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Epístemology of Historical Ecology: 3, The Dictionary

communities show a similar zonal distribution about the Earth (Cox et al, 1976), so that we can recognize a series of 'natural complexes' or landscapes in which the living and non-living aspects of Nature are closely associated with each other. Proxy evidence for past environmental change can only be found within these present landscapes, and two main forms of proxy evidence can be distinguished: continuous and discontinuous. The Atherton Tablelands comprise a 31,000 km section of the Great Dividing Range of Australia and are located in tropical north-east Queensland, to the west of Cairns. Apart from the occasional cyclone, the Tablelands are not at present subject to any great natural disturbance and remain a rich agricultural area, yielding beef and dairy products, peanuts, and maize. This present prosperity is a result, in part, of the considerable volcanic activity to which the region was formerly subject. We know about this because the Tablelands are dominated by landform and rock features which develop only in areas of volcanicity: such features include basaltic rocks and the fertile soils derived from them, scoria cones, and many volcanic craters (Keyser, 1972). In much the same way, many parts of the world which now experience a temperate climate have landscape structures that typically form in glaciated areas, and often develop only under a thick cover of ice (Bowen, 1978). Because such features cannot develop under the climate which is now being experienced in these regions, we can draw only one conclusion: that the climate of these areas has changed, and often in a drastic fashion. The problem with this sort of evidence is that it gives only a discontinuous record. If we understand and interpret it properly, we know that things were different, and when. But if we are to reconstruct a record of what has been happening, not only to find out what has happened but also to understand why and how it happened, we need to find a continuous record which extends in an uninterrupted sequence backwards from the present. To find an uninterrupted chronicle of past environmental events we need to search out materials which accumulate through time. These are more widespread than is commonly realized. Some trees, for example, may live to be thousands of years old. Because treegrowth is a function of environmental conditions, tree rings (which may or may not be annual) serve as a natural data-storage system (Creber, 1977). By crosscorrelating the ring pattern in living trees with the ring pattern in trees that have long been dead, such a record can be extended back far beyond the life-span of individual trees (e.g. Pilcher et al, 1977). Proxy records of environmental change which go back thousands or even hundreds of thousands of years are found in such accumulating deposits as the Greenland and Antarctic ice-caps, the sediment that is being deposited at the bottom of the sea or in any lake or pond, or growing peat-deposits. At first sight an historical record consisting of a column of mud, a column of ice, or a section of wood, may not seem very interesting. But the same could be said about any other historical record that is written in a language we do not understand. To interpret these annals we have first to find a dictionary, or at least a pertinent key.