Lee Mordechai | The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (original) (raw)
Papers by Lee Mordechai
הגרסה המעודכנת ביותר של מסמך זה נמצאת בכתובת: https://witnessing-the-gaza-war.com/he/בית/. את הגר... more הגרסה המעודכנת ביותר של מסמך זה נמצאת בכתובת: https://witnessing-the-gaza-war.com/he/בית/. את הגרסה כאן אעדכן רק מדי כמה חודשים.
<עדכון - 18.6.24>
אני, לי מרדכי, היסטוריון ואזרח ישראלי, מעיד במסמך זה, במהלך האירועים המתפתחים, על המצב הנורא ברצועת עזה. אני כותב את דעתי האישית מתוך אחריות כפולה: כאזרח שמדינתו מבצעת מה שאני רואה כפשעים חמורים, וכאקדמאי, שמאמין שמאחר והקדשתי את הקריירה שלי עד כה למחקר ולהוראת אחרים עליי להצביע על אי-צדק, במיוחד כשהוא מתרחש כל כך קרוב. אני כותב גם בשל השתיקה המאכזבת בנושא בקרב מוסדות אקדמיים רבים בישראל ובעולם, במיוחד כאלו שהיה מצופה מהם להשמיע את קולם בבירור. קומץ העמיתות והעמיתים שלי שבחרו לדבר באופן אמיץ היוו עבורי השראה.
אינני מאמין שמסמך זה ישכנע רבים, אבל כתבתי אותו כדי להעיד שבזמן המלחמה היו וישנם גם קולות ישראליים שדיברו אחרת.
The most up-to-date version of this document is now at https://witnessing-the-gaza-war.com/. I wi... more The most up-to-date version of this document is now at https://witnessing-the-gaza-war.com/. I will upload versions here only periodically.
<documented updated on June 18, 2024>
I, Lee Mordechai, a historian and an Israeli citizen, bear witness in this document, as events are unfolding, to the horrible situation in the Gaza Strip. I write my personal opinion out of a sense of double responsibility: as a citizen whose country is committing what I consider as grave crimes, and as an academic, who believes that after having dedicated my career so far to research and teaching others I am obliged to speak up against injustice, especially when it is so close. I write also because of the disappointing general silence on this issue among many international and Israeli academic institutions, especially those that are well-positioned to comment on it. The relatively few of my colleagues who have bravely spoken out have been an inspiration. I do not believe this document will convince many others to change their minds. Rather, I write this publicly to testify that during the war there were and remain Israeli voices who strongly dissented from Israel’s actions.
Global Environmental Change, 2022
In light of the challenges posed by contemporary environmental changes, interest in past environm... more In light of the challenges posed by contemporary environmental changes, interest in past environmental impacts and societies' responses to them is burgeoning. The main strength of such research lies in its ability to analyze completed society-environment interactions. Scholars have argued that such analyses can improve our understanding of present challenges and offer useful lessons to guide adaptation responses. Yet despite considerable differences between past and present societies, our inherently limited knowledge of the past and our changing understanding of it, much of this research uses historical antecedents uncritically, assuming that past societal impacts and responses are directly analogous to contemporary ones. We argue that this approach is unsound both methodologically and theoretically, thus drawing insights that might offer an erroneous course of action. To illustrate the challenges in drawing historical analogies, we outline several fundamental differences between past and present societies as well as broader limitations of historical research. Based on these points, we argue that scholars who apply historical inference in their work should do so critically, while reflecting on the objectives of learning from the past and the limitations of this process. We suggest a number of ways to improve past-present analogies, such as defining more explicitly what we can learn from the past, clarifying the rationale for using the analogy, and reducing the number of variables compared between past and present.
Winds of Change, 2021
The authors of this book acknowledge that the work is their original creation, that all the opini... more The authors of this book acknowledge that the work is their original creation, that all the opinions are their own, that no one else can be held accountable for them, and that there are no parts in their work that could infringe upon the rights of third parties.
This article surveys some examples of the ways past societies have responded to environmental str... more This article surveys some examples of the ways past societies have responded to environmental stressors such as famine, war, and pandemic. We show that people in the past did think about system recovery, but only on a sectoral scale. They did perceive challenges and respond appropriately, but within cultural constraints and resource limitations. Risk mitigation was generally limited in scope, localized, and again determined by cultural logic that may not necessarily have been aware of more than symptoms, rather than actual causes. We also show that risk-managing and risk-mitigating arrangements often favored the vested interests of elites rather than the population more widely, an issue policy makers today still face.
