In this book Sadi Maréchal examines the survival, transformation and eventual decline of Roman public baths and bathing habits in Italy, North Africa and Palestine during Late Antiquity. Through the analysis of archaeological remains, ancient literature, inscriptions and papyri, the continued importance of bathhouses as social hubs within the urban fabric is demonstrated, thus radically altering common misconceptions of their decline through the rise of Christianity and elite seclusion. Persistent ideas about health and hygiene, as well as perpetuating ideas of civic self-esteem, drove people to build, restore and praise these focal points of daily life when other classical buildings were left to crumble.
Sixth century Antioch is perhaps the best example of state-city 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.
This paper analyses the relationship between archaeological sites from the Roman-Late Roman period in the north-central Delta of Egypt and the palaeotopography and environmental conditions from the 1st millennium BC to 1st millennium AD. The location of the archaeological sites is mapped according to survey maps of the 19th and 20th c. and digital topographic models from satellite data. The Ptolemaic and Roman context for the apparent ‘boom’ in settlement during the late antique period (3rd–7th c. AD) is described to assess the way in which the diverse environments of floodplain, wetland and marsh, and sand-bars were managed, and to propose a possible reconstruction of the ancient landscape. The results of the correlation are discussed in terms of connectivity to waterways, lagoons and the sea, spatial organisation, hierarchy and site function. The way in which the evidence from this time period may provide a potential proxy for understanding earlier and later settlement density is explored. Throughout, the historical trajectory and the environment will provide the background for the development of the Delta in the Medieval and Modern period.
This paper outlines some key transformations in rural society and settlement patterns in the 4th to 7th c. western Mediterranean, as revealed by archaeological evidence. An overview of discernible trends and current debates about their socio-political contexts is illustrated with examples of well-investigated sites. From this data, two contrasting patterns emerge: intensive, and partly state-stimulated, cultivation of land; systematic animal breeding and specialised production up to the end of the 4th c.; and much more varied patterns of exploiting the landscape, including changes in animal husbandry, changes in land use and crops, and increasing use of uncultivated areas, in the 5th–7th c. This overview is intended to provide a broader framework for the detailed examination of environmental evidence which follows in this volume.
This essay discusses the introduction and circulation of plants in the western Roman empire between roughly AD 300 and 800. It focuses on one cultivated plant, rye, and on a few ecologically different regions in Gaul and Italy, in order to probe the causes of botanical successes and failures. It suggests that late antique people increasingly took care of rye for economic, social, and cultural reasons. It reaches this conclusion through an analysis of other explanations for the success of rye, such as late antique climate patterns and late antique human migration. It suggests that these explanations are unsatisfactory because they do not account for all the varied instances of increased rye cultivation between the 4th and 8th c. in Europe.
The interrelationships between environment, climate and society are by definition highly complex, and only a close analysis of the specific mechanics of change can reveal any putative causal connections. This paper will take the case of Byzantine Anatolia between the 6th and 8th c., together with the case of the small provincial city of Euchaïta in the Pontus, and examine some of the evidence for such causal links. As part of this discussion, I will suggest some of the reasons for the survival of the eastern Roman empire during the crisis of the later 7th and early 8th c.
This study argues that the biological environment is properly a part of environmental history. The microorganisms-bacteria, viruses, protozoa-that cause infectious disease were the principal cause of mortality in ancient societies, but the particular array of pathogens was both locally specific and unstable over time. Pathogenic microbes are ecologically sensitive, so the background of local climate, and the influence of climate variability and climate change, determined patterns of disease and mortality. The connections between climate variability and climate change, on the one hand, and the disease profile of a population, on the other, are complex, and this paper traces some of the main pathways of influence, with specific reference to a few of the best known diseases and epidemic events in the later Roman period.
Many events and developments in human history have been suspected to be, at least partly, influenced by climate and environmental changes. In order to investigate climate impacts on societies, reliable palaeoclimatic data of adequate dating precision, resolution, spatial representativeness, and so on, are needed. This paper presents a survey and analysis of published palaeoclimatic data of the Mediterranean for the 1st millennium AD, and identifies regional patterns of hydro-climate variability, useful for comparison with archaeological/historical studies. It also provides general guidelines to palaeoclimatic data for archaeologists/historians interested in climatic change. We conclude with a discussion of how the emerging patterns of regional climate histories may have had an impact on Mediterranean societies in Late Antiquity.
