Andrew McNey

Research Topic

Survival Against Climate Change and War in the 6th Century: The Resilient Communities of the Levant

“From the time when this thing happened men were free neither from war nor pestilence nor any other thing that brings death.” (Procopius, Bell. 4.14.5-6, tr. Kaldellis). As described by the Byzantine scholar and historian Procopius, the 6th century was perhaps one of the most disruptive periods in the historical record. Those living on the borders of the Byzantine Empire faced an unprecedented ecological shift, the first outbreak of the bubonic plague and the rekindling of military conflict between the Byzantine and Persian Empires. Recent paleoclimate data has unlocked new research possibilities, demonstrating through dendroecological studies a clearly identifiable period of climate instability in the middle 6th century. Human-environment relationships that were previously locked behind a lack of direct climate evidence are finally available with increasing precision. This has inspired a new wave of research that has begun to unpack how some communities managed to survive such complete upheaval. Settlements documented in the archaeological record demonstrate incredible resilience against what we might otherwise call a climate disaster.  My project will push this research further. To understand how it was possible that some communities survived this turmoil, we must study them in the finest detail possible. It is time we turned our attention towards the individual.

Supervisor: Fanny Bessard