Climate and society in long‐term perspective: Opportunities and pitfalls in the use of historical datasets

Recent advances in paleoclimatology and the growing digital availability of large historical datasets on human activity have created new opportunities to investigate long‐term interactions between climate and society. However, noncritical use of historical datasets can create pitfalls, resulting in misleading findings that may become entrenched as accepted knowledge. We demonstrate pitfalls in the content, use and interpretation of historical...