Regional Climatic and Social Transformations During the 4.2 ka BP Event in the Southern Iberian Peninsula

Within the F1 project of the CRC 1266 ‘Scales of Transformation‘ we are investigating the 4.2 ka BP event in the western Mediterra- nean and its influence on the transformation of societies at the major cultural transition from a Neolithic/Chalcolithic configuration towards the Bronze Age. Hereby the local timing and magnitude of the climatic oscillation during the event and the intensity and character of the societal change by quantification of the archaeological record are in focus. The intent is to correlate both proxies and to test if and to what extent the climate may have triggered and influenced developments in the human sphere. Geochemical analyses of long chained n-alkanes and alkenones from a marine sedimentary archive (ODP-161-976A) from the Al- boran Sea are taken out in order to investigate changes in precipitation, vegetation dynamics and sea surface temperatures. We combine this record with an estimation of the demographic development, which we obtain with the help of summed 14C data and aoristics. Our recent results indicate two prominent arid periods centred around 4.0 ka BP and 4.25 ka BP interrupted by more humid condi- tions. Furthermore, we found a correlation between the development of precipitation and demographic proxies. It is also evident that the settlement structures changed in the course of the climatic shift. Still a finer chronological resolution is desirable for both climatological and archaeological proxies. Nevertheless, it is already pos- sible to examine the hypothesis of early statehood on the Iberian Peninsula in a more differentiated way than before by taking into account the changed environmental conditions and a detailed and quantitative description of large transformations in the social sphere