How environmental stress affected past societies is an area of increasing relevance for contempor... more How environmental stress affected past societies is an area of increasing relevance for contemporary planning and policy concerns. The paper below examines a series of case studies that demonstrate that short-term strategies that sustain a state or a specific bundle of vested interests did not necessarily promote longer-term societal resilience and often increased structural pressures leading to systemic crisis. Some societies or states possessed sufficient structural flexibility to overcome very serious short-term challenges without further exacerbating existing inequalities. But even where efforts were made consciously to assist the entire
The American Historical Review, 2020
This article explores how plague—as an idea—became an ahistorical independent agent of historical... more This article explores how plague—as an idea—became an ahistorical independent agent of historical change. It focuses on the case of the Justinianic Plague (ca. 541–750 c.e.), the first major recorded plague pandemic in Mediterranean history, which has increasingly been used to explain significant demographic, political, social, economic, and cultural change during late antiquity (ca. 300–800 c.e.). We argue that the Justinianic Plague retains its great historiographic power—namely, its supposed destructive impact over two centuries—because it evokes a terrifying myth of what plague should do rather than because of conclusive evidence of what it did. We define this historiographic power as the plague concept. It includes three key features: extensive chronology (lasting for two centuries), mortality (catastrophic death toll), and geography (global). The plague concept is built on three interdisciplinary types of evidence (here termed truisms): rats, climate, and paleogenetics. Our article traces how scientists constructed the plague concept in the first half of the twentieth century, and how historians entered the discussion in the last third of that century. As historians engaged in Justinianic Plague research, they used the plague concept to frame their arguments without problematizing its presence or contesting features that scientists had constructed decades earlier.
Medizinhistorisches Journal , 2020
Medizinhistorisches Journal, 2020
We are thankful that Mischa Meier has engaged with our work. Further discussion of the Justiniani... more We are thankful that Mischa Meier has engaged with our work. Further discussion of the Justinianic Plague will only present new avenues forward and improve everyone's understanding of late antiquity. Meier's second response raises questions that have wider implications within the historical discipline and are worth discussing more closely. He claimed we argue that:
PLOS ONE, 2020
The Justinianic Plague, the first part of the earliest of the three plague pandemics, has minimal... more The Justinianic Plague, the first part of the earliest of the three plague pandemics, has minimal historical documentation. Based on the limited primary sources, historians have argued both for and against the "maximalist narrative" of plague, i.e. that the Justinianic Plague had universally devastating effects throughout the Mediterranean region during the sixth century CE. Using primary sources of one of the pandemic's best documented outbreaks that took place in Constantinople during 542 CE, as well as modern findings on plague etiology and epidemiology, we developed a series of dynamic, compartmental models of disease to explore which, if any, transmission routes of plague are feasible. Using expected parameter values, we find that the bubonic and bubonic-pneumonic transmission routes exceed maxi-malist mortality estimates and are of shorter detectable duration than described by the primary sources. When accounting for parameter uncertainty, several of the bubonic plague model configurations yielded interquartile estimates consistent with the upper end of maxi-malist estimates of mortality; however, these models had shorter detectable outbreaks than suggested by the primary sources. The pneumonic transmission routes suggest that by itself, pneumonic plague would not cause significant mortality in the city. However, our global sensitivity analysis shows that predicted disease dynamics vary widely for all hypothesized transmission routes, suggesting that regardless of its effects in Constantinople, the Justinianic Plague would have likely had differential effects across urban areas around the Mediterranean. Our work highlights the uncertainty surrounding the details in the primary sources on the Justinianic Plague and calls into question the likelihood that the Justinianic Plague affected all localities in the same way.
Studies in Source Criticism, 2020
Cover photo: Bust of Emperor Theodosius II (reigned ad 408-450); marble, fifth century ad. © Mari... more Cover photo: Bust of Emperor Theodosius II (reigned ad 408-450); marble, fifth century ad. © Marie-Lan Nguyen / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.5) Cover: Maryna Wiśniewska
Existing mortality estimates assert that the Justinianic Plague (circa 541 to 750 CE) caused tens... more Existing mortality estimates assert that the Justinianic Plague (circa 541 to 750 CE) caused tens of millions of deaths throughout the Mediterranean world and Europe, helping to end antiquity and start the Middle Ages. In this article, we argue that this paradigm does not fit the evidence. We examine a series of independent quantitative and qualitative datasets that are directly or indirectly linked to demographic and economic trends during this two-century period: Written sources, legislation, coinage, papyri, inscriptions, pollen, ancient DNA, and mortuary archaeology. Individually or together, they fail to support the maximalist paradigm: None has a clear independent link to plague outbreaks and none supports maximalist reconstructions of late antique plague. Instead of large-scale, disruptive mortality, when contextualized and examined together, the datasets suggest continuity across the plague period. Although demographic, economic, and political changes continued between the 6th and 8th centuries, the evidence does not support the now commonplace claim that the Justinianic Plague was a primary causal factor of them.
