LibGuides: HIST 2310: Fall of Rome: Climate Change

Books

Environment and Society in the Long Late Antiquity

Environment and Society in the Long Late Antiquity bring together scientific, archaeological, and historical evidence on the interplay of social change and environmental phenomena at the end of Antiquity and the dawn of the Middle Ages, ca. 300-800 AD.

Ancient Economic Thought

Check out chapters 8 & 9

This book explores the interrelationship between economic practice and religion, ethics, and social structure in a number of ancient cultures, including ancient East Indian, Hebraic, Greek, Hellenistic, Roman, and emerging European cultures.

Articles

The Justinianic Plague: An inconsequential pandemic?
by Lee Mordechai, et al
from PNAS
The Justinianic Plague (circa 541 to 750 CE) has recently featured prominently in scholarly and popular discussions. Current consensus accepts that it resulted in the deaths of between a quarter and half of the population of the Mediterranean, playing a key role in the fall of the Roman Empire. Our contribution argues that earlier estimates are founded on a small subset of textual evidence and are not supported by many other independent types of evidence (e.g., papyri, coins, inscriptions, and pollen archaeology). We, therefore, conclude that earlier analyses of the mortality and social effects of the plague are exaggerated and that the nontextual evidence suggests the plague did not play a significant role in the transformation of the Mediterranean world or Europe.