Kavil, SP and Bala, PR and Ghosh, D and Kumar, P and Sukumar, R (2021) Climate Change and the Migration of a Pastoralist People c. 3500 cal. Years BP Inferred from Palaeofire and Lipid Biomarker Records in the Montane Western Ghats, India. In: Environmental Archaeology .
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
Human migration in response to past climate change has been recorded globally. The pastoralist Todas are believed to have colonised the higher elevations (>2000 m asl) of the Nilgiris, Western Ghats, India, after �2000 cal. yr BP. During the late Quaternary, climate-induced vegetation shifts in tropical montane forest-grassland mosaic of the Nilgiris have been well-documented using stable carbon isotopes and pollen, but there have been no corresponding investigations of human activity. We used several proxies to infer the human ecology of this region. Radiocarbon-dated (�22,000 cal. yr BP to the present) peat from Sandynallah (2200 m asl) was used to reconstruct fire history, animal abundance, and human presence since the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). While macro-charcoal records fires at the LGM, macro- and micro-charcoal indicate intense fire at �3500 cal. yr BP, coprophilous fungal spores indicate abundant herbivorous mammals, n-alkane signatures point to arid grassland vegetation, and steroid biomarkers show human faecal remains for the first time. We infer that a pastoralist people, most likely the Todas, migrated to the montane Nilgiris along with their buffaloes in response to prolonged or abrupt climate change in peninsular India �3500 cal yr BP or ~1500 years prior to what historical accounts assume. © Association for Environmental Archaeology 2021.
| Item Type: | Journal Article |
|---|---|
| Publication: | Environmental Archaeology |
| Publisher: | Taylor and Francis Ltd. |
| Additional Information: | The copyright for this article belongs to Taylor and Francis Ltd. |
| Department/Centre: | Division of Biological Sciences > Centre for Ecological Sciences Division of Mechanical Sciences > Centre for Earth Sciences Division of Mechanical Sciences > Divecha Centre for Climate Change |
| Date Deposited: | 28 Nov 2021 09:31 |
| Last Modified: | 28 Nov 2021 09:31 |
| URI: | http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/69971 |
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