https://www.pnas.org/content/116/51/25546
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 2019
This article is a detailed critical review of all the major scholarly publications in the rapidly... more This article is a detailed critical review of all the major scholarly publications in the rapidly expanding field of the Justinianic Plague published from 2000 through 2018. It updates the article in Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies by Dionysios Stathakopoulos from 2000, while also providing a detailed appraisal of the state of the field across all disciplines, including: literary studies, archaeology, DNA evidence, climatology, and epidemiology. We also identify the current paradigm for the Justinianic Plague as well as survey possible avenues forward for the field in the future.
Recent research has increasingly argued that the Justinianic Plague was an unparalleled demograph... more Recent research has increasingly argued that the Justinianic Plague was an unparalleled demographic catastrophe which killed half the population of the Mediterranean world and led to the end of Antiquity. This article re-examines the evidence and reconsiders whether this interpretation is justified. It builds upon an array of interdisciplinary research that includes literary and non-literary primary sources, archaeological excavations, DNA research, disaster studies and resilience frameworks. Each type of primary source material is critically reassessed and contextualized in light of current research. By drawing upon this interdisciplinary foundation, the article demonstrates that the evidence for the catastrophic maximalist interpretation of plague is weak, ambiguous and should be rejected. The article also makes use of the Third Pandemic as a comparative case study, and considers how the metanarratives of plague in contemporary society influence research on the subject. It concludes that the Justinianic Plague had an overall limited effect on late antique society. Although on some occasions the plague might have caused high mortality in specific places, leaving strong impressions on contemporaries, it neither caused widespread demographic decline nor kept Mediterranean populations low. Any direct mid- or long-term effects of plague were minor at most.
Sixth century Antioch is perhaps the best example of statecity resilience in Late Antiquity. Over... more Sixth century Antioch is perhaps the best example of statecity resilience in Late Antiquity. Over the century, the city suffered multiple natural disasters, civil strife and external conflict. Scholars have generally accepted that the city declined as a result. This study integrates historical, archaeological and scientific data to illuminate the city's fate. It concludes that Antioch demonstrated remarkable resilience at the city level throughout the 6th c. The most important factor was the continuous support the city received from the central government.
A comparative approach to climate, environment and society in Eurasia: towards understanding the ... more A comparative approach to climate, environment and society in Eurasia: towards understanding the impact of climate on complex societies This interdisciplinary project investigates the impact of climatic changes across the last two millennia on societies in two environmentally sensitive areas:
This introductory article sets out some issues associated with the concept and theorization of 'r... more This introductory article sets out some issues associated with the concept and theorization of 'resilience'. We describe some historical contexts in which theories of societal resilience can be usefully deployed; we offer some challenges to critiques of the validity and usefulness of Formal Resilience Theory (Theory of Adaptive Change). Resilience, adaptation, and transformation are complex issues, and while we cannot tell the whole story through the lens of environmental change, we can integrate the various categories of evidence to attempt to focus in on where and how climate change might impact an imperial system. Using an example from Byzantine Anatolia we examine the most vulnerable segments, such as subsistence systems, with respect to the agency of elite managers and the role of religious identity. Thus we can throw light on how interconnected environmental and social factors might exert pressure on other sub-systems and thus the system as a whole.
We examine the social burden associated with resilience to environmental shocks in pre-modern soc... more We examine the social burden associated with resilience to environmental shocks in pre-modern societies. We argue that analyses of state-level interventions to mitigate the consequences of catastrophic events tend to isolate these measures from their larger social contexts and thereby overlook the uneven distribution of their burden across different groups. We use three cases of pre-modern societies in the northeastern Mediterranean-the sixth century Roman Empire, the tenth century Byzantine Empire, and the sixteenth century Ottoman Empire. We demonstrate how the adaptive processes that reinforced resilience at the state level incurred different burdens for those at lower levels of the social hierarchy. We found that some groups sustained losses while others gained unexpected benefits in the context of temporary systemic instability. We also found that although elites enjoyed enhanced buffers against the adverse effects in comparison with non-elites, this did not consistently guarantee them a better outcome. We conclude that the differentiated burden of resilience could in some cases entrench existing political or economic configurations, and in other cases, overturn them. Our case studies indirectly address the pressing issue of environmental justice.
