Page 27 - Life & Land Use on the Bahrain Islands (Curtis E Larsen)

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and equally significant changes in precipitation in the Near and Middle East (Butzer
1971, 1975, 1976; McClure 1978; Van Zeist, Woldring, and Stapert 1975). It was not
possible to discuss such detail in the 1950’s. The methods for radiometric dating
were not advanced, nor was there an emphasis on research in the post-Pleistocene
time interval. After nearly a decade of geological research on the Holocene, the
geological views of the previous decade appear too general and lack detail- The
archeological views concerning the Near East have, to a certain extent, lagged
behind the current trends in geological knowledge.
While the identification of sophisticated cultural variables in
archeological systems has added important new perspectives, dynamic natural
environments cannot be dimissed as covariables. Natural environmental processes
should be studied in greater detail to develop equally sophisicated human
paleoecological perspectives. A valuable approach lies in geoarcheological
research combining archeological, geological, and paleoecological perspectives.
An area chosen for geoarcheological study must satisfy the requirements
of a concrete research design. A region or subregion must be studied as a whole
system of interactive variables, both cultural and natural. To attain this end,
initial research should center on microenvironments that best approximate discrete
and understandable natural environmental systems. From this base archeological
and historical patterns can be viewed within a relatively secure paleoecological
framework. From such joint research will come the new theories necessary to
enrich and perhaps provoke future research.
Environment, population growth, technology, social organization, and
trade must be viewed simultaneously, but the archeologist and geologist are not
provided with such easily defined categories. Each scientist’s information is
derived from a body of physical data that is but a composite of interactions among
these and more variables. By such limitations, a geoarcheological research study
involves geo morphological and land use-settlement pattern analyses. TTie former
provides clues to the complex environmental changes to be expected, while the
latter presents the remains of equally complex sociocultural changes. It is a study
of man and the land.