Synopsis
Environment and Society in the Long Late Antiquity, edited by Adam Izdebski and Michael Mulryan and published by Brill in 2019, is a pioneering interdisciplinary volume that explores the complex interplay between environmental phenomena and societal changes in the Mediterranean world and beyond during the period roughly spanning 300–800 CE. This era, often referred to as Late Antiquity, marks a critical transition between the classical world and the early Middle Ages, characterized by significant political, cultural, economic, and environmental shifts. The book brings together contributions from historians, archaeologists, and natural scientists to offer a nuanced, non-catastrophist perspective on how human societies interacted with their environments during this transformative period. Rather than framing environmental factors as deterministic causes of societal collapse, the volume emphasizes the diversity of human responses to challenges such as climate fluctuations, disease, earthquakes, and landscape changes, highlighting resilience, adaptation, and innovation across a geographically expansive region that includes the Mediterranean, Northern Europe, and parts of the Near East.
The book is structured around three primary aims: integrating interdisciplinary methodologies, demonstrating the broader relevance of Late Antique case studies for environmental history, and reshaping historical narratives of the first millennium by foregrounding environmental factors. It begins with introductory and bibliographic essays that set the stage, including Izdebski’s own contribution on framing an environmental history of Late Antiquity. These essays provide a foundation for understanding the available data and scholarly debates, emphasizing the need to bridge the divide between humanities and natural sciences. The volume then delves into general surveys that address overarching themes, such as climatic changes in the Mediterranean, the impact of infectious diseases, and shifts in agricultural practices. These chapters draw on paleoenvironmental data, such as pollen records and climate proxies, alongside historical and archaeological evidence to trace patterns of environmental change and their societal implications.
A significant portion of the book is dedicated to regional and site-specific case studies, which ground the broader themes in concrete examples. In the Western Mediterranean, studies explore topics like the environmental and economic dynamics of the Iberian Peninsula, olive cultivation in Southern Apulia, and land-use patterns in lowland Britain. In the Eastern Mediterranean, contributors examine sites such as Butrint in Albania, where environmental and societal changes are analyzed through sediment cores and archaeological records, and Antioch in the sixth century, which probes the city’s resilience or vulnerability to environmental stressors. Other chapters address Byzantine Northern Anatolia’s grain production and the deltaic environments of Northern Egypt. These case studies illustrate the diversity of environmental conditions and human responses, from intensive state-driven agriculture in the early part of the period to more localized, subsistence-based practices in later centuries, reflecting the regionalization of the post-Roman world.