This article analyses high-quality hydroclimate proxy records and spatial reconstructions from th... more This article analyses high-quality hydroclimate proxy records and spatial reconstructions from the Central and Eastern Mediterranean and compares them with two Earth System Model simulations (CCSM4, MPI-ESM-P) for the Crusader period in the Levant (1095–1290 CE), the Mamluk regime in Transjordan (1260–1516 CE) and the Ottoman crisis and Celâlî Rebellion (1580–1610 CE). During the three time intervals, environmental and climatic stress tested the resilience of complex societies. We find that the multidecadal precipitation and drought variations in the Central and Eastern Mediterranean cannot be explained by external forcings (solar variations, tropical volcanism); rather they were driven by internal climate dynamics. Our research emphasises the challenges, opportunities and limitations of linking proxy records, palaeoreconstructions and model simulations to better understand how climate can affect human history.
History and archaeology have a well-established engagement with issues of premodern societal deve... more History and archaeology have a well-established engagement with issues of premodern societal development and the interaction between physical and cultural environments; together, they offer a holistic view that can generate insights into the nature of cultural resilience and adaptation, as well as responses to catastrophe. Grasping the challenges that climate change presents and evolving appropriate policies that promote and support mitigation and adaptation requires not only an understanding of the science and the contemporary politics, but also an understanding of the history of the societies affected and in particular of their cultural logic. But whereas archaeologists have developed productive links with the paleosciences, historians have, on the whole, remained muted voices in the debate until recently. Here, we suggest several ways in which a consilience between the historical sciences and the natural sciences, including attention to even distant historical pasts, can deepen contemporary understanding of environmental change and its effects on human societies.
הגרסה המעודכנת ביותר של מסמך זה נמצאת בכתובת: https://witnessing-the-gaza-war.com/he/בית/. את הגר... more הגרסה המעודכנת ביותר של מסמך זה נמצאת בכתובת: https://witnessing-the-gaza-war.com/he/בית/. את הגרסה כאן אעדכן רק מדי כמה חודשים.
<עדכון - 18.6.24>
אני, לי מרדכי, היסטוריון ואזרח ישראלי, מעיד במסמך זה, במהלך האירועים המתפתחים, על המצב הנורא ברצועת עזה. אני כותב את דעתי האישית מתוך אחריות כפולה: כאזרח שמדינתו מבצעת מה שאני רואה כפשעים חמורים, וכאקדמאי, שמאמין שמאחר והקדשתי את הקריירה שלי עד כה למחקר ולהוראת אחרים עליי להצביע על אי-צדק, במיוחד כשהוא מתרחש כל כך קרוב. אני כותב גם בשל השתיקה המאכזבת בנושא בקרב מוסדות אקדמיים רבים בישראל ובעולם, במיוחד כאלו שהיה מצופה מהם להשמיע את קולם בבירור. קומץ העמיתות והעמיתים שלי שבחרו לדבר באופן אמיץ היוו עבורי השראה.
אינני מאמין שמסמך זה ישכנע רבים, אבל כתבתי אותו כדי להעיד שבזמן המלחמה היו וישנם גם קולות ישראליים שדיברו אחרת.
The most up-to-date version of this document is now at https://witnessing-the-gaza-war.com/. I wi... more The most up-to-date version of this document is now at https://witnessing-the-gaza-war.com/. I will upload versions here only periodically.
<documented updated on June 18, 2024>
I, Lee Mordechai, a historian and an Israeli citizen, bear witness in this document, as events are unfolding, to the horrible situation in the Gaza Strip. I write my personal opinion out of a sense of double responsibility: as a citizen whose country is committing what I consider as grave crimes, and as an academic, who believes that after having dedicated my career so far to research and teaching others I am obliged to speak up against injustice, especially when it is so close. I write also because of the disappointing general silence on this issue among many international and Israeli academic institutions, especially those that are well-positioned to comment on it. The relatively few of my colleagues who have bravely spoken out have been an inspiration. I do not believe this document will convince many others to change their minds. Rather, I write this publicly to testify that during the war there were and remain Israeli voices who strongly dissented from Israel’s actions.
