Theme:
5. Climate Change and Socioenvironmental Perspectives
Session format:
Regular session
Title:
Climatic Changes in the Medieval World: Evidence for Adaptation and Resilience
Content:
Anthropogenic climate change is affecting societies across the world. While impacts have varying degrees of severity, it is clear that more and larger areas will be impacted by climate change and the communities in those areas will have to adapt.
Adaptation to changing climates has emerged in archaeological discourse, balancing the former propensity for studying social collapse. While collapse brought wholesale impacts on all aspects of life, the over-arching narrative in human past is one of resilience. The perceptible increase in adaptation research has concentrated on prehistoric societies, despite identified climatic changes in the medieval world. In addition, much research has focused on resilience across longer time scales yet it has been argued that a better understanding of adaptation and resilience at a human, generational timescale is required for today’s climate response.
Therefore this session creates a space for medieval archaeology to contribute to the adaptation and resilience narrative. It debates whether medieval resilience can be actively exploited as a bridge to reduce the psychological distance of climate change (a known barrier to climate action) especially in those geographical areas where climate change impacts have not yet been greatly felt, such as western Europe.
This session seeks papers on the human responses to climatic changes across the medieval world; particularly those detailing approaches to understanding the medieval environment and how adaptation and resilience may be detected. Papers may comprise paleoenvironmental records, material culture, or source-based approaches to known climatic trends such as the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) and Little Ice Age (LIA) or individual case studies. Discursive papers on the issues of linking adaptation at individual sites to the MWP or LIA are encouraged. In addition, this session welcomes papers on utilising medieval adaptation in anthropogenic climate change communication, or the challenges facing this inherently interdisciplinary research topic.
Keywords:
climate change, medieval archaeology, adaptation, resilience, climate heritage, environmental archaeology
Session associated with MERC:
yes
Session associated with CIfA:
no
Session associated with SAfA:
no
Session associated with CAA:
no
Session associated with DGUF:
no
Session associated with other:
Main organiser:
Sarah Kerr (Ireland) 1
Co-organisers:
Eileen Tisdall (United Kingdom) 2
Stefan Sagrott (United Kingdom) 3
Affiliations:
1. Aarhus University
2. University of Stirling
3. Historic Environment Scotland
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