Friday, October 22, 2021 / 1:30-3:00 pm / IMU Walnut Room
Delivered by Jordan Pickett and co-authored by Matthew Jacobson, this talk introduces historical climate change impacts from one of the ancient Mediterranean’s densest regions: southern Anatolia’s Lycia and Pamphylia. A new high resolution climate record from Kocain cave’s stalagmite is considered alongside pollen and the historical and archaeological record for ~400 settlements in the region. Popular hypotheses for a wetter, warmer Roman Mediterranean that facilitated Roman expansion cannot be supported here; Early Byzantine settlement evolved during a period of marked aridity; and multiple catastrophes (climatic, pathogenic, and defensive) contributed to sharp reductions in urban and rural settlement around an archaeologically difficult period c. 550 AD, though climate change appears to have come first.
Jordan Pickett is a professor of Classics at the University of Georgia and co-authored this work with Matthew Jacobson, University of Reading, Department of Archaeology.
The College of Arts