Presenter:
Present-day concerns about global warming have sparked the interest of scholars and the general public in understanding how complex societies managed (or failed) to cope with climate change in the past. While dramatic situations (from collapse to resilience) have long been the focus of study, archaeological and textual evidence from Mesopotamia in the second-third millennia BCE reveals long-term societal adaptations and elite-led strategies (not all successful) to maintain agricultural production in a changing environment.