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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN ANCIENT ECONOMIES

Climate Change and

Ancient Societies
in Europe and the
Near East
Diversity in Collapse
and Resilience
Edited by
Paul Erdkamp · Joseph G. Manning ·
Koenraad Verboven
 Palgrave Studies in Ancient Economies

Series Editors
Paul Erdkamp, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium
Ken Hirth, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA
Claire Holleran, University of Exeter, Exeter, Devon, UK
Michael Jursa, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
J. G. Manning, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
Himanshu Prabha Ray, Gurugram, Haryana, India
This series provides a unique dedicated forum for ancient economic
historians to publish studies that make use of current theories, models,
concepts, and approaches drawn from the social sciences and the disci-
pline of economics, as well as studies that use an explicitly comparative
methodology. Such theoretical and comparative approaches to the ancient
economy promotes the incorporation of the ancient world into studies of
economic history more broadly, ending the tradition of viewing antiquity
as something separate or ‘other’.
The series not only focuses on the ancient Mediterranean world, but
also includes studies of ancient China, India, and the Americas pre-1500.
This encourages scholars working in different regions and cultures to
explore connections and comparisons between economic systems and
processes, opening up dialogue and encouraging new approaches to
ancient economies.

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15723
 Paul Erdkamp · Joseph G. Manning ·
Koenraad Verboven
Editors

Climate Change
and Ancient Societies
in Europe
and the Near East
Diversity in Collapse and Resilience
Editors
Paul Erdkamp Joseph G. Manning
Department of History Department of History
Faculty of Languages Yale University
and the Humanities New Haven, CT, USA
Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Elsene, Belgium

Koenraad Verboven
Department of History
Ghent University
Gent, Belgium

ISSN 2752-3292 ISSN 2752-3306 (electronic)

Palgrave Studies in Ancient Economies
ISBN 978-3-030-81102-0 ISBN 978-3-030-81103-7 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81103-7

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2021
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 Introduction

The debate on Global Warming and the concerns about the impact of
Global Warming on future society have sparked interest in past climate
change and its impact on past societies—not only in academia, but even
more so outside academia. This general interest stimulated research by
historians, archaeologists and palaeoclimatologists, if only in response to
general claims from outside these disciplines. Climate change over the past
thousands of years is undeniable, but debate has arisen about its impact
on past human societies. The decline and even collapse of complex soci-
eties in the Americas, Africa and the Eurasian continent has been related
to catastrophic shifts in temperature and precipitation. Other scholars,
however, while seeing climate change as potentially hastening endoge-
nous processes of political, economic and demographic decline, argue that
complex societies did not fall victim to climate alone. In other words,
a debate has arisen concerning the nature and scope of climatic forces
on human society and the extent of resilience within complex societies
to deal with adverse changes in natural circumstances. The debate so
far has shown that the role of long-term climate change and short-term
climatic events in the history of mankind can no longer be denied. At
the same time, the realization has also emerged that further study must
go beyond global patterns and general answers. Diversity governs both
climate change and human society. Hence, furthering our understanding
of the role of climate in human history requires complex theories that
combine on the one hand recent paleoclimatic models that recognize the

v
vi INTRODUCTION

high extent of temporal and spatial variation and, on the other, models
of societal change that allow for the complexity of societal response to
internal and external forces.
This volume focuses on the link between climate and society in ancient
worlds, which all have in common a sparsity of empirical data that limits
our understanding of the endogenous and exogenous variables respon-
sible for societal change and our ability to empirically establish the causal
links between them. Lacking precise and secure historic data on weather,
harvests, prices, population, health and mortality, historical reconstruc-
tions run the risk of being overwhelmed by impressive quantities of
long-term paleoclimatic proxy data. Due to the sparsity of societal data,
early economies may appear to be more subjected to environmental forces
than later pre-industrial societies. The challenge is to bring both perspec-
tives together in models that allow an evenly balanced analysis of the link
between climate and society.

Joseph G. Manning---Climate
and Society: Past and Present
In the world before 1800, human societies had very little understanding
of long-term fluctuations in the climate that affected their environments.
They could observe weather phenomena or short-term events like the
height of the annual flood of the Nile, the Euphrates or the Yellow river,
or see that drought was upon them. But there was no understanding
of the natural forces that drove such short-term and long-term changes.
Farmers everywhere were well aware of the condition of their crops,
the best timing for planting and harvesting. Temperature could not be
measured, past consequences of drought or of disease were stored in
collective cultural memory, mainly through the medium of temples and
priesthoods.
The connection between environment and human cultures was already
of concern to the Ionian geographers, best embodied in Herodotus.
Aristotle’s Meteorology, written in the fourth century, is a remarkable
text upon which much modern science is based. In the early nineteenth
century, scholars such as Alexander von Humboldt revolutionized both
the natural sciences and the ideas of environmental geography with his
travels through South America. The very concepts of the ‘environment’,
of ecology, and human caused climate change were born in his fertile
 INTRODUCTION vii

