ALBERT

Description: The archaeology of the Nazi era is a relatively new field of research. This review addresses motivations and ethical circumstances of such research, as well as the complex relations between archaeological evidence and a variety of other sources, including documents, oral history, and photography. Archaeologists work with two fundamentally different conceptualizations: an objectivist one concerned with recording material remains, for which scale is a prominent issue, and interpretive approaches based on the evocative power of things, in which different degrees of victims’ anonymity play a core role. Other issues involve questions about the possibility of any coherent synthesis of this period. Investigations into the Nazi past also invariably include commemorative politics whose complex development is outlined. An engagement with this time of extremes has wider consequences, posing the question of the role of suffering and desolation in human history as a whole.

Description: Settlement crises in ancient cultures of Western Asia are commonly thought to be caused by climatic events such as severe droughts. However, the insufficient climate proxy situation in this region challenges the inference of clear relationships between climate and settlement dynamics. We investigate the Holocene climatic changes on the Varamin Plain in the context of the climatic history of Western Central Asia by using a transient comprehensive Earth System Model simulation (8 ka BP to pre-industrial), a high-resolution regional snapshot simulation and a synthesis of pollen-based climate reconstructions. In line with the reconstructions, the models reveal only slightly varying mean climatic conditions on the Varamin Plain but indicate substantial changes in seasonality during the Holocene. Increased precipitation during spring, combined with lower temperature and potentially stronger snow accumulation on the upstream Alborz mountains may have led to an increased water supply on the alluvial fan during the vegetation period and thus to more favourable conditions for agricultural production during the Mid-Holocene compared to modern times. According to the model, dry periods on the Central Iranian Plateau are related to particularly weak Westerly winds, fostering the subsidence in the mid-troposphere and hampering precipitation over the region. The model reveals that dry periods have spatially heterogenous manifestations, thus explaining why they do not appear in all proxy records in the wider study region. In fact, the climatic signal may depend on local environmental conditions. The interaction of the topography with the atmospheric circulation leads to additional spatial heterogeneity. Although our results provide several indications for a connection between climate and settlement dynamics, the small overall changes in moisture call into question whether climate is the main driver for settlement discontinuities on the Central Iranian Plateau. To shed further light on this issue, more high-resolution long-term proxy records are needed.