Existing evidence suggests that the Byzantine society, with all its complexity, successfully adapted to a variety of environmental conditions. The ways in which societal and environmental processes influenced each other remained surprisingly varied. In order to gain a better understanding of how these processes interacted, we compare palaeoenvironmental archive with historical data within the framework of an independent research group recently created at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena. Lake Dojran (Greece and FYROM) (1), within the historical region of Macedonia, provided a valuable record of Holocene environ- mental change, including several proxies, such as pollen, NPPs, geochemistry and biomarkers data. In this paper, we focus on the last 2000 years of palaeoenvironmental data supported by a robust age-depth model to present a case study that offers an insight into our approach. A reduction in arboreal vegetation occurred since the first century BC (ca. 2000 yr BP), when the new Roman province of Macedonia was integrated into the Roman market economy. Among trees, Pinus is the most affected taxon probably due to a selection in timber cutting by Romans. For almost 600 years the environment, that was already undergoing a transition to drier conditions, was clearly impacted as attested by the presence of cultivated and synanthorpic taxa. Then, at the end of the Roman period, arboreal vegetation expanded again. Between 600 and 850 AD (ca. 1400-1250 yr BP), the Plague of Justinian, the collapse of the Roman order in the Balkans and the coming of the Slavs (2) seem not impacting on pollen data but could be related to some changes in biomarkers. After a hiatus in cereal cultivation, probably related to the Black Death, cereal pollen achieves its highest values in the 16th and 17th c. (ca. 500-250 yr BP), which is clearly related to the role that Ottoman Macedonia played for the provision of the Ottoman armies and the city of Constantinople, as well as in the international grain trade in the Mediterranean.
Looking at the Byzantine Resilience using palaeoclimate proxies: pollen, geochemistry and biomarkers analyses from Lake Dojran (Greece, F.Y.R. of Macedonia) / Masi, A.; Francke, A.; Pepe, C.; Thienemann, M.; Wagner, B.; Sadori, L.; Izdebski, A.. - (2018), pp. 63-63. (Intervento presentato al convegno 10th European Palaeobotany and Palynology Conference tenutosi a Dublin, Ireland).
Looking at the Byzantine Resilience using palaeoclimate proxies: pollen, geochemistry and biomarkers analyses from Lake Dojran (Greece, F.Y.R. of Macedonia)
Masi A.;Pepe C.;Sadori L.;
2018
Abstract
Existing evidence suggests that the Byzantine society, with all its complexity, successfully adapted to a variety of environmental conditions. The ways in which societal and environmental processes influenced each other remained surprisingly varied. In order to gain a better understanding of how these processes interacted, we compare palaeoenvironmental archive with historical data within the framework of an independent research group recently created at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena. Lake Dojran (Greece and FYROM) (1), within the historical region of Macedonia, provided a valuable record of Holocene environ- mental change, including several proxies, such as pollen, NPPs, geochemistry and biomarkers data. In this paper, we focus on the last 2000 years of palaeoenvironmental data supported by a robust age-depth model to present a case study that offers an insight into our approach. A reduction in arboreal vegetation occurred since the first century BC (ca. 2000 yr BP), when the new Roman province of Macedonia was integrated into the Roman market economy. Among trees, Pinus is the most affected taxon probably due to a selection in timber cutting by Romans. For almost 600 years the environment, that was already undergoing a transition to drier conditions, was clearly impacted as attested by the presence of cultivated and synanthorpic taxa. Then, at the end of the Roman period, arboreal vegetation expanded again. Between 600 and 850 AD (ca. 1400-1250 yr BP), the Plague of Justinian, the collapse of the Roman order in the Balkans and the coming of the Slavs (2) seem not impacting on pollen data but could be related to some changes in biomarkers. After a hiatus in cereal cultivation, probably related to the Black Death, cereal pollen achieves its highest values in the 16th and 17th c. (ca. 500-250 yr BP), which is clearly related to the role that Ottoman Macedonia played for the provision of the Ottoman armies and the city of Constantinople, as well as in the international grain trade in the Mediterranean.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
