Periodic Reporting for period 1 - SSE1K (Science, Society and Environmental Change in the First Millennium CE)
Okres sprawozdawczy: 2023-01-01 do 2025-06-30
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.
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.
In order to address the large research problems raised by the project, the research team has worked hard on the collaborative design of research questions which allow us to investigate human experiences of environmental change, and human responses to it. This is particularly important since research questions from different disciplines often point in different directions: the challenges of this project are firstly to identify appropriate questions relating to relationships between humans and environmental change in the past, and secondly to identify the best ways of addressing these by examining the surviving historical, archaeological and environmental evidence. Through extensive discussion and analysis of previous research we have been able to develop new methodological approaches for interdisciplinary research combining evidence and approaches from history, archaeology and environmental sciences. In particular we have focused on how to retain rigour when working across different disciplines, to ensure that we produce excellent research which is truly interdisciplinary rather than being primarily the product of one discipline or another.
Addressing our research questions and problems requires the collection, preparation and analysis of a large body of data, which has been one of the main tasks for the researchers on the project team so far. The datasets produced draw on historical, archaeological and environmental evidence: they incorporate both legacy data (e.g. from previous excavations or from previous environmental research), and data from re-analysis of existing samples, and data from new environmental samples. These datasets are themselves a significant output but will also form the basis for ongoing analysis and interpretation.
In addition, a major output of the project will be an Agent-Based Model (ABM) which will allow us to test alternative hypotheses by simulating how people in the past may have responded to changing environmental circumstances. One of the major novelties of our ABM will be the incorporation of historical material, since previous research employing ABM approaches to understand human-environment relationships in the past has tended to focus on archaeological data without the incorporation of historical evidence. Our use of historical evidence is significant, however, since it informs the assumptions about past societies which are incorporated into the ABM: archaeological evidence is vital for understanding the material reality of human experience, but historical texts offer additional perspectives on cultural contexts, institutions, beliefs and ideologies which are not visible in the archaeological record.
Addressing our research questions and problems requires the collection, preparation and analysis of a large body of data, which has been one of the main tasks for the researchers on the project team so far. The datasets produced draw on historical, archaeological and environmental evidence: they incorporate both legacy data (e.g. from previous excavations or from previous environmental research), and data from re-analysis of existing samples, and data from new environmental samples. These datasets are themselves a significant output but will also form the basis for ongoing analysis and interpretation.
In addition, a major output of the project will be an Agent-Based Model (ABM) which will allow us to test alternative hypotheses by simulating how people in the past may have responded to changing environmental circumstances. One of the major novelties of our ABM will be the incorporation of historical material, since previous research employing ABM approaches to understand human-environment relationships in the past has tended to focus on archaeological data without the incorporation of historical evidence. Our use of historical evidence is significant, however, since it informs the assumptions about past societies which are incorporated into the ABM: archaeological evidence is vital for understanding the material reality of human experience, but historical texts offer additional perspectives on cultural contexts, institutions, beliefs and ideologies which are not visible in the archaeological record.
Our research moves beyond the state of the art by building successful methodologies for integrating data and approaches from different disciplines in ways which are appropriate (by acknowledging both the limitations and the potential of the different disciplines involved), rigorous (by employing specialists, including external collaborators where necessary, to ensure that different kinds of evidence are analysed and used legitimately following specific disciplinary norms), and balanced (in that all disciplines are treated with equal importance, so that one is not prioritised over another). As a result, based on rigorous analysis of surviving historical texts, archaeological evidence and palaeoenvironmental data, we have developed novel interpretations of the climatic downturn of the mid sixth century, and the effects of changing precipitation on the study of Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul, the capital of the eastern Roman Empire from the fourth century CE). Our development of protocols and documentation system for recording information derived from historical texts which can be used to inform the ABM also goes beyond the state of the art, not only because it allows us to present exciting new analyses based on the ABM, but also since we have established a framework which can be used and developed further by future research projects. Finally, we are able to present new high-resolution analysis of speleothem samples (both from new and existing samples) which provide important new data for the eastern Mediterranean and which will allow us to present novel conclusions about human-environment relationships in this area.