Recent interest in modern climate change has stimulated extensive scientific study into past societal responses to climate variability. However, examining climate change and society as a historical narrative drawing upon politics, economics, and settlement patterns does not provide a direct link between climate and society. Given that most inhabitants of the premodern world engaged in agriculture and/or pastoralism, examining chronological correlations between climate and foodways, not as a historical narrative but as a longterm socioenvironmental process, has the potential to identify direct societal adaptations to a changing environment.

From South Greece there is evidence for drier conditions at the end of the Late Bronze Age. Is the disappearance of writing, art, and many known settlements at the end of the Bronze Age an example of collapse in the face of inability to adapt to climate change? This is a difficult question to answer given the coarse resolution of many of our archaeological and climatic datasets. Settlement faunal records suggest that food production systems became increasingly homogenous in Late Bronze Age Greece, potentially due to an elite control over various production systems that promoted intensification of certain products. However, in the first millennium B.C.E., animal husbandry, specifically, and food production systems, more broadly, became more heterogenous, and a proportional increase in goats in areas with less rainfall was likely an adaptive response to the drier climate. This paper examines the adaptive relationship between foodways and climate and argues for a process driven approach when explaining social responses to ancient climate change.

最近对现代气候变化的兴趣激发了对过去社会对气候变化的反应的广泛科学研究。然而，将气候变化和社会作为一种借鉴政治、经济和定居模式的历史叙述来考察，并不能提供气候与社会之间的直接联系。鉴于前现代世界的大多数居民从事农业和/或畜牧业，研究气候和饮食方式之间的时间顺序相关性，而不是作为一个历史叙述，而是作为一个长期的社会环境过程，有可能确定社会对不断变化的环境的直接适应。

来自希腊南部的证据表明，青铜时代晚期的气候更加干燥。青铜时代末期文字、艺术和许多已知定居点的消失是否是无法适应气候变化导致崩溃的一个例子？考虑到我们许多考古和气候数据集的粗略分辨率，这是一个难以回答的问题。定居动物群记录表明，青铜时代晚期希腊的食物生产系统变得越来越同质化，这可能是由于精英对各种生产系统的控制促进了某些产品的集约化。然而，在公元前的第一个千年，畜牧业（特别是畜牧业）和更广泛的粮食生产系统变得更加多样化，在降雨量较少的地区山羊的成比例增加可能是对干燥气候的适应性反应。本文研究了饮食方式与气候之间的适应性关系，并在解释对古代气候变化的社会反应时主张采用过程驱动的方法。