Buried in the ground? Looking for environmental changes for Serbian Banat Late Bronze Age settlement abandonment

The abandonment of LBA Serbian Banat settlements between 1250 and 1150 BC raises important questions regarding the factors that may have contributed to that process. New LBA settlements continue to be discovered through satellite images and surveys, which seem to indicate that they were connected in a dense network. These settlements emerged around 1500 BC, in a period that coincides with the abandonment of MBA tells. Varying in size and layout, some of them achieved considerable size, with several being surrounded by ditches and ramparts. Yet something changed around 1200 BC, leading to the settlements’ abandonment for more than 200 years. Were the environmental conditions, that allowed these communities to settle and prosper in this area, no longer favourable? Following what seems to be a similar path to the Terramare culture of the Southern Po Valley (Italy), with the flourishing and decline occurring at similar periods, we look for evidence of environmental changes through sediment deposition analyses that can shed some light into this question.