mind, and the powers of his observations. Von Humboldt laid the founda-
tion for much of the work now being done in climate science laboratories
around the world. With an understanding of the interconnectedness of
the world, ‘Humboldtian science’ as it is now called, historians and scien-
tists began to examine the connection between climatic changes and the
human responses to them. Observations, for example, of Swiss natural-
ists to the advance and retreat of glaciers in the Alps began to be tied to
agricultural output, since they were proxy evidence for global changes in
temperature. In some ways, though, we can trace Humboldt’s work back
to the Ionian geographers of the sixth century BCE and to the work of
Herodotus in the fifth century BC.
Before the climate science revolution readers who sought an under-
standing of historical climate change could turn to the classic accounts by
the great French historian Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie and his pioneering
Times of Feast, Times of Famine. A History of Climate Since the Year 1000
(Doubleday, 1971, originally appearing as Histoire du climate depuis l’an
mil, 1967).1 The book still makes compelling reading. Le Roy Ladurie
analysed crop reports, observations of glacial retreat and the dates of
grape harvests with great care. These were detailed records for some
regions like Burgundy, but it was impossible to join them with climate
data, there just was not enough detailed information. And besides, there
were other factors, the supply of seasonal labour for example, that deter-
mined the timing of grape harvests in Burgundy. With increasing amounts
of precise climate data of precipitation and temperature patterns across
the world, historians are able to gain a much clearer picture of what was
happening region by region around the world.
That revolution certainly shows that nature was a ‘protagonist’ in
history, to quote one recent scholar (Campbell 2010). But it was not
the only protagonist. Human societies are complex things. Up to the
early twentieth century, historians tended to focus on political history, the
doings and dealings of kings and armies. Holistic histories that attempt
to take account of social complexity, ‘histoire totale’ the French historical
Annales school calls them, combine political, economic, environmental
and cultural factors in past societies. Ironically, the complexity of human

1 More recent work by him incorporates more climate data and departs from his earlier
views of the role of climate change in history. See Le Roy Ladurie (2004), Le Roy Ladurie
and Vasak (2011). For the evolution of Le Roy Ladurie’s thinking, see the essay by Mike
Davis (2018).
viii INTRODUCTION

societies and the increasing amount of detail that paleoclimatologists are

offering has served as a barrier to writing new histories (Bradley 2015).
Mountains of complex and difficult-to-interpret data stand sentry to all
those who would seek answers in the new science.
Our ability to integrate climate data with humanistic archives about
past climate change is one of the most important and exciting devel-
opments in History. The possibility of rewriting almost the entirety of
human history lies before us. History will never again be based on written
texts alone. New histories that reveal how intimately connected societies
have been with their environments and how they have responded to
climate change have already begun to appear. Yet this potential for new
histories is neither uncontroversial nor easy. The controversy goes back
as least as far as Hippocrates and Herodotus who believed that culture
and particular regions on Earth were determined by climate and envi-
ronmental conditions. Egypt was rich yet static and unchanging. Greece,
in contrast, was dynamic, borrowing new ideas anywhere it could. Egypt
was hot, agriculture was accomplished by irrigating fields from the annual
flood of the Nile. The soil was rich, very little labour was required to
produce abundance. This abundance created soft people who were easily
conquered. Greece, in purposeful contrast, was poor, it had rocky soil,
farmers had to depend on rain. Greeks were quarrelsome and competitive,
yes, but they could band together to defeat the mighty Persian Empire.
A subtle yet important historical theory that has been with us ever since.
So much so indeed that it is a major problem and point of vigorous
argument among historians. It has come to be known by the uncompli-
mentary phrase ‘climate determinism’, committed by Montesquieu in the
eighteenth, Friedrich Ratzel in Germany in the nineteenth and the Yale
geographer Ellsworth Huntington in the early twentieth century. In 1915
Huntington wrote an influential book entitled Civilization and Climate.
It was a compelling story, complete with observations of temperature,
humidity and human health, that mapped human civilization and climatic
zones around the world. In direct way, Huntington’s theory mirrored
Herodotus’ theory of civilization written at the end of the fifth century
BC that contrasted Greeks with other civilizations around the Mediter-
ranean. Despite the fact that this simplified ‘climate determinism’ view of
the world has become obsolete, it remains a common critique of much
recent work that combines climate data with historical analysis.
The central question is: was climatic change the most important driver
of cultural turning points like the Bronze Age ‘Collapse’, the Roman
 INTRODUCTION ix

Climate Optimum, the Medieval Climate Anomaly and the Little Ice
Age? When did these periods begin and end? What about short-term
climate shocks? How did these, if they did, play a role in cultural change
or adaptation? An important issue, raised by the historian Jan De Vries,
is measurement. Can we really show that temperature or precipitation
changes produced a ‘crisis’? Given the complexity of societies, including
ancient ones, the uncertainties of data and the difficulties of assigning
historical causality, it is better, he suggests, to think about adaptation.
Juxtaposing climate facts and historical facts and assuming the two must
somehow be related just won’t do. We think that the integration of histor-
ical and climate date within this model is a very good (if very challenging)
way to go.
‘Unless these crises can be shown to be something other than unique,
exogenous shocks’, De Vries (1980) rightly concludes, ‘a skeptic might
feel justified in concluding that short-term climatic crises stand in rela-
tion to economic history as bank robbers to the history of banking’. He’s
speaking about short term, year by year climate shocks, and is correct to
say that understanding climate/human events in a longer time series is
better with very specific models. Climatic change may have been a very
tiny part of historical change, at other times it might have played a signifi-
cant role. The challenge is to measure climate as an independent variable.2
Here time scale is critical, and we are fortunate now, compared to 1980,
in having much better and more highly resolved data, often with the same
temporal resolution as historians work, i.e. annual.
The traditional cultural historical views of the ancient perceptions
of environment around the Mediterranean, embodied in the work of
Glacken (1967) and Hughes (1996), can and must now by studied along-
side a growing body of scientific studies of environmental and climatic
change. R. Sallares’ book was pioneering in introducing a more scientific
approach to understanding the Greek environment 1991. His discussion
of demography and agriculture in particular established a new agenda,
which increasingly is dominated by scientific approaches and data. This
basic orientation has now been much elaborated and extended.3 Paleo-
climatologists around the world are adding new and increasingly highly

