Glass Transition Phenomena Semiannual Status Report

Multiple glass transitions, heat capacities, and equation of state properties of polymer system

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

Not the End of the World? Post-Classical Decline and Recovery in Rural Anatolia

Between the foundation of Constantinople as capital of the eastern half of the Roman Empire in 330 CE and its sack by the Fourth Crusade in 1204 CE, the Byzantine Empire underwent a full cycle from political-economic stability, through rural insecurity and agrarian decline, and back to renewed prosperity. These stages plausibly correspond to the phases of over-extension (K), subsequent release (Ω) and recovery (α) of the Adaptive Cycle in Socio-Ecological Systems. Here we track and partly quantify the consequences of those changes in different regions of Anatolia, firstly for rural settlement (via regional archaeological surveys) and secondly for land cover (via pollen analysis). We also examine the impact of climate changes on the agrarian system. While individual histories vary, the archaeological record shows a major demographic decline between ca .650 and ca. 900 CE in central and southwestern Anatolia, which was then a frontier zone between Byzantine and Arab armies. In these regions, and also in northwest Anatolia, century-scale trends in pollen indicate a substantial decline in the production of cereal and tree crops, and a smaller decline in pastoral activity. During the subsequent recovery (α) phase after 900 CE there was strong regional differentiation, with central Anatolia moving to a new economic system based on agro-pastoralism, while lowland areas of northern and western Anatolia returned to the cultivation of commercial crops such as olive trees. The extent of recovery in the agrarian economy was broadly predictable by the magnitude of its preceding decline, but the trajectories of recovery varied between different regions

The climate and environment of Byzantine Anatolia: Integrating science, history, and archaeology

pre-printThis article, which is part of a larger project, examines cases in which high-resolution archaeological, textual, and environmental data can be integrated with longer-term, low-resolution data to afford greater precision in identifying some of the causal relationships underlying societal change

Managing the Roman Empire for the long term: risk assessment and management policy in the fifth to seventh centuries

This chapter analyses the reasons for the survival of the eastern Roman state from three different but complementary angles: imperial administration, the environmental conditions impacting land-use for the period, and the ability of the state to leverage resources. We conclude that a major contributory factor in survival was the effective use of natural resources and a self-reinforcing social-ecological system through which the state and its elites and infrastructure facilitated the survival of landscapes, generating the resources necessary for the state’s continued existence. In areas where this broke down—as in the western part of the empire—the Roman state in the long term disappeared

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

Iconoclasia en Bizancio: mitos y realidades

Fil: Haldon, John. University of Princeton; Estados UnidosLa Iconoclasia bizantina se ha envuelto en una membrana casi impenetrable de actitudes y supuestos, muchos de ellos contradictorios. De hecho, cuando volvemos a examinar los textos en cuestión, y los ubicamos en su contexto histórico, rápidamente se hace evidente que muy poco de lo que se ha supuesto sobre el debate iconoclasta, es de hecho confiable. El contexto de la controversia iconoclasta está dado por la crisis política y económica que afectaba la región oriental del Imperio Romano tras las invasiones árabes a partir de los años 630 y el colapso del poder romano en la cuenca mediterránea oriental. La pregunta obvia es ¿por qué se produce la iconoclasia en este momento en particular? Antes del 680 y de los actos del Concilio, celebrado en Constantinopla en ese año, hay referencias dispersas a las imágenes que sugieren que de vez en cuando, y en determinadas circunstancias, algunos retratos sagrados en particular fueron venerados y se les otorgó poder para proteger a sus propietarios o para transmitir oraciones. Pero no hay pruebas de que la práctica fuera generalizada hasta entonces, después de lo cual tenemos un aluvión constante de referencias

Modelling climate and societal resilience in the Eastern Mediterranean in the last Millennium

This article analyses high-quality hydroclimate proxy records and spatial reconstructions from the Central and Eastern Mediterranean and compares them with two Earth System Model simulations (CCSM4, MPI-ESM-P) for the Crusader period in the Levant (1095–1290 CE), the Mamluk regime in Transjordan (1260–1516 CE) and the Ottoman crisis and Celâlî Rebellion(1580–1610 CE). During the three time intervals, environmental and climatic stress tested the resilience of complex societies.We find that the multidecadal precipitation and drought variations in the Central and Eastern Mediterranean cannot be explained by external forcings (solar variations, tropical volcanism); rather they were driven by internal climate dynamics. Our research emphasises the challenges, opportunities and limitations of linking proxy records, palaeoreconstructions and model simulations to better understand how climate can affect human history