Global Environmental Change, 2022
In light of the challenges posed by contemporary environmental changes, interest in past environm... more In light of the challenges posed by contemporary environmental changes, interest in past environmental impacts and societies' responses to them is burgeoning. The main strength of such research lies in its ability to analyze completed society-environment interactions. Scholars have argued that such analyses can improve our understanding of present challenges and offer useful lessons to guide adaptation responses. Yet despite considerable differences between past and present societies, our inherently limited knowledge of the past and our changing understanding of it, much of this research uses historical antecedents uncritically, assuming that past societal impacts and responses are directly analogous to contemporary ones. We argue that this approach is unsound both methodologically and theoretically, thus drawing insights that might offer an erroneous course of action. To illustrate the challenges in drawing historical analogies, we outline several fundamental differences between past and present societies as well as broader limitations of historical research. Based on these points, we argue that scholars who apply historical inference in their work should do so critically, while reflecting on the objectives of learning from the past and the limitations of this process. We suggest a number of ways to improve past-present analogies, such as defining more explicitly what we can learn from the past, clarifying the rationale for using the analogy, and reducing the number of variables compared between past and present.
Winds of Change, 2021
The authors of this book acknowledge that the work is their original creation, that all the opini... more The authors of this book acknowledge that the work is their original creation, that all the opinions are their own, that no one else can be held accountable for them, and that there are no parts in their work that could infringe upon the rights of third parties.
This article surveys some examples of the ways past societies have responded to environmental str... more This article surveys some examples of the ways past societies have responded to environmental stressors such as famine, war, and pandemic. We show that people in the past did think about system recovery, but only on a sectoral scale. They did perceive challenges and respond appropriately, but within cultural constraints and resource limitations. Risk mitigation was generally limited in scope, localized, and again determined by cultural logic that may not necessarily have been aware of more than symptoms, rather than actual causes. We also show that risk-managing and risk-mitigating arrangements often favored the vested interests of elites rather than the population more widely, an issue policy makers today still face.
How environmental stress affected past societies is an area of increasing relevance for contempor... more How environmental stress affected past societies is an area of increasing relevance for contemporary planning and policy concerns. The paper below examines a series of case studies that demonstrate that short-term strategies that sustain a state or a specific bundle of vested interests did not necessarily promote longer-term societal resilience and often increased structural pressures leading to systemic crisis. Some societies or states possessed sufficient structural flexibility to overcome very serious short-term challenges without further exacerbating existing inequalities. But even where efforts were made consciously to assist the entire
The American Historical Review, 2020
This article explores how plague—as an idea—became an ahistorical independent agent of historical... more This article explores how plague—as an idea—became an ahistorical independent agent of historical change. It focuses on the case of the Justinianic Plague (ca. 541–750 c.e.), the first major recorded plague pandemic in Mediterranean history, which has increasingly been used to explain significant demographic, political, social, economic, and cultural change during late antiquity (ca. 300–800 c.e.). We argue that the Justinianic Plague retains its great historiographic power—namely, its supposed destructive impact over two centuries—because it evokes a terrifying myth of what plague should do rather than because of conclusive evidence of what it did. We define this historiographic power as the plague concept. It includes three key features: extensive chronology (lasting for two centuries), mortality (catastrophic death toll), and geography (global). The plague concept is built on three interdisciplinary types of evidence (here termed truisms): rats, climate, and paleogenetics. Our article traces how scientists constructed the plague concept in the first half of the twentieth century, and how historians entered the discussion in the last third of that century. As historians engaged in Justinianic Plague research, they used the plague concept to frame their arguments without problematizing its presence or contesting features that scientists had constructed decades earlier.
