Artifacts as Exposures: Malarial Landscapes in Late Roman Italy
By David Pickel
Today historians and archaeologists generally consider disease incidence during the later Roman periods to have been predominantly the result of pan-Mediterranean environmental and climatic conditions, with major topical focus regarding endemic malaria and pandemic events like the 3rd century CE “Plague of Cyprian” and the later “Justinianic Plague” beginning in the 5th century (e.g., Sallares 2002; 2006; Harper 2017).
The River and the City: The Tiber as a Case Study in Roman Ecohistory
By Krešimir Vuković
Much has been written on the urban history of the city of Rome but the role of the river Tiber remains poorly explored, particularly in relation to recent trends in ecohistory. The last major study of the Tiber in Rome was Le Gall’s (1953). The British School at Rome conducted a major project on the Tiber Valley which resulted in several edited volumes (Coarelli and Patterson 2004, etc.) and Aldrete’s (2008) book on the floods of the Tiber was an excellent addition to the scholarship.
Systems Change Without Demographic Collapse? Trans-Mediterranean Trade and the Justinianic Pandemic
By Henry Gruber
Analysis of the social impact of the Justinianic Pandemic has addressed two scales: the local or personal, especially the phenomenological impact of the arrival of Y. pestis in the Mediterranean on individuals and communities; and a Mediterranean-wide scale in which the driving question is the so-called end of antiquity. Recent skeptical approaches (e.g., Mordechai et al.