2 Cf. the remarks by Harper (2015) 562.

3 For a sense of the rapid development of the field, see inter alia Harris (2013), Harper
(2017) and Scheidel (2018).
x INTRODUCTION

resolved data for many parts of the world so rapidly that it is very hard to
keep pace with the literature even within one subfield.
Three periods of climate history have received a good deal attention
in recent years: the so-called 4.2 ka (ca. 2200 BCE) event, the 3.2 ka
event (ca. 1100 BCE, the so-called Bronze Age Collapse) and the Roman
Climate Optimum, a period with inexact temporal boundaries but gener-
ally understood, for the central Mediterranean, as lying between 100 BCE
and 150 CE. Now there is work on shorter term climate shocks as well.
An important contribution to the debate now is the study of the impact of
explosive volcanic eruptions on hydroclimate, which in large part is due to
the increased chronological precision produced by ice core geochemistry
(Manning, Ludlow et al. 2017; Sigl et al. 2015).

Koenraad Verboven---Climate
and Society: A Complex Story
With few exceptions reliable direct meteorological measurements are
not available before the nineteenth century. Temperatures, rainfall or
prevailing wind directions and strengths have to be inferred from indirect
data. The past few decades climate scientists have collected an impres-
sive amount of such ‘proxy data’ from tree rings, ice-core layers, glaciers,
speleothems, stable isotope variations and many more ‘natural archives’.
There are many difficulties in the interpretation of these data as indi-
cators of relative and absolute meteorological data such as temperature
and precipitation values. But in this respect as well the methodolog-
ical advances during the past decades have been impressive. The datasets
continue to expand and are easily accessible for research. For historians,
however, the relevant questions are not what average temperatures were
and how they changed, or how much rain or snow there was. The relevant
question is how this affected human history.
Clearly climate is an important factor in historical developments.
Climate affects the ecosystems and thus also the socio-ecological systems
(SES) in which human societies develop. But this process is far from
straightforward. It is profoundly non-linear. More or less rain can result
in strains on food production methods, but populations can respond by
changing production and storage methods, or even diets. The effects
of climatic events and trends depend on human landscape manage-
ment. Agrarian use of slopes without precautions triggers erosion even
 INTRODUCTION xi

without changes in precipitation levels. Conversely increased rainfall can

be managed by sensible drainage systems.
Individual human actions have little impact, but the aggregate impact
of large numbers of individual actions can be extremely damaging or
protecting. Potentially even more impactful are cooperative efforts. Coop-
eration among humans, however, depends on prevailing institutions,
social structures and inequalities in power and wealth distributions.
Without understanding the social structure and dynamics of human popu-
lations, therefore, we cannot hope to understand the historical effects of
climate change.
Human societies are part of socio-ecological systems (SES) that are
both complex and adaptive. They consist of different components—not
only individuals and organized groups, but also animals, plants, pathogens
and even non-living elements as soils and landscape reliefs—interacting
and affecting each other, each responding differently to inputs. If we want
to understand the effects of climate changes at local/regional/global
scales we need to study these systems as a whole, including their societal
characteristics besides their ecological, geographic and climatic. Such a
holistic approach is not feasible for single researchers or monodisciplinary
teams. We need multidisciplinary teams including historians, social scien-
tists, archaeologists, geomorphologists and climate scientists. This book
is a step in this direction.
A key concept to understand the evolution of complex systems is
their resilience—their ability to absorb shocks but also, and more impor-
tantly, their ability to adapt and change without breaking down as a
system. According to resilience theory any SES will go through phases
of episodic change (Redman 2005). Typically these changes follow an
‘adaptive cycle’ consisting first of ‘exploitation’ followed by ‘conserva-
tion’. During the exploitation phase the system (e.g. a polis-based SES)
expands its potential and thus builds up its capital base. From a human
perspective, for instance, new land is brought under cultivation, wild-life
is controlled, forests felled or reorganized for human exploitation; mate-
rially, public infrastructure is built, production, storage, and distribution
facilities for consumables are constructed; socially, power distributions
are realigned and institutionalized; and so on. During the conservation
phase the system enjoys its newly acquired higher state; land is being
cultivated, the proceeds are distributed towards elites and non-elites ….
The progressive ‘exploitation’ and ‘conservation’ phases are followed
by a ‘release’ or ‘collapse’ phase during which the built-up capital—for
xii INTRODUCTION