Medizinhistorisches Journal , 2020
Medizinhistorisches Journal, 2020
We are thankful that Mischa Meier has engaged with our work. Further discussion of the Justiniani... more We are thankful that Mischa Meier has engaged with our work. Further discussion of the Justinianic Plague will only present new avenues forward and improve everyone's understanding of late antiquity. Meier's second response raises questions that have wider implications within the historical discipline and are worth discussing more closely. He claimed we argue that:
PLOS ONE, 2020
The Justinianic Plague, the first part of the earliest of the three plague pandemics, has minimal... more The Justinianic Plague, the first part of the earliest of the three plague pandemics, has minimal historical documentation. Based on the limited primary sources, historians have argued both for and against the "maximalist narrative" of plague, i.e. that the Justinianic Plague had universally devastating effects throughout the Mediterranean region during the sixth century CE. Using primary sources of one of the pandemic's best documented outbreaks that took place in Constantinople during 542 CE, as well as modern findings on plague etiology and epidemiology, we developed a series of dynamic, compartmental models of disease to explore which, if any, transmission routes of plague are feasible. Using expected parameter values, we find that the bubonic and bubonic-pneumonic transmission routes exceed maxi-malist mortality estimates and are of shorter detectable duration than described by the primary sources. When accounting for parameter uncertainty, several of the bubonic plague model configurations yielded interquartile estimates consistent with the upper end of maxi-malist estimates of mortality; however, these models had shorter detectable outbreaks than suggested by the primary sources. The pneumonic transmission routes suggest that by itself, pneumonic plague would not cause significant mortality in the city. However, our global sensitivity analysis shows that predicted disease dynamics vary widely for all hypothesized transmission routes, suggesting that regardless of its effects in Constantinople, the Justinianic Plague would have likely had differential effects across urban areas around the Mediterranean. Our work highlights the uncertainty surrounding the details in the primary sources on the Justinianic Plague and calls into question the likelihood that the Justinianic Plague affected all localities in the same way.
Studies in Source Criticism, 2020
Cover photo: Bust of Emperor Theodosius II (reigned ad 408-450); marble, fifth century ad. © Mari... more Cover photo: Bust of Emperor Theodosius II (reigned ad 408-450); marble, fifth century ad. © Marie-Lan Nguyen / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.5) Cover: Maryna Wiśniewska
Existing mortality estimates assert that the Justinianic Plague (circa 541 to 750 CE) caused tens... more Existing mortality estimates assert that the Justinianic Plague (circa 541 to 750 CE) caused tens of millions of deaths throughout the Mediterranean world and Europe, helping to end antiquity and start the Middle Ages. In this article, we argue that this paradigm does not fit the evidence. We examine a series of independent quantitative and qualitative datasets that are directly or indirectly linked to demographic and economic trends during this two-century period: Written sources, legislation, coinage, papyri, inscriptions, pollen, ancient DNA, and mortuary archaeology. Individually or together, they fail to support the maximalist paradigm: None has a clear independent link to plague outbreaks and none supports maximalist reconstructions of late antique plague. Instead of large-scale, disruptive mortality, when contextualized and examined together, the datasets suggest continuity across the plague period. Although demographic, economic, and political changes continued between the 6th and 8th centuries, the evidence does not support the now commonplace claim that the Justinianic Plague was a primary causal factor of them.
https://www.pnas.org/content/116/51/25546
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 2019
This article is a detailed critical review of all the major scholarly publications in the rapidly... more This article is a detailed critical review of all the major scholarly publications in the rapidly expanding field of the Justinianic Plague published from 2000 through 2018. It updates the article in Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies by Dionysios Stathakopoulos from 2000, while also providing a detailed appraisal of the state of the field across all disciplines, including: literary studies, archaeology, DNA evidence, climatology, and epidemiology. We also identify the current paradigm for the Justinianic Plague as well as survey possible avenues forward for the field in the future.
Recent research has increasingly argued that the Justinianic Plague was an unparalleled demograph... more Recent research has increasingly argued that the Justinianic Plague was an unparalleled demographic catastrophe which killed half the population of the Mediterranean world and led to the end of Antiquity. This article re-examines the evidence and reconsiders whether this interpretation is justified. It builds upon an array of interdisciplinary research that includes literary and non-literary primary sources, archaeological excavations, DNA research, disaster studies and resilience frameworks. Each type of primary source material is critically reassessed and contextualized in light of current research. By drawing upon this interdisciplinary foundation, the article demonstrates that the evidence for the catastrophic maximalist interpretation of plague is weak, ambiguous and should be rejected. The article also makes use of the Third Pandemic as a comparative case study, and considers how the metanarratives of plague in contemporary society influence research on the subject. It concludes that the Justinianic Plague had an overall limited effect on late antique society. Although on some occasions the plague might have caused high mortality in specific places, leaving strong impressions on contemporaries, it neither caused widespread demographic decline nor kept Mediterranean populations low. Any direct mid- or long-term effects of plague were minor at most.
Sixth century Antioch is perhaps the best example of statecity resilience in Late Antiquity. Over... more Sixth century Antioch is perhaps the best example of statecity resilience in Late Antiquity. Over the century, the city suffered multiple natural disasters, civil strife and external conflict. Scholars have generally accepted that the city declined as a result. This study integrates historical, archaeological and scientific data to illuminate the city's fate. It concludes that Antioch demonstrated remarkable resilience at the city level throughout the 6th c. The most important factor was the continuous support the city received from the central government.
