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Palgrave Macmillan

Climate Change and Ancient Societies in Europe and the Near East

Diversity in Collapse and Resilience

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  • © 2021

Overview

  • Explores the link between climate and society in ancient worlds
  • Contributes to the multi-disciplinary debate between scholars working on climate and society
  • Highlights the role of human agency and the complex interactions of the natural environment

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Ancient Economies (PASTAE)

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About this book

Climate change over the past thousands of years is undeniable, but debate has arisen about its impact on past human societies.  This book explores the link between climate and society in ancient worlds, focusing on the ancient economies of western Eurasia and northern Africa from the fourth millennium BCE up to the end of the first millennium CE.

This book contributes to the multi-disciplinary debate between scholars working on climate and society from various backgrounds. The chronological boundaries of the book are set by the emergence of complex societies in the Neolithic on the one end and the rise of early-modern states in global political and economic exchange on the other. In order to stimulate comparison across the boundaries of modern periodization, this book ends with demography and climate change in early-modern and modern Italy, a society whose empirical data allows the kind of statistical analysis that is impossible for ancient societies.  

The book highlights the role of human agency, and the complex interactions between the natural environment and the socio-cultural, political, demographic, and economic infrastructure of any given society.  It is intended for a wide audience of scholars and students in ancient economic history, specifically Rome and Late Antiquity.

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Keywords

Table of contents (20 chapters)

Editors and Affiliations

  • Department of History, Faculty of Languages and the Humanities, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Elsene, Belgium

    Paul Erdkamp

  • Department of History, Yale University, New Haven, USA

    Joseph G. Manning

  • Department of History, Ghent University, Gent, Belgium

    Koenraad Verboven

About the editors

Paul Erdkamp is Professor in Ancient History at Vrije Universiteit Brussels, Belgium.  He teaches Ancient History, specializing in the Roman World, with a particular interest in economy, food supply, historiography, and environmental and social aspects of army and war.

Joseph G. Manning is Professor of Classics and Professor of History and Senior Research Scholar in Law at Yale University, New Haven, USA.  He specializes in Hellenistic history with particular focus on the legal and economic history of Ptolemaic Egypt.

Koenraad Verboven is Professor of Ancient History at the University of Ghent, Belgium. He specializes in ancient social and economic history, particularly of the Roman world, and has a special interest in monetary history and numismatics, friendship and patronage based networks, guilds (collegia), (neo-)institutional analysis and complexity economics.

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Climate Change and Ancient Societies in Europe and the Near East

  • Book Subtitle: Diversity in Collapse and Resilience

  • Editors: Paul Erdkamp, Joseph G. Manning, Koenraad Verboven

  • Series Title: Palgrave Studies in Ancient Economies

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81103-7

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham

  • eBook Packages: Economics and Finance, Economics and Finance (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-81102-0Published: 06 November 2021

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-81105-1Published: 06 November 2022

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-81103-7Published: 05 November 2021

  • Series ISSN: 2752-3292

  • Series E-ISSN: 2752-3306

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: LVI, 623

  • Number of Illustrations: 35 b/w illustrations, 59 illustrations in colour

  • Topics: Economic History, Agricultural Economics, History of Ancient Europe

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