instance the concentration of land, wealth, power and technical know-

how—is destroyed or rearranged—for instance through the destruction
of production facilities and large land holdings, the redistribution of agri-
cultural land or the destruction of oligarchic rule. The ‘release/collapse’
phase is eventually followed by a reorganization—for instance a transition
from direct exploitation to tenancy, or vice versa; from dispersed authority
(oligarchy, democracy) to centralized authority (monarchy), or vice versa,
from gift-exchange of status goods to market-based commodity exchange,
or vice versa.
Climate change is not an external variable in this process. An increase
or decrease in precipitation levels and temperatures may boost an exploita-
tion phase or trigger collapse. Yet while it is true that human agency
had very little impact on such climate phenomena before the indus-
trial era, human interventions have profoundly affected how climate
changes translated into impacts on ecosystems since many thousands of
years. As many contributions in this book show, agrarian-based ecosys-
tems with a predominance of human food crops generally respond very
differently to climate change than non-human determined ecosystems.
Historical studies of climate change, therefore, have to include the
interaction between societal systems and ecosystems as integral parts of
socio-ecological systems.
Historical trajectories of societal systems are far more complicated than
their ‘complexity’ in terms of systems theory can capture. The ‘com-
plex adaptive nature’ of societal systems means that they too consist
of interacting non-homogenous components—in plain speak individuals,
households, families and small or not so small groups—that have inde-
pendent agency from the higher system. The human dimension of social
behaviour imbues societal systems with a heterogeneity that is qualita-
tively different from that underlying ecosystems, climate or geophysical
systems.
Conceptually we can ascribe agency to animals, plants, even to things
and spaces; we can even, as in Actor Network Theory, situate agency in
relations rather than in individuals or collective entities. But conceptual
ascriptions to fit social-science models should not be confused with the
reality they are trying to model. Not every actant is an ‘agent endowed
with will and understanding’, having the ability to decide consciously or
 INTRODUCTION xiii

unconsciously to act or not.4 Only higher-order animals are effectively

endowed with agency in this sense. Among them, human beings are
incomparably more powerful because their collective agency is aided by
symbolic languages that support social learning and memories. Together
symbolic languages, social cognition and memories forge and express
social identities that merge individual and collective interests. These iden-
tities in turn stimulate cooperation and inform incentivized co-operators
on their expected roles. For the same reason, however, misunderstand-
ings, overestimations and even denial of external realities are built-in in
our mental system. We perceive reality—even experience it to a large
extent—through the lens of the symbolic languages we use to inform
ourselves and others, and we make sense of this perceived and expe-
rienced reality by inserting it in cognitive frames built through social
learning and memories. The current denial of climate change, COVID-
19 impacts, and the anti-vaxers movement are painful reminders of the
limits of our understandings. Human realities are phenomenological, not
ontological. Hence, the societal part of socio-ecological systems does not
abide by any comprehensive rule set governing the overarching SES.
Or more correctly in terms of systems theory: the rule sets governing
socio-ecological systems are predictive, not deterministic.
For instance, as Tim Soens (2018) argued for coastal communities in
early modern Flanders to understand societal change we cannot look only
at the systemic level to understand the supposed resilience or breakdown
of the system. We need to factor in the victims and victors, the losers
and winners. Major questions need to be asked such as whether and how
existing elites succeed or fail to take advantage of the impacts of (in our
case) environmental changes to improve their elite status by increasing
their wealth and/or power. ‘Resilience’ may be defined as the ability of
a societal system to maintain its features against external and internal
shocks. But the inevitable costs involved are rarely distributed evenly or
in proportion to the existing resource distributions. Resilience may be
achieved by upgrading and downgrading the living standards of large

4 Audi and Audi 2017: 17 s.v. ‘agent causation’; the terminology is muddled; ‘actant’,
‘actor’ and ‘agent’ are (too) often used as interchangeable concepts. I think this is regret-
table because the negation of the primary difference between material agents and human
agents obscures more than it reveals, but I cannot go into that discussion here; the liter-
ature on the agency of objects, particularly in anthropology, is vast; for an introduction
and discussion see Hoskins (2006).
xiv INTRODUCTION

swaths of the people in it, by destroying habitual ways of life, by shifting

them within the structural boundaries of the system—from freeholders
to peasants, to day-labourers; from shopkeepers to hired hands; from
merchants to land-owners; and so on… Unless we realize this and include
it in our research questionnaire, the definition of resilience covers up
dynamics that profoundly impact how societies change or not in response
to climate change.
In addition to societal subsystems, such as villages or clans, societies
comprise also ‘classes’, ‘status groups, ‘orders’, ‘races’ and other social
categories. These are useful conceptual labels because they express similar-
ities in individual or small-group behaviour that derive from the position
of people and groups within social structures. As such the labels denote
real-world phenomena, valid subjects of research in themselves, determi-
nants of a system’s overall behaviour and thus components of the system.
Yet they are not themselves subsystems. Although similarities may be iden-
tified in the behaviour of the agents belonging to a specific class, status
category or order, they do not per se interact more with their ‘likes’
than with agents belonging to different categories—servants, masters, co-
workers, bosses, soldiers, officers and so on. Members of the same class
may live in different, even distant, communities with little or no inter-
secting social networks to connect them. The labels denote components
of socio-cultural (sub)systems that cross through and interact with soci-
etal subsystems. In studying impacts of climate change, culture is part of
the equation as much as precipitation levels are.
Systemic behaviour is guided by rule sets (Verboven 2021). In complex
adaptive systems, however, different rule sets are at work. Obviously
natural laws drive climate change—cloud formations, winds, precipitation
and so on—but these are only a small part of the story of human climate
history. Social rules and institutions drive how humans impact ecosystems
and how they respond or fail to respond to climate change. Contrary to
the laws of physics, this drive is not deterministic. Natural laws deter-
mine natural events—how matter and energy change or not. Social rules
predict social events—how human beings act or not. These predictions
are never absolute. They depend on circumstances that are often unpre-
dictable. Shared social rules and institutions are road maps that allow
humans to navigate themselves and others towards and along values and
interests, and to predict how others will do the same. But social rules
only exist because they are played out by agents who have a choice—even
if it sometimes means suffering or death. This playing out of rules not
 INTRODUCTION xv