A comparative approach to climate, environment and society in Eurasia: towards understanding the ... more A comparative approach to climate, environment and society in Eurasia: towards understanding the impact of climate on complex societies This interdisciplinary project investigates the impact of climatic changes across the last two millennia on societies in two environmentally sensitive areas:
This introductory article sets out some issues associated with the concept and theorization of 'r... more This introductory article sets out some issues associated with the concept and theorization of 'resilience'. We describe some historical contexts in which theories of societal resilience can be usefully deployed; we offer some challenges to critiques of the validity and usefulness of Formal Resilience Theory (Theory of Adaptive Change). Resilience, adaptation, and transformation are complex issues, and while we cannot tell the whole story through the lens of environmental change, we can integrate the various categories of evidence to attempt to focus in on where and how climate change might impact an imperial system. Using an example from Byzantine Anatolia we examine the most vulnerable segments, such as subsistence systems, with respect to the agency of elite managers and the role of religious identity. Thus we can throw light on how interconnected environmental and social factors might exert pressure on other sub-systems and thus the system as a whole.
We examine the social burden associated with resilience to environmental shocks in pre-modern soc... more We examine the social burden associated with resilience to environmental shocks in pre-modern societies. We argue that analyses of state-level interventions to mitigate the consequences of catastrophic events tend to isolate these measures from their larger social contexts and thereby overlook the uneven distribution of their burden across different groups. We use three cases of pre-modern societies in the northeastern Mediterranean-the sixth century Roman Empire, the tenth century Byzantine Empire, and the sixteenth century Ottoman Empire. We demonstrate how the adaptive processes that reinforced resilience at the state level incurred different burdens for those at lower levels of the social hierarchy. We found that some groups sustained losses while others gained unexpected benefits in the context of temporary systemic instability. We also found that although elites enjoyed enhanced buffers against the adverse effects in comparison with non-elites, this did not consistently guarantee them a better outcome. We conclude that the differentiated burden of resilience could in some cases entrench existing political or economic configurations, and in other cases, overturn them. Our case studies indirectly address the pressing issue of environmental justice.
This article analyses high-quality hydroclimate proxy records and spatial reconstructions from th... more This article analyses high-quality hydroclimate proxy records and spatial reconstructions from the Central and Eastern Mediterranean and compares them with two Earth System Model simulations (CCSM4, MPI-ESM-P) for the Crusader period in the Levant (1095–1290 CE), the Mamluk regime in Transjordan (1260–1516 CE) and the Ottoman crisis and Celâlî Rebellion (1580–1610 CE). During the three time intervals, environmental and climatic stress tested the resilience of complex societies. We find that the multidecadal precipitation and drought variations in the Central and Eastern Mediterranean cannot be explained by external forcings (solar variations, tropical volcanism); rather they were driven by internal climate dynamics. Our research emphasises the challenges, opportunities and limitations of linking proxy records, palaeoreconstructions and model simulations to better understand how climate can affect human history.
History and archaeology have a well-established engagement with issues of premodern societal deve... more History and archaeology have a well-established engagement with issues of premodern societal development and the interaction between physical and cultural environments; together, they offer a holistic view that can generate insights into the nature of cultural resilience and adaptation, as well as responses to catastrophe. Grasping the challenges that climate change presents and evolving appropriate policies that promote and support mitigation and adaptation requires not only an understanding of the science and the contemporary politics, but also an understanding of the history of the societies affected and in particular of their cultural logic. But whereas archaeologists have developed productive links with the paleosciences, historians have, on the whole, remained muted voices in the debate until recently. Here, we suggest several ways in which a consilience between the historical sciences and the natural sciences, including attention to even distant historical pasts, can deepen contemporary understanding of environmental change and its effects on human societies.
