Human-environment dynamics in the ancient Mediterranean. Keywords of a research field

Abstract

Human-environment dynamics in past societies has been a major field of research in the Mediterranean for a long time, but has grown significantly following the increase in the number and quality of palaeoclimate and palaeoenvironmental records in the last two decades. Here we sketch the outline of this field of research based on 1,531 author keywords from 280 peer-reviewed articles published in 78 different scientific journals during 2016–2021. Sourced from the Web of Science, the selected studies cover the time span from the Neolithic to the Roman period across the Mediterranean and provide a large number of entry points for the interested reader regardless of their prior knowledge and specific interests. The results make evident the breadth and interdisciplinary nature of this research and show that it is possible to approach questions of human-environment dynamics in many and diverse ways. Among other things, our overview outlines the importance of temporal and spatial scales, as well as the elusive nature of causality, and highlights that monocausal models connecting climate events and societal collapse are increasingly replaced by scenarios favouring more nuanced renditions of the sequence of events within which internal societal factors are given more room for play.

7 Recent research on climate, environment, and society in the ancient Greek world

“…7.1 ). The study thus shows the importance of adapting chronological resolution to facilitate comparison between proxy data and the archaeological record (Weiberg and Finné 2022). This research also highlights how humid climate conditions may have helped to push land use and cultivation in areas of the landscape with thinner soil cover in different periods (Bonnier and Finné 2021; Weiberg, Bonnier and Finné 2021; Fig.…”

“…Until recently, studies of climate and society in Greece and the eastern Mediterranean were focused primarily on the impact of climate change on societal collapse. Such research has generally been focused on the breakdown of societal organization and settlement structures in light of catastrophic climate events, which prompted periods of extraordinarily arid conditions in the Late Bronze Age (for example, Cullen et al 2000;Middleton 2010;Kaniewski, Guiot and Van Campo 2015;Kaniewski and Van Campo 2017;Weiss 2017; see also the review in Weiberg and Finné 2022). In a Greek context, research has focused on the possible impact of the climate in the destruction of the Mycenaean palatial system, at the time of the so-called '3.2k event' (referring to 3200 BP in scientific dating, i.e.…”

“…Kyle Harper’s book on climate change in the later Roman Empire (2017) has prompted much critique and debate on the possible impact of climate on societal transformations in this period (Erdkamp 2019; Haldon et al 2018a; 2018b). Discussions on climate change and socio-environmental trajectories in the Greek world during the historical periods have, however, been much more limited, particularly in the context of the Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic eras (as has also been discussed in Post 2022a; Weiberg and Finné 2022). Multidisciplinary research on Egypt and the impact of volcanic eruptions on the Nile summer floods, disruptions in agricultural production, and societal responses during the Hellenistic period has been carried out by Joseph Manning and colleagues, utilizing Arctic ice core data (Manning et al 2017; Ludlow and Manning 2021).…”

Archaeological Evidence for Community Resilience and Sustainability: A Bibliometric and Quantitative Review

“…The Peloponnese, and Aegean region more broadly, are the focus in these papers. Weiberg and colleagues have written extensively about climate-society interactions in the Eastern Mediterranean, including detailed sophisticated analyses of resilience and persistence [116,117].…”