00:00.00 Alex And we are back with archeo animals. We're talking about paleo environmentalronmental reconstruction today and well we spent the first segment talking about what it all is and you know all the various subdisciplines that come together like a big puzzle to reconstruct past environments. Now let's talk more specifically about the stuff we kind of know a bit more about and talk about how zoarology fits into all this. 00:31.30 Cpt Granarius So as we discussed earlier and hinted at in all the previous previous episodes of this secret miniseries ah different animals. So my favorite kind of miniseries. It's the secret. 00:37.83 Alex You love that. 00:45.59 Cpt Granarius That the minieries you don't see coming um, but yes I mean different animal species be them mammalian avian amphib a reptile will largely prefer certain habitats over others I mean who doesn't um with some species preferring like fairly niche ones are that. So therefore looking at the habitat ranges and preferences preferences of a given species today and of course presuming that would have been the same ten thousand years ago which if their biologists remain the same more or less. You know likely? Um, it can inform the paleo environment that we're trying to reconstruct based on their presence. Or indeed their absence. Um, so what we've done here is and we've put together. Ah some examples or species in the sort of environments. You may find them in including a few that are quite habitats acceptable. 01:35.61 Alex Yeah, so obviously we have talked about some of these but they're just a bit more examples. So say amphibians we have all episode. You can go back and listen to it if you haven't heard yet now we again, we've talked about this in the episode but just to recap. Their proximity to water is obviously what kind of makes them a pretty useful indicator for a paleo but your mental reconstruction and let's be honest, though, that's not the most groundbreaking thing in England. 02:07.25 Cpt Granarius It. 02:08.97 Alex In fact, it's probably a fair guess you could probably just make that assumption without looking at Amphibian remains. 02:13.93 Cpt Granarius Yeah, because like what can you tell us about this english field. It's bamp. What about it Two thousand years ago it's damp 02:22.39 Alex Yeah I mean you know I mean I guess realistically the opposite would be a bit more crowd breaking at this point. 02:30.88 Cpt Granarius We we found this microclimate in the northwest of England that was actually like a very sort of dry Mediterranean Landscape um I'm moving that. Um. 02:40.65 Alex So for an example, that's not British though there have been fossilized remains of the surname. The Pip surinami. 02:51.94 Cpt Granarius And surinami look be species which was this it Pepa is italian for pipe. So this is okay Rene la species. 02:57.71 Alex Yes, and interesting and the beaked toads found in the Amazon rainforest which have been used to develop paleoenvironmental reconstructions of the region during the upper miocene. Due to their very different behaviors relating to water so the surinami ah toads are actually found mostly near kind of stagnant bodies of water while the beak toads are actually less dependent on watery habitats to survive. So very contrasting species but depending on where they were found and what contexts they were found. You know temporal contexts they were found ah researchers have been able to kind of get a better idea of the kind of changes in climate. Ah. The Amazon rains force has gone through in the past which is really interesting and also it's just interesting to find a toad that's not really that dependent on water. 04:06.16 Cpt Granarius Yeah I mean there and also it is interesting for heart us to once again, but break out of a British shells but pretty just we we keep being yes. Um. 04:06.25 Alex Who knew. 04:14.38 Alex I'm trying and I'm just I'm trying as best as I can let me tell you. 04:23.67 Cpt Granarius Yeah, or onto you know from a change of that and getting onto again some more groundbreaking stuff. We have have rodents. Um, so we have like ah 1 of the most common at least in Britain being field vols bi grato sares these which tend to like open field or hedges. Ah, which do you honest, you know the same goes for many mouse species and it's sort of a similar story for the harvest mouse that Mikarami Minot does because you know there's about at least in Britain like 3 species of mouses like the house mouse the wood mouse and the harvest mouse. Um, but again finding species that thrive in open fields and hedges. Probably not exactly groundbreaking as far as Britain is concerned however say that you had a site in what is now a forest I mean very unlikely most of ah archaeology in Britain is developer led a lot of the trees are protected but let's say that you have. An archeical site in the middle of a forest. Um and you find a lot of species that associate more associated with open fields and say okay that may be sort of like that woodland might be a little bit later. Um, it might be established in the medieval period but he actually used to be open fields beforehand so being while we do tend to associate you know. With Britain in a sort of vastly open fields the landscape as changed were fairly dramatically from like great deforestation events that are taking place in the neolithic and the bronze age then the romans came about and they thought they carry out some more deforestation. Um gonna and. 05:58.54 Cpt Granarius Yes, and then you have the the establishment of Medieval woodlands but also some deforestation and just the cycle goes on I mean but the the landscape has been altered a fair amount and of course you're with the enclosure act like the shape of the fields and so of the hedge rows of all like change the fair amount. Um, but still. 