by Association des Amis du Centre d’Histoire et Civilisation de Byzance ACHCByz, Marek Jankowiak, Warren Treadgold, Constantin Zuckerman, Andrzej Kompa, Jesse W. Torgerson, Filippo Ronconi, Irina Tamarkina, Geoffrey Greatrex, Bernard POUDERON, Anna Kotłowska, Łukasz Różycki, Salvatore Cosentino, Muriel Debié, Andy Hilkens, and Lee Mordechai
TM XIX, 2015
This book presents the proceedings of the conference “The Chronicle of Theophanes: sources, compo... more This book presents the proceedings of the conference “The Chronicle of Theophanes: sources, composition, transmission,” organized by the editors in Paris in September 2012. The first section of the volume is devoted to the question of the authorship of the Chronicle, raised by C. Mango almost forty years ago. The second section is devoted to issues of transmission, both direct (manuscript tradition) and indirect (readership, translations). The third section concerns Theophanes’ sources for early Byzantine history. A separate section hosts papers by some of the major actors in the current debate on Theophanes’ Eastern source. The last section of the book deals with the later part of the Chronicle and with its sources. ISBN 978-2-916716-58-9
The Infectious Historians provide resources on past disease outbreaks, while also discussing them... more The Infectious Historians provide resources on past disease outbreaks, while also discussing themes in the past that are relevant now. Our website offers further readings on various historical pandemics and ongoing posts reflecting on topics of interest for today.
Our first 5 episodes are live and can be found on our website or via various streaming services, with the list found here: https://anchor.fm/infectioushistorians (we will be adding more streaming services as well). Our podcast offers informative discussions with experts on these pandemics and diseases along with some lighter discussions as we reflect on responses to the ongoing pandemic around us and changes to daily life.
Washington Post, 2020
Our standard outbreak narrative conceals the reality of pandemic diseases.
The famous imperial mosaics in the gallery of Hagia Sophia , are one of the major attractions in ... more The famous imperial mosaics in the gallery of Hagia Sophia , are one of the major attractions in the modern museum in Istanbul. They mark a key change of the eleventh centurythe developing saliency of the imperial family and succession. The Zoe mosaic on the left shows the empress (1028-c. 1050) with her third husband Constantine IX Monomachos and Christ Antiphonites in the middle. The Ioannes II Komnenos mosaic on the right shows an imperial family almost a century later. Ioannes (1118-1143) and his wife Eirene stand on both sides of the Virgin which holds Christ. The imperial couple's oldest son and designated successor, seventeen year old Alexios II, stands on a side pilaster next to his mother, attesting to this transformation.
The Climate Change and History Research Initiative (CCHRI), a three-year project at Princeton Uni... more The Climate Change and History Research Initiative (CCHRI), a three-year project at Princeton University, is holding a workshop for pre-modernists in September 2016 on palaeoclimatology and palynology. This entry-level is geared towards younger scholars (junior faculty members and graduate students) from the humanities and social sciences and requires no previous knowledge of either subject. The workshop focuses on palynology and the reconstruction of past temperature, precipitation and environmental changes from natural archives in the form of sediments. Renowned scholars Neil Roberts (Plymouth University) and Warren Eastwood (University of Birmingham) will lead the workshop. Both have published extensively on climate reconstruction and palynology.
An interdisciplinary workshop at Princeton University, 1-3 May 2015.
Beginning this fall, a new workshop series will be held at Princeton University to focus on dendr... more Beginning this fall, a new workshop series will be held at Princeton University to focus on dendroclimatology and the reconstruction of past temperature, precipitation and environmental changes from natural and documentary archives. The intensive workshops are considered entry-level and geared towards History and Archaeology graduate students and junior faculty, from Princeton as well as from other universities, and require no previous knowledge of the subjects.
Kyle Harper's The Fate of Rome, written for a popular audi
This is the second of a three‐section review of Kyle Harper's The Fate of Rome in which we examin... more This is the second of a three‐section review of Kyle Harper's The Fate of Rome in which we examine in detail Harper's treatment of two allegedly widespread and mortal Roman outbreaks of disease. In the case of the second‐ century Antonine plague, we demonstrate that Harper overlooked a major controversy and instead portrayed an oversimplified narrative of a catastrophic event. In the case of the third‐century Cyprianic plague, we call attention to several glaring methodological issues in Harper's treatment of the episode, point out the absence of corresponding evidence in the papyri, and cast doubt on the linkage previously drawn between the plague and archaeology.
This is the last of a three‐part review of Kyle Harper's The Fate of Rome. Here, we scrutinize Ha... more This is the last of a three‐part review of Kyle Harper's The Fate of Rome. Here, we scrutinize Harper's treatment of the Justinianic Plague, demonstrating how he crafts a convincing narrative based on rhetorical flourishes but little evidence. We call further attention to several internal contradictions within the chapter and misinterpretations of evidence. We conclude this series of articles with a reflection on Harper's deterministic approach to environmental history. While the environment appears everywhere, agency (people: society and culture) is mostly absent. We finish by emphasizing the need to develop more nuanced causal explanations for complex historical processes and suggest that future attempts to bring together such wide‐ranging material be done within interdisciplinary research teams.