Climate, disease and society in late-medieval Ireland

Campbell, Bruce M.; Ludlow, Francis

doi:10.1353/ria.2020.0001

Cited by 10 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…Studies on late medieval and early modern Italy have shown that climate-induced food shortage likely played a role in catalyzing or exacerbating mass mortality events (52). It has been suggested that, in early modern Italy, episodes of short-term climate instability, especially rapid cooling, were associated with food shortage, social crisis, and epidemic disease (6,53).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate change, society, and pandemic disease in Roman Italy between 200 BCE and 600 CE

Zonneveld,

Harper,

Klügel

et al. 2024

Sci. Adv.

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Records of past societies confronted with natural climate change can illuminate social responses to environmental stress and environment-disease connections, especially when locally constrained high–temporal resolution paleoclimate reconstructions are available. We present a temperature and precipitation reconstruction for ~200 BCE to ~600 CE, from a southern Italian marine sedimentary archive—the first high-resolution (~3 years) climate record from the heartland of the Roman Empire, stretching from the so-called Roman Climate Optimum to the Late Antique Little Ice Age. We document phases of instability and cooling from ~100 CE onward but more notably after ~130 CE. Pronounced cold phases between ~160 to 180 CE, ~245 to 275 CE, and after ~530 CE associate with pandemic disease, suggesting that climate stress interacted with social and biological variables. The importance of environment-disease dynamics in past civilizations underscores the need to incorporate health in risk assessments of climate change.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate change, society, and pandemic disease in Roman Italy between 200 BCE and 600 CE

Zonneveld,

Harper,

Klügel

et al. 2024

Sci. Adv.

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“…This was a period of considerable societal stress with the onset of more frequent harvest failures and famines and the start of large-scale reorganisations in northern hemispheric atmospheric circulations (e.g. Campbell, 2016; Campbell and Ludlow, 2020). It was also a period of marked increase in marine fisheries with substantial evidence of exploitation of deep-sea species (Orton et al, 2014).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Historical Plankton Index: Zooplankton abundance in the North Sea since 800 CE

Scherer,

Ludlow,

Matthews

et al. 2024

The Holocene

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The North Sea region boasted one of the world’s most important fisheries for many centuries. Climate directly and indirectly influences the development and survival of many important pelagic fish in the North Sea ecosystem. One indirect influence is the food availability in the form of phyto- and zooplankton abundance, which is strongly controlled by environmental factors. One of these environmental factors is local sea surface temperatures. A negative correlation between zooplankton abundance and sea surface temperature is well established for the epeiric sea on the European continental shelf. Continuous temporal observations of North Sea zooplankton production only exist since 1958. Therefore we developed a Historical Plankton Index (HPI) from 800 CE onwards to extend our record of temperature-driven zooplankton abundance in the North Sea over a multi-centennial time scale. For this we used the North Atlantic temperature reconstructions and associations between zooplankton abundance and contemporary sea surface temperatures established applying a General Additive Modelling (GAM) approach. We then examined the association between the HPI and historical landings from the Dutch commercial herring fishery in the 17th century to test the utility of our HPI. We examine the potential influence of food availability (in terms of zooplankton abundance) on the fishery, the evolution of which is often only considered in terms of human influences such as conflict, fishing gear and demand for fish as a commodity. We find that under certain conditions the HPI can explain 20% of the variability in Dutch herring landings. This highlights the importance of developing long-term and large-scale indices of natural marine ecosystem dynamics to understand the historical fortunes of the commercial fishing industry. The results are directly relevant to the United Nations’ sustainable development goal 14 – life below water.

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“…The capacity to recover from stressors, however, is complicated by the contributory influence of social status and resulting stress exposure likelihood severity and frequency (Hughes‐Morey, 2016). The Ballyhanna population, who were likely subject to frequent famine events and ongoing food scarcity even outside of famine events as detailed in historical documentation and inferred from the archeological context, demonstrated shorter mean stature for both males and females compared with other medieval Irish and British populations, as well as shorter mean stature than their presumed descendants from Donegal in the 1930s (Campbell & Ludlow, 2020; McKenzie & Murphy, 2018). This is indicative of widespread poor nutrition resulting in higher likelihood of selective mortality of the most stunted individuals, and insufficient conditions for catch‐up growth in the survivors rather than a genetic predisposition toward smaller stature (McKenzie & Murphy, 2018).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing the association of skeletal indicators of stress with mean age‐at‐death in sub‐adults

Wyatt,

McFadden,

Ward

et al. 2023

American Journal of Biological Anthropology

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ObjectivesThe present study investigated the association of skeletal indicator of stress presence with mean age‐at‐death as a means of understanding whether commonly studied indicators are indeed indicative of increased frailty.Materials and MethodsUsing a medieval Gaelic population from Ballyhanna (Co. Donegal), the present study assessed the association between skeletal indicators of stress and mean age‐at‐death using the Kaplan–Meier survival function with log rank test to determine whether these indicators were associated with younger age‐at‐death, and therefore increased frailty, in sub‐adults only (0 to 18 years, N = 139) and through comparison to an all‐ages cohort (N = 318).ResultsOnly linear enamel hypoplasia was found to be associated with significantly decreased survivorship across the all‐ages cohort but, conversely, was associated with increased survivorship when analysis was restricted to sub‐adults. All other indicators assessed were associated with increased age‐at‐death for both all‐age cohorts and sub‐adult cohorts (cribra orbitalia), increased age‐at‐death when assessing all ages only (porotic hyperostosis and healed periosteal lesions); or were sufficiently rare in adults to prevent comparative analysis (stunting and micronutrient deficiency). Increased survivorship in individuals with higher numbers of co‐morbid skeletal indicators was observed for both sub‐adults alone and all age cohort.DiscussionThese findings suggest that these commonly recorded skeletal indicators may be more accurately viewed simply as records of stressor exposure and subsequent survival only, rather than providing evidence that these sub‐adults are frailer than their similarly aged‐at‐death peers. Thus, the demographic and sociocultural context is essential to the interpretation of observed skeletal indicators of stress.

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Climate, disease and society in late-medieval Ireland

Cited by 10 publications

References 11 publications

Climate change, society, and pandemic disease in Roman Italy between 200 BCE and 600 CE

Climate change, society, and pandemic disease in Roman Italy between 200 BCE and 600 CE

A Historical Plankton Index: Zooplankton abundance in the North Sea since 800 CE

Assessing the association of skeletal indicators of stress with mean age‐at‐death in sub‐adults

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