The impact of Holocene climate setbacks on Neolithic societies in Eastern Europe: ways of scientific cooperation and exchange

The challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic remind the scientific community that human-environment relations are of great social relevance. Societal crises, currently triggered by the emergence of unknown viruses or in the future by climate change, are essentially the result of widening human activities since the last 12,000 years. Therefore, research that examines the transformative phases in the evolution of human culture associated with past global climate changes has become particularly important in recent years.
The study of the interaction of nature and society in the Holocene was one of the tasks of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) Institutional Partnership project “Network in Eastern European Neolithic and Wetland Archaeology for the improvement of field techniques and dating methods (NEENAWA)”. With the organisation of the session “The Climate Impact on European Neolithic Societies During the 8.2ky BP Events Near River Basins and Lakes” at the 26th Annual Virtual Conference of the European Association of Archaeologists (EAA, 24-30 August 2020), issues related to the economy and ecology of Neolithic communities linked to water bodies were discussed. The publication of session materials will be important for the study of the local manifestations of the different responses of prehistoric societies to climate setbacks in the early Holocene. In order to unite science and training through the interaction of the student audience with the professional environment, the Centre for Palaeoethnological Research decided to develop a multimedia training course “Nature and Society in Prehistoric Europe” in 2021.