06:09.68 Alex A. 06:16.61 Cpt Granarius Um, to field vols about. Ah. 06:17.74 Alex But yeah, it's interesting as well because you know it sounds like that's you know, not big deal. Okay, there used to be trees Now. There's not, but obviously there's so many kind of activities human-led activities obviously but also species dependent kind of changes that happen depending on what's pretty. Big shift in landscape and that obviously really alters the archaeological context around these sites and these regions So. It's actually even though it may seem a bit you know, ah who cares it actually is extremely important to kind of get this detail. Especially when you think about you know how much of a site. We don't get in material remains that can be determined through stuff like this. No. 06:59.32 Cpt Granarius And ah I mean Absolutely and he does have a knock on effect at the more or say macro level mackerel over more in a way like moving away from the small like. Field Vol and and Harvest Mouse remains that on to sort of the yeah, the more macro level of your archaeological site because even in terms of livestock the kind of environment that the settlement is in will also determine which kind of livestock is kept. So Even though you do find your cows your sheep and pigs sort of pretty much throughout. 07:22.94 Alex And. 07:30.21 Cpt Granarius Um, cattle and pig over sheep are more suited or can thrive in Woodland Habitats sheep not so much and sort of and depending on how the the landscape has changed over times if the um. If it wasn't as much of pasture. It was more rugged terrain goats would have been more suited as opposed to sheep so it it does have an impact even on your common demand domesticates that you may or may not find and why on this particular side. They preferred cattle over pig of course like that wouldn't necessarily be the only reason there's a. Number of variables at play but the kind of environment they have to play with may have also had an impact on which choice of domesticates to keep. 08:18.22 Alex Moving a bit above literally ah field Voles Migratory Birds. So migration ranges which we kind of talked about in this episode. They may have changed over time as the C climatemate shifted. So For example, various species of waterfowl from the an annoated day I never know how to say that yes I did very poorly in Latin the ducks the ducks the ducks. 08:39.85 Cpt Granarius Anati Day The ducks stuck dus. What. 08:47.14 Alex They were found in late pleistocene early holocene context in Jordan and I've actually shed further light on climate changes that may have caused the kind of wetland environment to become a little less inviting to migrating birds over time. Also I don't. About you. There's certain species that make me feel weird when I think about them in the past and I think ducks are one of them. 09:09.94 Cpt Granarius Ah, okay, hot take number 2 Why do ducks make you feel weird. 09:13.49 Alex I don't know just like saying like oh the ducks from the late pleistocene like that feels like a wild sentence. You know I. 09:20.91 Cpt Granarius But they were wild because I guess dus because this sort of you'd regard them as a common domestic kid thinking of like a wild duck out out there in the late Plexocene made South bizarre. 09:32.35 Alex I Have a Ph D fox. 09:38.79 Alex But also I don't. 09:39.23 archpodnet What what about the what about pleistoce squirrels with those would those have been different. No I was just for It's just another one for your Bingo cards ladies and gentlemen. 09:45.31 Alex You don't have to be mean you know that you don't have to bully no bullying on this podcast. No one's ever done this on this podcast either. 09:58.72 archpodnet And all those between we have a squirrel appearing on your bingo card Mark it off. 10:01.33 Cpt Granarius Um. 10:05.99 Cpt Granarius A first should mention for people that haveve just joined us ah on this particular episode this. So so a long running inside joke from almost tens of episodes ago in which um Alex had the realization that they were squirrels in Britain. 10:19.36 Alex Listen I only just got my proper glasses like last year so just been walk around not being able to see leave me alone. 10:21.24 Cpt Granarius After like 6 years of living here. 10:27.65 archpodnet I Can't believe it. It's a glasses thing of course, did you? Also you you also thought we had raccoons. We don't actually have raccoons. 10:36.14 Alex I Don't know I'm sorry that my American biases are so strong. Okay. 10:39.90 archpodnet Very strong right? Sorry go back to the Plaistton squirrels I mean ducks. 10:45.26 Alex Anyway, no, we're just going to talk about how migratory Birds remains on your site. They can be pretty cool right. 10:55.91 Cpt Granarius Like u um, yes, ah because I mean it's not this not strictly paleobe mentally related. Um, but you can find you know migratory birds at an archeological site. You know you usually sort of either summer or winter visitors. Ah the. About it is that you know provided the mangatory time so and ranges have remained the same over time. It gives you an indication of what time of the year the remains with deposited because you know normally for your remains you get a dating you know, like late Roman but what about late roman in the summer 11:28.93 Alex Is pretty cool. It's pretty cool. So yeah, it's not just that though there are other species that we still have today as well that are still very climate susceptible. So just some examples penguins. 11:46.20 Cpt Granarius Svanishhi The species. 