My current research is situated at the intersection of Paleoclimatology and the economic history of the premodern world. Paleoclimate research has advanced rapidly in the last few years and is increasingly adding high resolution proxy data on climate change on multiple scales. I'm particularly interested in ice core science. It is a very exciting and dynamic discipline and historians, especially of the premodern world, simply can no longer afford to ignore the growing natural archive produced by ice core analysis. Other proxy data, inter alia from tree rings, speleothems, sediment cores, are crucial as well. I am part of a small team that has been working on understanding the impacts of explosive volcanic eruptions on the Nile watershed. We have focused on the Ptolemaic period so far but plan on extending our study through Late Antiquity and examining the inter-regional impacts of climate change across the Mediterranean world. Our ongoing work shows that there is a lot of work now to do to understand human societies as coupled human-natural systems with feedback loops. What was the impact of human society on the environment? And what was the impact of climate change on early human societies? We have the ability now to answer these crucial questions in far more detail than ever before.
The chronology of explosive eruptions from ice core records from 305 BCE to 200 CE from the NEEM ice core record. Courtesy of Michael Sigl, Paul Scherrer Institute, Switzerland.
Terminus of Sóheimajökull glacier, southern Iceland
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A demotic Egyptian sale of land from the Ptolemaic period in Egypt.
