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Abstract
Environmental history is a well-established discipline that until recently focused mainly on the modern era and was dominated by historians. Numerous scholars agree today that this needs to change: a focus on Late Antiquity can help this happen. To make it possible, we should concentrate our efforts on three parallel projects. First, make late antique studies more interdisciplinary, i.e. joining the efforts of historians, archaeologists and natural scientists. Second, look at Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages as a source of case studies that are relevant to the central themes of environmental history. Third, use environmental history as a new framework that has the potential to modify our vision of the 1st millennium AD, by getting us closer to the actual experience of the people who lived this past.
Abstract
This paper examines the archaeological, palynological and textual evidence for economic prosperity in the Anatolian countryside in Late Antiquity. Thanks to the separate analysis of data for coastal and inland regions, it shows that we do not see any substantial differences in the functioning of the rural economy between these two geographical zones. Therefore, the new demand from Constantinople for agricultural produce or a local economy’s proximity to a long-distance exchange network, cannot explain fully the observed phenomena. The vitality and complexity of local economies must also have played an important role in the economic expansion of Anatolia’s late antique countryside.
Abstract
Environmental history is a well-established discipline that until recently focused mainly on the modern era and was dominated by historians. Numerous scholars agree today that this needs to change: a focus on Late Antiquity can help this happen. To make it possible, we should concentrate our efforts on three parallel projects. First, make late antique studies more interdisciplinary, i.e. joining the efforts of historians, archaeologists and natural scientists. Second, look at Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages as a source of case studies that are relevant to the central themes of environmental history. Third, use environmental history as a new framework that has the potential to modify our vision of the 1st millennium AD, by getting us closer to the actual experience of the people who lived this past.
Abstract
This paper examines the archaeological, palynological and textual evidence for economic prosperity in the Anatolian countryside in Late Antiquity. Thanks to the separate analysis of data for coastal and inland regions, it shows that we do not see any substantial differences in the functioning of the rural economy between these two geographical zones. Therefore, the new demand from Constantinople for agricultural produce or a local economy’s proximity to a long-distance exchange network, cannot explain fully the observed phenomena. The vitality and complexity of local economies must also have played an important role in the economic expansion of Anatolia’s late antique countryside.
Abstract
This paper examines the archaeological, palynological and textual evidence for economic prosperity in the Anatolian countryside in Late Antiquity. Thanks to the separate analysis of data for coastal and inland regions, it shows that we do not see any substantial differences in the functioning of the rural economy between these two geographical zones. Therefore, the new demand from Constantinople for agricultural produce or a local economy’s proximity to a long-distance exchange network, cannot explain fully the observed phenomena. The vitality and complexity of local economies must also have played an important role in the economic expansion of Anatolia’s late antique countryside.
Abstract
Environmental history is a well-established discipline that until recently focused mainly on the modern era and was dominated by historians. Numerous scholars agree today that this needs to change: a focus on Late Antiquity can help this happen. To make it possible, we should concentrate our efforts on three parallel projects. First, make late antique studies more interdisciplinary, i.e. joining the efforts of historians, archaeologists and natural scientists. Second, look at Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages as a source of case studies that are relevant to the central themes of environmental history. Third, use environmental history as a new framework that has the potential to modify our vision of the 1st millennium AD, by getting us closer to the actual experience of the people who lived this past.