Climate Change and Ancient Societies in Europe and the Near East

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-lvi

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2. A Historian’s Introduction to Paleoclimatology

   • Paul Erdkamp

   Pages 1-24

3. A Hard Row to Hoe: Ancient Climate Change from the Crop Perspective

   • Frits Heinrich, Annette M. Hansen

   Pages 25-80

4. Who Follows the Elephant Will Have Problems: Thought on Modelling Roman Responses to Climate (Changes)

   • Maurits Ertsen

   Pages 81-102

5. Famines, Demographic Crises and Climate in Italy 1650–1913

   • Paolo Malanima

   Pages 103-125

6. Collapse and Resilience in Prehistoric Archaeology: Questioning Concepts and Causalities in Models of Climate-Induced Societal Transformations

   • Caroline Heitz, Julian Laabs, Martin Hinz, Albert Hafner

   Pages 127-199

7. Climate, State Building and Political Change in Egypt During the Early Bronze Age: A Direct Relation?

   • Juan Carlos Moreno García

   Pages 201-213

8. Vulnerability to Climate Change in Late Bronze Age Peloponnese (Greece)

   • Erika Weiberg, Martin Finné

   Pages 215-242

9. Saving Up for a Rainy Day? Climate Events, Human-Induced Processes and Their Potential Effects on People’s Coping Strategies in the Mycenaean Argive Plain, Greece

   • Riia Timonen, Ann Brysbaert

   Pages 243-276

10. Peloponnesian Land Use Dynamics and Climate Variability in the First Millennium BCE

    • Anton Bonnier, Martin Finné

    Pages 277-299

11. Volcanic Eruptions, Veiled Suns, and Nile Failure in Egyptian History: Integrating Hydroclimate into Understandings of Historical Change

    • Francis Ludlow, J. G. Manning

    Pages 301-320

12. The Environmental Imperialism of the Roman Empire in Northwestern Europe

    • Tyler V. Franconi

    Pages 321-345

13. Seasonal Drought on Roman Rivers: Transport vs. Irrigation

    • Cynthia J. Bannon

    Pages 347-371

14. The Antonine Crisis: Climate Change as a Trigger for Epidemiological and Economic Turmoil

    • Brandon T. McDonald

    Pages 373-410

15. Climate Change and the Productive Landscape in the Mediterranean Region in the Roman Period

    • Paul Erdkamp

    Pages 411-442

16. Viticulture as a Climate Proxy for the Roman World? Global Warming as a Comparative Framework for Interpreting the Ancient Source Material in Italy and the West (ca. 200 BC–200 AD)

    • Dimitri Van Limbergen, Wim De Clercq

    Pages 443-484

17. Risks for Farming Families in the Roman World

    • Paul V. Kelly

    Pages 485-503

18. Figures in an Imperial Landscape: Ecological and Societal Factors on Settlement Patterns and Agriculture in Roman Italy

    • Annalisa Marzano

    Pages 505-531

19. Hydrological Changes in Late Antiquity: Spatio-Temporal Characteristics and Socio-Economic Impacts in the Eastern Mediterranean

    • E. Xoplaki, J. Luterbacher, N. Luther, L. Behr, S. Wagner, J. Jungclaus et al.

    Pages 533-560

20. Resilience and Adaptation at the End of Antiquity. An Evaluation of the Impact of Climate Change in Late Roman Western-Central Anatolia

    • Paolo Maranzana

    Pages 561-586

Climate change over the past thousands of years is undeniable, but debate has arisen about its impact on past human societies.  This book explores the link between climate and society in ancient worlds, focusing on the ancient economies of western Eurasia and northern Africa from the fourth millennium BCE up to the end of the first millennium CE.

This book contributes to the multi-disciplinary debate between scholars working on climate and society from various backgrounds. The chronological boundaries of the book are set by the emergence of complex societies in the Neolithic on the one end and the rise of early-modern states in global political and economic exchange on the other. In order to stimulate comparison across the boundaries of modern periodization, this book ends with demography and climate change in early-modern and modern Italy, a society whose empirical data allows the kind of statistical analysis that is impossible for ancient societies.  

The book highlights the role of human agency, and the complex interactions between the natural environment and the socio-cultural, political, demographic, and economic infrastructure of any given society.  It is intended for a wide audience of scholars and students in ancient economic history, specifically Rome and Late Antiquity.

• Ancient Economies
• Climate change and human history
• Climate-induced societal transformations
• Roman responses to climate
• Roman Empire
• Collapse of past societies

• Department of History, Faculty of Languages and the Humanities, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Elsene, Belgium

  Paul Erdkamp

• Department of History, Yale University, New Haven, USA

  Joseph G. Manning

• Department of History, Ghent University, Gent, Belgium

  Koenraad Verboven

Paul Erdkamp is Professor in Ancient History at Vrije Universiteit Brussels, Belgium.  He teaches Ancient History, specializing in the Roman World, with a particular interest in economy, food supply, historiography, and environmental and social aspects of army and war.

Joseph G. Manning is Professor of Classics and Professor of History and Senior Research Scholar in Law at Yale University, New Haven, USA.  He specializes in Hellenistic history with particular focus on the legal and economic history of Ptolemaic Egypt.

Koenraad Verboven is Professor of Ancient History at the University of Ghent, Belgium. He specializes in ancient social and economic history, particularly of the Roman world, and has a special interest in monetary history and numismatics, friendship and patronage based networks, guilds (collegia), (neo-)institutional analysis and complexity economics.

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