Energy regimes help tackle limitations with the prehistoric cultural-phases approach to learn about sustainable transitions: Archaeological evidence from northern Spain

Abstract

Human societies face challenges in transitioning towards low-carbon economies and sustainable management of land use and natural resources. Documenting and learning from past transitions helps policy-makers cope with such challenges. The agricultural revolution in Cantabrian Spain (ca. 7000 cal a bp) was one major adaptation of hunter-gatherers to a changing environment that started with the Last Glacial Maximum (ca. 24 000 cal a bp) and lasted until the Mid-Holocene (ca. 5300 cal a bp). Classic approaches to documenting prehistoric cultural timelines are based on manufacturing and technology, thus limited in their ability to describe the sustainability of past societies. Energy regimes, a functional societal approach independent from time, investigate and consider patterns of resource and energy use in various cohabiting and cooperating cultural phases. To examine past energy regimes, a database of archaeological remains was compiled to document four indicators: mobility, economy, overexploitation and societal complexity. Statistical analyses were conducted to elucidate trends, changes and continuity in subsistence strategies by hunter-gatherers and sedentary societies. Results show that energy regimes act as a complement to cultural phases, adding novel functional analyses of past societies to cultural stratigraphy units common in archaeology, shedding light on the sustainability of past societal transitions.