The Mediterranean in the first millennium CE saw significant environmental and climatic changes which have been identified as causes for major short- and long-term societal and political processes and events, such as the rise and fall of empires. SSE1K examines textual, archaeological and environmental evidence to investigate human experiences of environmental and climatic variation in the Mediterranean in the first millennium CE, focusing in particular on how people responded both intellectually and socially to these changing conditions. The project considers the complex relationships between people and their environments, especially in relation to how human perceptions and ways of thinking shaped societal, political and religious responses to environmental and climatic change, and explores issues such as how the circulation of knowledge and adaptability intersect with sustainability and resilience in pre-modern societies.
Unusually for a research project focusing on the relationships between humans and environmental change in the past, this project is humanities-led rather than science-led; however, the research undertaken is interdisciplinary and crosses the boundaries between history, archaeology and environmental sciences. By focusing on human experience and human responses we place humanities-focused questions at the centre of scientific study and aim to produce effective, high-quality interdisciplinary research which combines methods, approaches and evidence from different disciplines to make the most of the limited and fragmentary material which survives from this period of the distant past. In addition, we explore the ways in which humanities research can contribute to scientific study, and conversely how scientific research can contribute to the study of the humanities.
The project seeks to move away from simple narratives of causation, and in particular from simple narratives of collapse, to explore issues relating to resilience and knowledge transfer. Importantly, the research team examines different cultural contexts (primarily the Latin-speaking West, the Greek-speaking East, and the Arabic-speaking Islamic Mediterranean) both separately and in comparison: this allows us to identify both the contribution of specific cultural norms to responses to environmental change, and also the contribution of particular environmental factors to human experiences within different cultural dynamics. By focusing on both intellectual and social responses to changing environmental conditions – since these are intrinsically linked but rarely examined together – the project aims to identify and understand the full complexity of human-environment relationships in the Mediterranean in the first millennium CE.