11:46.65 Alex My favorite animal now. Modern penguin species are currently considered particularly susceptible to climate change for you know, kind of obvious reasons. But this was also very true for penguins of the past as well. So during the little ice age which was a period of global cooling from 1400 to 1700 a dzo archeological analysis suggested a massive biological turnover New Zealand so you know where one species is replaced by another species with the white hata. Why ha. White aha penguin I'm really doing well with those pronunciations apologies. Thank you replaced by the yellow eyed penguin that how is expanding that. 12:27.60 Cpt Granarius Mega deep this white taha. 12:32.71 Cpt Granarius Mega Deep tests antipo this or and people this we're goingnna and this antipo this and people this and peoplepo this I'm going with an people of this. 12:38.90 Alex So so it's. I will trust you now the Whitehab Penguin was expanding its habitat norfward and um, the former species sorry I'm going to take that again. The yellow eyed penguin was expanding its habitat northward. Replacing and the whiteaha penguin and eventually unfortunately that penguin species wouldn't go extinct due to this biological turnover. 13:15.25 Cpt Granarius Next we have the the humble cod haha goded um gado species. Um, so fish um like cod and other guded species usually need a very specific temperature range for a successful life cycle particularly spawning. So as such the rising sea temperatures associated with climate change are pretty bad news for these fish. Did you see a trend here forming but for your eyes or before your ears rather um, which is also incidentally very quick aside of why zoo archaeology can also be very helpful for sort of ah applied. Biological sciences but aside over um so in determining baseline populations from Zoo Archaeological Data archaeologists have been able to see how past climate shifts. For example, the medieval warm period between 950 to twelve fifty a d and the little ice age that um. Alex I just discussed um all like so these shift in temperatures have impacted the size of gadded species increasing during the warm period and decreasing during the colder one and I mean as we said that is true for gaddes of which cods are part but also just at a plethora of other fish. 14:29.57 Alex And. 14:30.14 Cpt Granarius Species something we probably don't talk enough because no. 14:35.60 Alex And obviously for fish like Cai. That's extremely important to kind of understand and know about as this kind of stuff impacts things like fisheries and I believe the context which a lot of this research has been done has been done looking at medieval. Fishing habits and fisheries and you know obviously with the climate change that was impacted by. You know the size of gads the kind of ability to even you know take in loads of fish. It's again as simona kind of described it earlier. It's a knockdown effect. Where if you understand kind of the environmental conditions. It can explain a lot of things that were happening in the archeological record that we can see or even like you know as we get further into the medieval period the kind of textual record that we may have. Now we have one last species to talk about and it's I think we have talked about reindeer before yes because there are very interesting species as far as. 15:35.80 Cpt Granarius Must have turned yes but rangifer tarandus. 15:46.72 Alex Not really domesticated. They are herded by the indigenous people up north the sami and so they're very interesting kind of case study of a species That's not really feral but not necessarily domesticated. Ah yeah, it's. 16:00.65 Cpt Granarius Just like semi-domesticated. 16:06.31 Alex Yeah I mean we've talked about this in episodes which there are plenty that we talked about domestication but you know domestication isn't necessarily a on and off switch There are kind of shades domestication I guess different levels of domestication. Maybe but yeah, so reindeer. Populations that are located in The Arctic and the subartic regions of the world unsurprisingly very susceptible to the increasingly more mar ah environment up North who would have thought again bit of a theme going in here bit trends trends we're talking about climate change bad hot another hot take apparently. 16:37.78 Cpt Granarius Trainings. 16:45.34 Alex Ah, unfortunately climate change is bad and yeah, it's effectively lot species and you know I hate to say you don't even have to look at the archaeological record to find out that information I'll just tell you that right now a bad and yeah, unfortunately I guess we have not learned our lessons as far as climate change overall impact. Not just us but lots of other species anyway, tangent over archaeological research on Sami Land use have shown the potential impact of environmental changes on their reindeer herding you know again I believe we've talked about Sami ah land use and Sami Reindeer herding in a previous episode probably the one one of our wear in the world episodes. Don't quote me on that but probably um, but yeah, so. And there's been. You know those 2 historical periods of climate change that we've talked about because I think they're kind of the main periods of climate change that historians talk about the medieval warm period and the little ice age they may have actually impacted grazing for wild reindeer which along with. A couple other factors including political border formations may have actually caused the sami to shift to a new form of nomadic pastoral economy in the mid seventeen hundreds. So again, lots of knockdown effects that we're talking about here and how they impact not just one species but a lot of other species and unfortunately. 18:12.80 Alex Time is a flat circle and a lot of these species. We talked about are still climate Susceptible. So who knows I guess maybe in the the hundreds and hundreds of years later other archaeologists will be able to have very similar stories about species from our time and on that. Downer of a note we will take a break and we will talk about case studies when we come back.