only depends on how well the agents understand the rules by which they
and others are expected to play. Agents can choose or feel constrained to
play out, ignore or break rules in specific situational contexts according to
the social roles in which they feel cast, but also according to the personal
or collective interests they perceive. They have memories that affect how
situations are interpreted, anticipations regarding the outcome of their
and other agents’ actions, and hopes and fears of future events—real or
imagined.
The structural position of agents within a system affects their behaviour
and the rule sets they choose to follow or deviate from. Partly this is
the case because the position in which a person—or a collective—situates
himself and others affects the social roles and expectations inherent in
that position (their gender or social or economic class for instance). Partly
also this is because resource endowments and flows are tied up with social
structures. Purposeful action may fail or be impossible not because people
fail to see what needs to be done, but because they lack the means to act
effectively.
What does all this mean for human climate history? It means that we
need to ask not just how the impact of climate change on ecosystems
might have affected the socio-ecological systems of past societies. We
need to ask how social structures, institutions, resource endowments and
culture were affected by and responded to climate change impacts and
we need to ask how they—driven by dynamics that cannot be reduced to
climate events—impacted both directly and indirectly (via their societal
systems) on ecosystems.

Paul Erdkamp---Climate and Society:

Studying Ancient Worlds
The impact of climate change on society is in part a question of temporal
scale. It has been pointed out that on the scale of the entire Holocene
(which started after the last Glacial Period about 11,700 years ago),
there seems to be no correlation between climate and society. The long-
term climatic trend over the Holocene up to twentieth century (when,
according to some, the Anthropocene began) was one of decreasing
temperature and humidity, as the climate in western Eurasia was colder
and drier at the end of the Holocene than in its first half. Despite
fluctuations and geographical variations this general long-term trend is
clear. However, population levels, societal complexity and life expectancy
xvi INTRODUCTION

increased significantly between those two points in time (Roberts et al.

2019, 15), again with much fluctuation and variation, but undeniably
so. In short, the long-term trend did not constrain the development
of humankind quantitatively or qualitatively. Nobody would want to
conclude that humans fare better in colder and drier conditions, so
the conclusion must be that societies were resilient. In the long run,
humankind did well, despite overall adverse climatic trends.
However, from a different perspective the image reverses, at least for
those historical eras and regions for which quantifiable data are available.
Some of the most severe mortality crises can be related to climatic events,
such as the extremely cold decade of the 1690s. Large segments of the
population in the most affected countries proved vulnerable to the effects
of prolonged periods of cold on livestock and arable farming, causing
hundreds of thousands to perish in Scotland and Finland (Huhtamaa
and Helama 2017, 9; D’Arrigo et al. 2020). Despite differing degrees
of vulnerability, societies clearly were susceptible to weather extremes that
caused harvest failures or floods. But also the demographic impact of these
years of extreme weather is a matter of scale, as Scotland’s and Finland’s
population recovered fairly soon. In the long run, the cold spell of the
1690s had little impact on northern Europe’s demography, although the
catastrophic experience may have seriously affected these societies in other
ways. Demographic studies of societies that offer sufficient empirical data
have shown that famines by themselves had little impact on population
levels in the long run. Long-term demographic trends are much more
determined by the presence and absence of epidemic disease, which makes
the debate on the possible links between climate change and epidemics a
hugely important one.
In order to establish the impact of climate change empirically, we need
time series of data on weather, population and economy, which are avail-
able for western Europe and China from the later Middle Ages onwards,
but for few societies beyond these temporal and spatial boundaries. Our
demographic or economic data for early societies are far less accurate
than those for early modern Europe and China, at best allowing the
identification of relative trends. Population estimates for ancient societies
are generally based on estimates of settlement size and number, while
those for prehistory are derived from trends in C14-datings (Bevan et al.
2018, 2019). The results are characterized by a low spatial and temporal
resolution and a wide margin of uncertainty.
 INTRODUCTION xvii

