR4 Third Lead Author

Meeting of the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC), Mrida, Yucatn,

Mxico, January 18-20, 2006.

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Oxford Dictionaries

2010 Multivalent. Oxford Dictionaries. Oxford University Press. Electronic document,

, accessed April 01, 2012.

Salas, Catalina

1994 Retrodicting Climatic Sequences: Examining Relationships Between Climate and

Populations in the Rise and Decline of Mississippian Culture Focusing on Cahokia.

Unpublished honors thesis, Department of Anthropology, Hamline University, Saint Paul,

MN.

Sanchez, W. A. and J. E. Kutzbach

1974 Climate of the American Tropics in the 1960's and Possible Comparisons with Climatic

Variations of the Last Millennium. Quaternary Research 4:128-135.

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Figure 1: Map illustrating world regions covered from CADGAP I through XXVII.

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F i g u r e 2 : B a a p h l l s t a t n t h a v a m o n t h l y p c p t a t o n f o D a k a Y o f f , S n a l f o

1 9 0 0 5 0 0 ( M

a n s

0 1 0 ) .

F i g u r e 3 : L n a p h l l s t a t n a n n a l a v a p c p t a t o n t n d s f o D a k a Y o f f , S n a l ,

f o m

1 9 0 0 5 0 0 ( M

a n s

0 1 0 ) .

0


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4 w

w

6


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7 E x b C A G A P

N W

z T


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8

z

y

j

2 4


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F i g u r e 9 : S c n c a p t s h o w n a n x a m p l o f a f l l d n E x c l c h o n o l o c a l c h a t f o

G

a a q l E c a d o . H t h s t d n t h a s p o v d d c o l o c o d n f o t h p c p t a t o n s c n a o s

a n d t x t n t h a c h a o l o c a l s q n c .

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1 0 P

N M W C A D A P ( )

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APPENDIX: COMPLETE LIST OF CADGAPS 1991-2012

Each of the following had student instruction guidebooks and manuals made available to the class,

with many still available as PDF manuscripts.

Archaeologically Oriented CADGAP Projects forPrehistory of the Non-Mediterranean

World(Anthropology 3270)

M CADGAP, Climatic Analogs Data-Gathering Project: Student Collaboration in

Archaeological Climatic Research (1991). (In the first versions students could choose

whatever region and site they preferred and the CADGAP did not receive a number.)

M CADGAP III: Student Collaboration in Archaeological Climatic Research Retrodicting

Climatic Scenarios for Africa's Iron-Age and Bantu Dispersal (1993)

M CADGAP VI: Student Collaboration in Archaeological Climatic Research Retrodicting

Climatic Scenarios for Ancient China (1994)

M CADGAP VIII: Student Collaboration in Archaeological Climatic Research Retrodicting

Climatic Scenarios for Ancient Brazil (1997)

M CADGAP X: Student Collaboration in Archaeological Climatic Research Retrodicting

Climatic Scenarios for Ancient Mxico (1998)

M CADGAP XIII: Student Collaboration in Archaeological Climatic Research Retrodicting

Climatic Scenarios for the Ancient Indian Subcontinent (2000)

M CADGAP XIV: Student Collaboration in Archaeological Climatic Research Retrodicting

Climatic Scenarios for Ancient Mainland Southeast AsiaThailand, Cambodia, Vietnam,

Laos, and Myanmar(2001)

M CADGAP XVI: Student Collaboration in Archaeological Climatic Research Retrodicting

Climatic Scenarios for Ancient Oceania (2003)

M CADGAP XIX: Student Collaboration in Archaeological Climatic Research Retrodicting

Climatic Scenarios for the Ancient Andean Region (2005)

M CADGAP XXIV: Student Collaboration in Archaeological Climatic Research

Retrodicting Climatic Scenarios for the South American Lowlands: Amazonia,

Orinoquia, and the Gran Chaco (2010)

M CADGAP XXV: Student Collaboration in Archaeological Climatic Research Retrodicting

Climatic Scenarios for Sub-Saharan West Africa (2010)

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Future-Oriented CADGAP Projects for Cultural Ecology (Anthropology 3480)

M CADGAP II: Student Collaboration in Anthropological Climatic Research (1993) (In this

version students could choose whatever region and site they preferred

M CADGAP IV: Present-day Meteorology and Future Cultural Implications for the Indian

Subcontinent Student Collaboration in Anthropological Climatic Research (1994)

M CADGAP V Present-Day Meteorology and Future Cultural Implications for Thailand

(1994) CADGAP V (Messenger 1994b) and

M CADGAP VII: Climatic Analogs Data-Gathering Project Present-Day Meteorology

and Future Cultural Implications for Thailand Part 2 (1996)

M CADGAP IX: Present-Day Meteorology and Future Cultural Implications for East Asia

(China, the Korean Peninsula, and Japan) (1998)

M CADGAP XI: Present-day Meteorology and Future Cultural Implications for the

Republic of Mxico. (1999)

M CADGAP XII: Present-day Meteorology and Future Cultural Implications for Western

South America Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, and Chile (1999)

M CADGAP-XV: Present-day Meteorology and Future Cultural Implications for Sub-

Saharan West Africa (2001)

M CADGAP XVII: Present-day Meteorology and Future Cultural Implications for South

and Southeast Africa (2004)

M CADGAP XVIII: Present-day Meteorology and Future Cultural Implications for the

Northern Pacific and Bering Sea Region (2004)

M CADGAP XX: Present-Day Meteorology and Future Cultural Implications for NorthernEurope the Baltic, Scandinavian, and British Isles Regions (2006)

M CADGAP XXI: Present-day Meteorology and Future Cultural Implications for the

Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East(2006)

M CADGAP XXII: Present Day Meteorology and Future Cultural Implications for China,

Mongolia, and Adjacent Russian Siberia (2008)

M CADGAP XXIII: Present-day Meteorology and Future Cultural Implications for

Australia and New Guinea (2009)

M CADGAP XXVI: Present-day Meteorology and Future Cultural Implications for Oceania

Polynesia, Micronesia, and Melanesia (2011)

M CADGAP XXVII: Present-day Meteorology and Future Cultural Implications for Nations

of the European Mediterranean Drainage (2011)

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Documents

Using CADGAP to Climatically Contextualize Ancient Cultures