UNRAVELLING THE THREADS: CLIMATE CHANGES IN THE LATE BRONZE III AEGEAN by Jennifer Moody As our climate changes before our eyes, the idea that the Bronze Age Aegean climate differed little from today’s becomes less and less believ- able. Like many others in the 1970s and 80s, my early reconstructions of Aegean Bronze Age environments were largely based on the modern Mediterranean climate regime of hot, dry summers and cool, wet win- ters 1 . By the 1990s, however, – as new techniques and data became avail- able – it became increasingly clear that this was not case: not only was the amount of precipitation quite different from today’s, but more importantly so was its distribution throughout the year 2 . This paper reviews the data now available for reconstructing the Aegean Late Bronze Age climate. This involves assessing the relationship between the Aegean climate and that of the Eastern Mediterranean; the relationship between the Eastern Mediterranean and the Mediterranean as a whole; and finally the relationship between the Mediterranean and more global weather systems such as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO). The solar cycle plays a key role in all these climate systems and is also discussed. Orbital parameters such as the eccentricity of the Earth’s orbit, obliqui- ty of the axis, and precession of the equinoxes are also important but on a much grander scale, and are not discussed in any detail 3 . Once these relationships are established, the sparse paleoclimate data from the Aegean can be augmented by data sets from elsewhere in the Mediterranean, allowing a fuller understanding of Late Bronze Age cli- mate conditions in the Aegean. 1 WRIGHT 1968, 1972, MOODY 1985, 1987. 2 MOODY – RACKHAM – RAPP 1996, MOODY 1997, MOODY 2001, MOODY – WATROUS forthcom- ing, MOODY 2004. 3 See BERGER – LOUTRE 1991, ZACHOS et al. 2001, RUDDIMAN 2001. (32) MOODY 22/3/2005 10:19 ™ÂÏ›‰·451