The difference in the nature of the sources for early and later societies
is linked to distinctions in methodologies and disciplines. The availability
of written historical data for early modern societies in Europe means that
the debate on the impact of climate in this period is mostly conducted
by historians, in contrast to the debate on the same issues regarding
ancient societies, in which archaeology plays a major role. Both disci-
plines have shown widely differing perspectives on the role of climate
in world history. However, also within the discipline of archaeology,
perspectives have been shifting in recent decades, as processual archae-
ology—at least in part—yielded to postprocessual archaeology. Processual
archaeology was characterized by the search for underlying principles
in human society—principles that were mostly found in environmental
factors (O’Brien 2017, 296; Weber 2017, 27). Fundamental drivers
of societal dynamics were seen in the link between environment and
population. Environmental change, population growth, carrying capacity
and societal collapse were therefore key themes in this approach to
the past. However, the emphasis on underlying principles and environ-
mental factors made processual archaeology vulnerable to environmentally
inclined ‘Grand Narratives’, a realization that stimulated the shift towards
postprocessual archaeology, which aims at a more balanced approach to
the interplay of environmental and societal factors.
This paradigm shift within archaeology also contributed to bridging
the gap between archaeologists and most historians, as the latter tend to
dismiss theories that perceive societies as passive subjects to environmental
factors. The reluctance of many historians to accept a determining role
of environmental factors in historical processes is often depicted as an
instinctive response to ideas that threaten their traditional belief in the
primacy of human agency. Indeed, in the nineteenth century, history as
an academic discipline held as one of its basic principles that all societies
were unique and had to be understood by themselves. The subjection
of historical processes to environmental determinants as a universal law
of history conflicted with the basic understanding of the drivers behind
societal developments. History as a discipline has changed significantly
since the nineteenth century, but it is still very much rooted in the same
soil. In a sense, over the course of the twentieth century, the historical
discipline moved in the direction of social science, often putting social and
economic factors at the heart of the narrative and assigning an important
role to the environment, including climate, but many historians are still
xviii INTRODUCTION

very much weary of universal truths in the past and of ‘Grand Narratives’
that reduce myriad events to a few big ideas.5
This volume brings together historians, archaeologists and paleoclima-
tologists who critically discuss the impact of climate change on ancient
societies, focusing on western Eurasia and starting with the Neolithic,
while ending at the early Middle Ages.
The first section consists of four thematic chapters, each dealing with
a different aspect of the debate. Reconstructions of past climates by pale-
oclimatologists constitute the starting point for the analysis of the impact
of climate change on early societies. An understanding of what the proxies
on which these reconstructions are based can tell us about past climates—
and what not—is fundamental to the debate. Hence, Paul Erdkamp starts
with an overview of the most relevant proxies with an eye to the temporal
and spatial resolution of these data, as this aspect is crucial regarding
the link that modern scholars draw between environmental and societal
processes. He also notes that the recent increase in the resolution of our
image of past climate change has triggered a veritable paradigm shift.
While the earlier data seemed to point to clear-cut centuries-long climatic
eras, recent analyses emphasize short-term fluctuations and regional vari-
ations within long-term trends and therefore move away from thinking in
terms of climatic epochs.
Frits Heinrich and Annette Hansen give a leading role to an element
that is central to the impact of climate on society, but that has curiously
received little attention in historic debates: agricultural crops. Many misin-
formed assumptions concerning the impact of changes in temperature and
precipitation have guided narratives of the impact of climate change on
society. Based on crop biology and agricultural science, the authors offer
a nuanced overview of the biochemical processes affected by changing
meteorological conditions. They moreover warn against easy and gener-
alized conclusions, as they emphasize the crucial importance of time scale
and of the vital but variable role of the human actor.

5 Emanuel LeRoy Ladurie hesitated to assign climate a determining role in human

history: ‘In short, the narrowness of the range of secular temperature variations, and the
autonomy of the human phenomena which coincide with them in time, make it impossible
for the present to claim that there is any causal link between them. […] I am satisfied if
this book establishes certain primary phenomena of pure climatic history. The secondary
question, of the impact of climate on human affairs, belongs to another province, and to
researches not yet carried out’ (Quote from p. 292.).
 INTRODUCTION xix

On the basis of his expertise in how longer-term water practices emerge

from short-term actions of human and non-human agents in historical
and archaeological periods, Maurits Ertsen discusses models on the inter-
action between humans and landscapes that have been applied in the
case of the Roman world. His conclusion emphasizes that our models of
larger-scale and longer-term correlations between environmental and soci-
etal processes must be based on our understanding of causalities between
short-term agencies.
The analysis of famines, demography and climate in Italy from the late
seventeenth to the early twentieth century by Paolo Malanima offers the
kind of study that prehistorians and ancient historians need to help them
interpret the limited data that they have for the societies they study. As we
have noted above, early societies lack quantifiable evidence concerning the
demographic impact of climate change on their populations. The combi-
nation of imprecise and uncertain data on demographic trends and the
general absence of climatic data on an annual, let alone seasonal or daily,
scale makes it impossible to empirically analyse the impact of weather
phenomena or climate change on mortality or fertility. Studies into the
demography of prehistory or antiquity inevitably rely on the models that
are based on the empirical data of later times. Malanima’s chapter shows
how complex the empirical study of the link between weather phenomena,
agricultural production and demographic shocks is.
The remainder of the volume presents case-studies that span the
Neolithic to the early medieval period and cover much of Europe,
the Near East and northern Africa. Caroline Heitz et al. on the one
hand discuss such concepts as resilience and collapse, on the other
methodological aspects of analysing prehistoric societal change from these
perspectives. They do so on the basis of long-term data series concerning
climate and settlement activities on the northern Alpine foreland. While
the impact of climate change on society is clear, the authors see this
not as collapse and population decline, but as an adaptive response by
highly mobile agrarian societies. Their ability to adapt to challenging
environmental situations was fundamental to these agrarian societies’
resilience.
Juan Carlos Moreno García challenges the textual and archaeological
basis of narratives that see the changes in the Egyptian kingdom at the end
of the third millennium BCE as a form of collapse resulting from adverse
climate change. He argues that there is no clear evidence of climatic
events causing the collapse of the Egyptian political system. Instead, he
xx INTRODUCTION

