Invisible Environmental History: Infectious Disease in Late Antiquity

Late Antique Archaeology ◽

10.1163/22134522-12340069 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 12 (1) ◽

pp. 116-131

Author(s):

Kyle Harper

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Infectious Disease ◽

Climate Variability ◽

Environmental History ◽

Late Antiquity ◽

Specific Reference ◽

Local Climate ◽

Pathogenic Microbes ◽

Biological Environment ◽

The One

Abstract 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.

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Approaches to the environmental history of Late Antiquity, part II: Climate Change and the End of the Roman Empire

History Compass ◽

10.1111/hic3.12425 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 15 (10) ◽

pp. e12425 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Michael J. Decker

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Roman Empire ◽

Environmental History ◽

Late Antiquity ◽

History Of

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Setting the Scene for an Environmental History of Late Antiquity

Late Antique Archaeology ◽

10.1163/22134522-12340049 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 11 (1) ◽

pp. 3-13

Author(s):

Adam Izdebski

Keyword(s):

Case Studies ◽

Environmental History ◽

Middle Ages ◽

Late Antiquity ◽

Late Antique ◽

Actual Experience ◽

The People ◽

History Of ◽

Modern Era ◽

New Framework

Abstract Environmental history is a well-established discipline that until recently focused mainly on the modern era and was dominated by historians. Numerous scholars agree today that this needs to change: a focus on Late Antiquity can help this happen. To make it possible, we should concentrate our efforts on three parallel projects. First, make late antique studies more interdisciplinary, i.e. joining the efforts of historians, archaeologists and natural scientists. Second, look at Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages as a source of case studies that are relevant to the central themes of environmental history. Third, use environmental history as a new framework that has the potential to modify our vision of the 1st millennium AD, by getting us closer to the actual experience of the people who lived this past.

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Approaches to the environmental history of Late Antiquity, part 1: The rise of Islam

History Compass ◽

10.1111/hic3.12407 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 15 (10) ◽

pp. e12407

Author(s):

Michael J. Decker

Keyword(s):

Environmental History ◽

Late Antiquity ◽

History Of

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Setting the Scene for an Environmental History of Late Antiquity

Environment and Society in the Long Late Antiquity ◽

10.1163/9789004392083_002 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 3-13

Keyword(s):

Environmental History ◽

Late Antiquity ◽

History Of

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Pandemics and passages to late antiquity: rethinking the plague of c.249–270 described by Cyprian

Journal of Roman Archaeology ◽

10.1017/s1047759415002470 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 28 ◽

pp. 223-260 ◽

Cited By ~ 17

Author(s):

Kyle Harper

Keyword(s):

Roman Empire ◽

Environmental History ◽

Late Antiquity ◽

Historical Demography ◽

Social Consequences ◽

Human History ◽

Ancient History ◽

Lively Debate ◽

Clinical Description

Pandemic events are surpassingly rare in human history. Yet the period we call late antiquity could be considered the age of pandemic disease. It began and ended with the Antonine plague that erupted in the mid-160s A.D. and the Justinianic plague of the mid-6th c. Modern interest in these pandemics has waxed and waned. It was long taken for granted that these events played a major rôle in the fate of the Roman empire. In the mid-20th c., however, attention subsided. Historical demography struggled to make inroads into the discipline of ancient history. In the case of the Antonine plague, a critical article of J. F. Gilliam turned focus away from the disease for a generation. Only in the last 20 years, with the rise of historical demography in ancient studies, and a broader interest in environmental history, have the Antonine and Justinianic plagues received their proper due. Attention has focused on the epidemiology and impact of these events. The Antonine plague is most plausibly identified as smallpox, based on the presentation of the disease described by the contemporary physician Galen, and should qualify as the first pandemic in all of human history. It struck the empire at the apex of its power and prosperity. Its severe demographic effects now seem widely accepted, although there is lively debate about its long-term geopolitical and social consequences. For the Justinianic plague neither its demographic scope nor the long-range consequences are in doubt. Securely identified by both clinical description and paleomolecular evidence, Yersinia pestis arrived in 541 and struck recurrently for over two centuries; like the Black Death in the 14th c., the first bubonic plague fundamentally reshaped the trajectory of European populations.

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Silver and Society in Late Antiquity: Functions and Meanings of Silver Plate in the Fourth to Seventh Centuries. Ruth E. Leader-Newby

Speculum ◽

10.1017/s0038713400001901 ◽

2005 ◽

Vol 80 (4) ◽

pp. 1318-1320 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Bente Kiilerich

Keyword(s):

Late Antiquity ◽

Silver Plate

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Tissue section lifting for electron microscopy

Proceedings, annual meeting, Electron Microscopy Society of America ◽

10.1017/s0424820100081292 ◽

1978 ◽

Vol 36 (2) ◽

pp. 86-87

Author(s):

Adrian F. van Dellen

Keyword(s):

Infectious Disease ◽

Electron Microscopy ◽

Tissue Culture ◽

Organ System ◽

Surrounding Tissue ◽

Paraffin Sections ◽

Surface Areas ◽

Specific Determination ◽

High Degree ◽

Accuracy And Repeatability

The morphologic pathologist may require information on the ultrastructure of a non-specific lesion seen under the light microscope before he can make a specific determination. Such lesions, when caused by infectious disease agents, may be sparsely distributed in any organ system. Tissue culture systems, too, may only have widely dispersed foci suitable for ultrastructural study. In these situations, when only a few, small foci in large tissue areas are useful for electron microscopy, it is advantageous to employ a methodology which rapidly selects a single tissue focus that is expected to yield beneficial ultrastructural data from amongst the surrounding tissue. This is in essence what "LIFTING" accomplishes. We have developed LIFTING to a high degree of accuracy and repeatability utilizing the Microlift (Fig 1), and have successfully applied it to tissue culture monolayers, histologic paraffin sections, and tissue blocks with large surface areas that had been initially fixed for either light or electron microscopy.

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