Catastrophes are on the rise due to climate change, as is their toll in terms of lives and livelihoods as world populations rise and people settle into hazardous places. While disaster response and management are traditionally seen as the domain of the natural and technical sciences, awareness of the importance and role of cultural adaptation is essential. This book catalogues a wide and diverse range of case studies of such disasters and human responses. This serves as inspiration for building culturally sensitive adaptations to present and future calamities, to mitigate their impact, and facilitate recoveries.

Catastrophes are on the rise due to climate change, as is their toll in terms of lives and livelihoods as world populations rise and people settle into hazardous places. While disaster response and management are traditionally seen as the domain of the natural and technical sciences, awareness of the importance and role of cultural adaptation is essential. This book catalogues a wide and diverse range of case studies of such disasters and human responses. This serves as inspiration for building culturally sensitive adaptations to present and future calamities, to mitigate their impact, and facilitate recoveries.

The first volume presents new archaeological and ecological data and analyses on the relation between human subsistence and survival, and the natural history of North-Western Europe throughout the period 10000 - 6000 BC. The volume contains contributions from ecological oriented archaeologists and from the natural sciences, throwing new light on the physical and biotic/ecological conditions of relevance to the earliest settlement. Main themes are human subsistence, subsistence technology, ecology and food availability pertaining to the first humans, and demographic patterns among humans linked to the accessibility of different landscapes.

In the late spring some 13,000 years ago, the Laacher See volcano in present-day western Germany erupted. The area in the immediate vicinity of the volcano was completely destroyed, covering and preserving, Pompeii-like, a prehistoric landscape complete with traces of plant, animal and human activity. But what was the impact of this cataclysm on the Final Paleolithic hunter-gatherer communities that occupied nothern Europe at that time? This book presents a new take on the cultural evolution of these forager groups, seen in light of the Laacher See eruption. Rooted in a framework of vulnerability and resilience, the author makes a powerful and multidisciplinary argument for how the ecological and sociological consequences of the eruption led to, in particular, the emergence of the hitherto ill-understood Bromme culture that comes into existence in southern Scandinavia just after the eruption. The primary aim of this book is to integrate archaeology and volcanology in a better understanding of this remarkable episode of culture change in Europe's deep past. At the same time the author makes and argument that archaeological and historical studies of extreme event such as volcanic eruptions can and should play a greater role in historically informed, evidence-based decision making procedures in contemporary risk reduction policies.

Volcanic eruptions can affect everything - nature, wildlife, people. From the earliest times, human resilience has been tested by this most severe environmental hazard resulting in a variety of collective responses - from despair and helplessness to endurance, increased worship of the gods, and even mass migrations. Past vulnerability breaks new ground by examining the histories of extreme environmental events, from the resent eruptions of Mount Merapi in Central Java to the prehistoric Toba supervolcanic eruption 74.000 years ago on the island of Sumatra. Experts from a broad and unconventional range of disciplines - from anthropology to literature studies and from archaeology to theology - discuss the impacts of volcanic eruptions in human history and prehistory. The book sets the scene for a 'palaeosocial volcanology' that complements and extends current approaches to volcanic hazards in the natural and social sciences by presenting historically informed and evidence-based analyses on how traditional societies dealt with these dangers -- or failed to do so.

Miikka Tallavaara's name is spelled "Tallaavaara" on title page.