sees changes in state structure as a readjustment of the balance of power

between the central government and the provinces at a time of intense
trade activities.
The next three chapters all deal with southern mainland Greece in the
second and first millennium BCE. A central issue concerns the end of the
Mycenaean palatial centres around 1200 BCE, often described in terms
of ‘collapse’, which was followed by a period of lower population levels
and societal complexity. Some modern scholars see this as triggered by a
prolonged period of lower precipitation that impacted societies not only
in Greece, but around the eastern Mediterranean as well. Erika Weiberg
and Martin Finné analyse those features of society in the Peloponnese
during the Bronze Age that determined their vulnerability to changing
environmental conditions, pointing on the one hand to a shift towards
growing centralization and homogenization in society, causing increased
vulnerability, on the other to regional variations in the extent of connec-
tivity that characterized the Mycenaean centres. Riia Timonen and Ann
Brysbaert investigate the pressure of prolonged adverse climate condi-
tions on Late Bronze Age societies, but emphasize that environmental
factors must be seen in combination with societal stress factors, such
as monumental construction programmes, and risk management strate-
gies. Though they conclude that no clear link between climatic events
and historical processes can be established on the basis of current data,
the combination of several years of drought and poor political decisions
could have left society susceptible to natural catastrophes and human
disasters. Anton Bonnier and Martin Finné relate paleoclimate data based
on local speleothems to land use dynamics over the first millennium BCE
(from the Early Geometric Period to the Roman era). They conclude
that there is a clear synchronicity between land use expansion and phases
of increasing humidity, while drier climate is linked land use contrac-
tions. Dry periods in the Late Hellenistic to Middle Roman period
impacted farming negatively. Moreover, increasing precipitation most of
all facilitated expansion into marginal areas.
Francis Ludlow and J. G. Manning argue that the impact of explosive
volcanic eruptions on the African Monsoon caused the suppression of the
Nile summer flood, which in itself affected agriculture in the Nile valley
negatively, while societal changes during the Ptolemaic era, such as the
emergence of new large urban areas, a rising population and the shift
towards drought-sensitive wheat production, increased the risks of food
shortages, famine and revolt.
 INTRODUCTION xxi

Two chapters examine rivers and riverine landscapes in the Roman

era. Under the heading environmental imperialism, Tyler V. Franconi
discusses the interplay between landscape and Roman political and
economic development. The Rhine and Thames river basins in the Roman
period offer insights into the relative impacts of anthropogenic and
climatological influence. The two cases show that climatic drivers played
relatively little part in the environmental change and that the relation-
ship between Rome and its environment must not be limited to climatic
factors. Moreover, the cyclical pattern of anthropogenic and environ-
mental change reflects the complexity of the environmental history of the
Roman Empire. Cynthia Bannon examines the influence of environmental
factors in Roman laws governing the use of rivers. The Tiber in Italy, Ebro
in Spain and Maeander in Asia Minor shared a pattern of seasonal rain-
fall and dry summers that affected their use for transportation, irrigation
and other purposes. Roman and local authorities used their knowledge of
climate and environment to adapt their policies to local circumstances.
Brandon McDonald suggests a catastrophic chain of causes and effects,
starting with volcanic eruptions in the 160 s, which spurred cold and dry
climatic phases in much of Eurasia. These brief periods of colder and drier
conditions improved conditions for the spread of smallpox, leading to the
so-called Antonine Plague. McDonald concludes that both the epidemic
and the climate change affected the various parts of the Roman Empire
differently, but notes that it is challenging on the basis of current data to
disentangle both factors as causes of regional crises.
The next chapters focus on agriculture and the wider economy in the
Roman world. Paul Erdkamp analyses the impact of climate change on
agricultural production in the Mediterranean region, using modern data
on the susceptibility of cereal crops to changes in temperature and precip-
itation. Changes in temperature in the Roman world remained by and
large within the tolerance range of most crops. Changes in precipita-
tion had potentially more impact, but were much more regionally varied,
which is particularly important in such a varied landscape as that of the
Mediterranean region. Moreover, ‘agriculture’ is not a fixed system, and
farmers, as much as the rest of society, responded to long-term changes
in climate. Hence, he argues that there is no compelling evidence to
assume a general catastrophic impact of climate trends in the Roman
era. Dimitri Van Limbergen and Wim De Clercq pose the question
whether the evidence for the geographical distribution of the cultivation
of such a climate-sensitive crop as vines can indicate climate change during
xxii INTRODUCTION

