83 research outputs found
What stories should historians be telling at the dawn of the Anthropocene?
This chapter discusses the ways in which history can contribute to coping with the current planetary crisis. It argues that historians should engage more in interdisciplinary exchange across the humanities-natural sciences divide. Thus they will be able to create historical narratives fitting for the Anthropocene—both in terms of explaining it and shaping our responses to it, in particular to the acute planetary crisis that marks its advent. At the same time, history should not give up its drive to critically dissect and analyse socio-political, economic, cultural and ecological change, contributing to developing balanced and resilient public policy
Introduction: what sort of past does our future need?
In this short introduction we set out the aims of the volume, which represents the fruits of two seminars held in the autumn of 2020. The chapters respond to one big thematic issue: how to research and understand historical societal resilience; and one big question: what sort of past does the future need? They attempt to address these through three linked themes: can history be made more relevant to modern policy in respect of environmental and climate challenges? To what extent do our various sources indicate awareness and management of risk and/or the implementation of mitigating strategies in the past? And how can we identify ‘resilience’ in the social praxis of historical agents
On the Use of Palynological Data in Economic History: New Methods and an Application to Agricultural Output in Central Europe, 0–2000 AD
In this paper we introduce a new source of data to economic history: palynological data, i.e. information about pollen grains which are preserved in bottom sediments of various water basins. We discuss how this data is collected and how it should be interpreted; develop new methods for aggregating this information into regional trends in agricultural output; construct an extensive data set with a large number of pollen sites from Central Europe; and use our methods to study the economic history of Greater Poland, Lesser Poland, Bohemia, Brandenburg, and Lower Saxony since the first century AD
On the Use of Palynological Data in Economic History: New Methods and an Application to Agricultural Output in Central Europe, 0–2000 AD
In this paper we introduce a new source of data to economic history: palynological data, i.e. information about pollen grains which are preserved in bottom sediments of various water basins. We discuss how this data is collected and how it should be interpreted; develop new methods for aggregating this information into regional trends in agricultural output; construct an extensive data set with a large number of pollen sites from Central Europe; and use our methods to study the economic history of Greater Poland, Lesser Poland, Bohemia, Brandenburg, and Lower Saxony since the first century AD
Recommended from our members
The medieval climate anomaly and Byzantium: a review of the evidence on climatic fluctuations, economic performance and societal change
At the beginning of the Medieval Climate Anomaly, in the ninth and tenth century, the medieval
eastern Roman empire, more usually known as Byzantium, was recovering from its early medieval
crisis and experiencing favourable climatic conditions for the agricultural and demographic growth.
Although in the Balkans and Anatolia such favourable climate conditions were prevalent during the
eleventh century, parts of the imperial territories were facing significant challenges as a result of
external political/military pressure. The apogee of medieval Byzantine socio-economic development,
around AD 1150, coincides with a period of adverse climatic conditions for its economy, so it becomes
obvious that the winter dryness and high climate variability at this time did not hinder Byzantine
society and economy from achieving that level of expansion. Soon after this peak, towards the end of
the twelfth century, the populations of the Byzantine world were experiencing unusual climatic
conditions with marked dryness and cooler phases. The weakened Byzantine socio-political system
must have contributed to the events leading to the fall of Constantinople in AD 1204 and the sack of
the city. The final collapse of the Byzantine political control over western Anatolia took place half
century later, thus contemporaneous with the strong cooling effect after a tropical volcanic eruption in
AD 1257.
We suggest that, regardless of a range of other influential factors, climate change was also an
important contributing factor to the socio-economic changes that took place in Byzantium during the
Medieval Climate Anomaly. Crucially, therefore, while the relatively sophisticated and complex Byzantine
society was certainly influenced by climatic conditions, and while it nevertheless displayed a significant
degree of resilience, external pressures as well as tensions within the Byzantine society more broadly
contributed to an increasing vulnerability in respect of climate impacts.
Our interdisciplinary analysis is based on all available sources of information on the climate and
society of Byzantium, that is textual (documentary), archaeological, environmental, climate and
climate model-based evidence about the nature and extent of climate variability in the eastern
Mediterranean. The key challenge was, therefore, to assess the relative influence to be ascribed to
climate variability and change on the one hand, and on the other to the anthropogenic factors in the
evolution of Byzantine state and society (such as invasions, changes in international or regional
market demand and patterns of production and consumption, etc.). The focus of this interdisciplinar
- …