Paper short abstract:

This paper aims to question the scale that climate change is studied at, arguing that that although it occurred at a global and millennial scale, it unfolded at a local and community level.

Paper long abstract:

This paper aims to question the scale that climate change is studied at, arguing that that although it occurred at a global and millennial scale, it unfolded at a local and community level.

Climate change data tends to be large scale in nature and models frequently describe it as a smooth, linear process, with curves worked out as an 'average'. This often leads to little consideration of the human aspect - the way people either perceived or reacted to the way their landscape changed. It also does not deal with dynamism and uncertainty. It is, however, on the local scale that changes would have been observed, and adaptations developed. This paper will refer specifically to early Holocene climate change but will also use modern day examples to show how an understanding of the local perspective can provide insights that large scale models cannot.