Abstract
During the past decade, several studies have related the rise of the Roman Empire to the Roman Climatic Optimum, and its subsequent decline to the so-called Late Antique Little Ice Age. Climate change undoubtedly had an impact on agricultural production and practices, but the impact was far from uniform in the diverse landscapes. It is very well possible that changes in averages and the variability of temperature and precipitation and in the pattern of extreme weather raised the frequency of bad harvests of cereal and other crops in those regions that were susceptible to these changes. However, in most regions the severity of change remained well within the biological tolerance range of crops. Agricultural systems were never fixed, but always subjected to environmental and societal circumstances. To the extent that more frequent weather extremes affected agricultural production in the long term, climate change may have caused a kind of ‘Boserupian’ response that compensated for the fall in crop yields and land productivity.
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Notes
- 1.
Grain production in Egypt will not be addressed, despite its importance for the Roman state, as along the Nile the link between weather and harvest operated significantly different from the largely rain-fed agriculture in the rest of the Roman world. Moreover, outside the cities of Rome and Constantinople, the impact of Egypt’s grain on the food supply of the Roman Empire should not be overstated. See Erdkamp (2019).
- 2.
Cf. Haldon et al. (2014, 121): “The RWP [Roman Warm Period] was not warm and wet everywhere all the time.”
- 3.
However, Xoplaki et al. (in this volume) present data that show variability at the multi-decadal scale and differences between various parts of the Mediterranean region. Recent paleoclimate studies going back to the second millennium BCE demonstrate that uniform climatic eras do not adequately describe past climate change. Neukom et al. (2019).
- 4.
In Camenish’s (2015) analysis of the impact of the weather on grain prices, only the 1430s were apparently affected by the Spörer minimum, but not the 1420s or the 1440s.
- 5.
Thus e.g. Quiroga and Iglesias (2009, 91): “The Mediterranean region suffers from recurrent drought episodes resulting in highly variable rainfed production […]. Farmers have adapted to these conditions over hundreds of years.”
- 6.
Mougou et al. (2011). The average annual rainfall between 1950 and 2004 was 282 mm, but maximum was 734.4 mm, minimum 133.1 mm. The statement on general water deficit is based on data for the period 1979–2000.
- 7.
Cf. Prudentius, Symm. 2.960ff: “If the corn grew up before it could firm with its tender milk the grains it had conceived, and its sap was checked by the breath of a hot east wind, so that it produced unfertile stalks and a barren forest of straws cheated the farmer’s hopes and brought them to nothing.”
- 8.
In contrast, a less preferred kind of cereal like millet was mentioned specifically in connection with peasants by Columella, Res Rust. 2.9,17. Cf. Spurr (1986, 97).
- 9.
Columella 2.9,8; Pliny, Nat. Hist. 18.70. See also, Spurr (1986, 42ff, 66f).
- 10.
Heinrich (2017) discusses the various properties of cereal types cultivated in Italy and their (dis)advantages from the point of view of production and distribution.
- 11.
Labuhn et al. (2018, 71–73).
- 12.
Brooke sets the chronological boundaries of the LIA at 1400–1700; Camenish and Rohr (2018) on the basis of the historical archive as 1300–1850; Esper et al. (2018, 87) on the basis of long-term dendrological series as seventeenth to nineteenth century. White (2014) assigns different chronological boundaries on the basis of different criteria, which illustrates that the LIA is a real, but in a sense also indefinable climatic phenomenon.
- 13.
Diaz and Trouet (2014, 163) point out that at the end of the Roman Climatic Period and the beginning medieval Dark Age, which they place at around 300 CE, there was no unilateral force that was comparable to the Mesoamerican drought at the end of the first millennium.
- 14.
E.g. Bevan et al. (2017) point to a “striking consistency” in human population dynamics across regions of Britain and Ireland during middle and later Holocene. Similar, Hin (2013, 86—90): “During warming periods, population has tended to grow; during cooling periods, it has tended to stagnate or decline” (p. 89).
- 15.
A similar suggestion is made in Labuhn et al. (2018, 83).
- 16.
To put this figure in perspective: of the total area of modern Italy (including the islands) about 11.5 million ha is characterized as mountainous.
- 17.
The relative impact was much greater at higher latitudes. Regarding Scotland, for example, Parry (1985) estimates that in 1150—250 AD, oats were grown up height of 450 metres, but in 1600 only to 265 metres. At such low altitudes, an altitudinal difference of nearly 200 metres. has a much greater impact on total area of potential arable land than in Italy.
- 18.
Hence, a statement like the following is simply wrong: “The basic cycle of production of food and necessities was determined by the landscape and geography of the [Byzantine] empire’s territories”. Haldon and Rosen (2018, 282–283).
- 19.
Such a scenario is suggested for Byzantine southwest Anatolia, where abandonment of certain places at altitudes above 1,200 metres is explained by the migration towards more attractive and underpopulated territories in a context of cooler conditions, warfare and other calamities. Haldon et al. (2014, 147).
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I would like to thank Frits Heinrich, Daniel Jew and Thomas Gartmann for their comments on an earlier version of this paper.
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Erdkamp, P. (2021). Climate Change and the Productive Landscape in the Mediterranean Region in the Roman Period. In: Erdkamp, P., Manning, J.G., Verboven, K. (eds) Climate Change and Ancient Societies in Europe and the Near East. Palgrave Studies in Ancient Economies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81103-7_14
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