Empires & Ecologies of Afro-Eurasia at the End of Antiquity

The end of antiquity is seeing renewed interest in environmental perspectives, not least because of the ‘Late Antique Little Ice Age’ and the ‘Islamic Green Revolution’. The papers at this workshop address interactions between northern African and Eurasian ecologies and empires across the span of the temperate zone and its adjacent steppes and deserts in the second half of the first millennium CE. They present historical and archaeological perspectives on the reflexive relationship between political, social and cultural organisation and the environment in the new political and cultural formations of the period, as well as analyses of the causes and effects of climatic and environmental changes, and work on late antique and early medieval cultural and religious interpretations of the environment and ecology.

Registration
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Draft schedule

Saturday 4th July

0930-1000 Introductory remarks

1000-1040 Peter Sarris, Late Antique Connectivity and the First Pandemic

1040-1120 Ling Zhang and David Mozina, Building Celestial Empires in China’s Early Medieval Climate Anomaly

[coffee 1120-1150]

1150-1230 Lea Niccolai, Thinking with animals: ecology and political community in the later Roman world

1230-1310 Lucy Grig, Rainy, rainy rattle stanes: coping with extreme weather at the end of antiquity

[lunch for speakers - 1310-1430]

1430-1510 Andrew Marsham, Scripture and Pasture: Animals, plants, and weather in the Qur’an

1510-1550 Harry Munt, 2nd/8th century Arabia and the beginnings of an environmental history of the early Islamic empire

[coffee 1550-1610]

1610-1650 Soren Stark, Cotton Production in the Oasis of Bukhara during Late Antiquity

1650-1730 Corisande Fenwick, Beyond the “Islamic Green Revolution”: Environment and Empire in Early Islamic North Africa

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Sunday 5th July

0930-1010 Caroline Goodson, Minerals, animals, and plants in early medieval Rome.

1010-1050 Maddelena Barenghi, The Tang Imperial Landscape in Central Asia

1050-1130 Hans van Ess, Treatises on the Five Elements in Chinese Standard Histories of the Medieval Period

[coffee 1130-1150]

1150-1230 Nicolas Schroeder, The Imperial Roots of a Contest Woodland, Hambach AD 400-1200

1230-1300 Cameron Petrie, Envisaging Empires as Constellations: Re-conceptualising the empires of the Iranian plateau and the Indo-Iranian borderlands from 500 BC to AD 1000

1300 closing remarks