Publication details
Aftershocks and Aftermaths: Natural Disasters as Vectors of Socio-Cultural Change in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages
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| Year of publication | 2022 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | The study of natural disasters has been a remarkably popular topic in modern scholarship on Antiquity and Late Antiquity, especially amongst archaeologists and historians. The topic of natural disasters – from earthquakes to tsunamis but also famines, and for obvious reasons it has been a particularly popular topic in the last few years, epidemics – has indeed been defined as a perfect “disciplinary crossroads”. It becomes particularly interesting in the relationship between a society to its environment, to the dialogue between a social system and an ecosystem. As such it allows to study the responses, reactions, beliefs, but also the immediate measures put into place in the aftermath of disasters. As such, disasters can also be instrumentalized by policy makers as convenient moments of “transitions”. Choosing what to rebuild or not – for example a Pagan temple that has crumbled down – can, in this way, become a tool for conversion. |