the Roman Climate Optimum. They conclude that at the moment the
evidence is inconclusive. Hence, they call for further detailed studies both
of viticulture and climate in the Roman world. Paul Kelly assesses the risks
that farmers in the Roman world experienced by comparing the impact of
climate-related risks with other factors that threatened their household’s
prosperity. He uses a stochastic model and Monte-Carlo simulation to
calculate the financial situation of various categories of farmers under a
variety of conditions over a period of 15 years. He concludes that small-
holders and petty landlords were relatively isolated from climate risks,
but that these risks were significant for tenants working under fixed rent
agreements.
Changes in Italy and provinces in the West during the second and
third centuries in settlement patterns, urban life and rural exploitation
have recently been linked to the end of the so-called Roman Climate
Optimum. Annalisa Marzano analyses the archaeological data for two
regions in Italy (Cisalpine Gaul and Tuscany) and points to local variations
in the changes in the landscape. These diverse and complex micro-
regional histories indicate that, while a partial and local impact of climate
change cannot be ruled out, many changes are better explained by societal
factors than environmental ones.
For many decades, uniform centuries-long climate eras dominated the
debate on climate change and its effects on past societies. Following a
trend in recent paleoclimate studies that is triggered by the increasing
temporal and spatial resolution of the proxy data, Elena Xoplaki et al.
move away from such viewpoints. Using the most recent proxy data
and climate models, they identify a sequence of dry and wet decadal
to multi-decadal intervals in the eastern Mediterranean in the fourth to
seventh centuries, as well as annual to multi-annual droughts. However,
they emphasize that these do not constitute ‘epochs of climate history’.
Brief periods of arid conditions in the eastern Mediterranean lead to an
increased frequency of subsistence crises that formed the background for
the increasing role that bishops at the time began to play in civic life.
Paolo Maranzana notes that western-central Anatolia showed marked
increase in rural occupation and agricultural production from the fourth
century CE to the mid-seventh century, when population and production
suddenly fell. On the basis of a study of agricultural activity, manufacture
and trade routes, he concludes that changes in climate had no signifi-
cant effect on the rural countryside in the Anatolian plateau. During this
period the communities in this region adapted to and resisted pressures
 INTRODUCTION xxiii

successfully. When changes came in the seventh century, this was more
the result of geopolitical than environmental shifts.
Arguing that the overall long-term trend across Mediterranean land-
scapes is more consistent with anthropogenic than climatic causation,
Dries Daems et al. focus at the micro-regional level to provide deeper
insight into human-environment interactions and resilience. On the basis
of an analysis of the region of Sagalassos (SW Turkey), the authors
conclude that changes in the landscape during the period from about
1550 BCE to 650 CE were a predominantly human-driven episode of
change, but that the ‘Medieval Climate Anomaly’ was a climate-driven
event that set the parameters for a resurgence of human impact onto the
environment.
Within the disciplines of history and archaeology one will nowadays
find few ‘environmental determinists’ or ‘traditionalist deniers’, although
there is debate on the complex interplay between environmental and
human dynamics and the exact role that has to be assigned to past climate
change. ‘Diversity in collapse and resilience’ is part of the title of this
volume, and thus diversity is what we find it its chapters. Some authors
conclude that climate change played a major role in historical trajectories,
sometimes even determining the fate of kingdoms. Others emphasize that
we should not overestimate the impact of climate change on past societies
and that, in the particular cases that they studied, societal developments
can best be explained by societal factors. Other chapters have focused on
those features of societies that made them responsive to beneficial—and
vulnerable to adverse—climate change. Nevertheless, there seems to be
agreement that climate by itself does not explain world history and that
environmental factors always have to be understood in interplay with soci-
etal dynamics. If Ptolemaic Egypt was severely weakened by the effects
of volcanic eruptions on the Nile flood, it is emphasized, it was because
changes in society made it vulnerable to the harvest failures following
bad floods. Inevitably this makes the story more complicated than the
simplistic causalities between tree rings and falling empires that we find in
the narratives that are popular in general media. Paleoclimatologists have
an important role to play in the further development of this debate, as
their careful interpretation of the recent high-resolution data and latest
reconstructions of past climates emphasize much greater variability in
climate trends, moving away from the heterogeneous epochs that have
xxiv INTRODUCTION

misled historians to narrate world history in terms of Warm Periods and

rising empires, of climatic Dark Ages and doomed fates.

Paul Erdkamp
Joseph G. Manning
Koenraad Verboven

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 Contents

1 A Historian’s Introduction to Paleoclimatology 1

Paul Erdkamp
2 A Hard Row to Hoe: Ancient Climate Change
from the Crop Perspective 25
Frits Heinrich and Annette M. Hansen
3 Who Follows the Elephant Will Have Problems:
Thought on Modelling Roman Responses to Climate
(Changes) 81
Maurits Ertsen
4 Famines, Demographic Crises and Climate in Italy
1650–1913 103
Paolo Malanima
5 Collapse and Resilience in Prehistoric Archaeology:
Questioning Concepts and Causalities in Models
of Climate-Induced Societal Transformations 127
Caroline Heitz, Julian Laabs, Martin Hinz,
and Albert Hafner
6 Climate, State Building and Political Change in Egypt
During the Early Bronze Age: A Direct Relation? 201
Juan Carlos Moreno García

xxvii
xxviii CONTENTS

7 Vulnerability to Climate Change in Late Bronze Age

Peloponnese (Greece) 215
Erika Weiberg and Martin Finné
8 Saving Up for a Rainy Day? Climate Events,
Human-Induced Processes and Their Potential Effects
on People’s Coping Strategies in the Mycenaean
Argive Plain, Greece 243
Riia Timonen and Ann Brysbaert
9 Peloponnesian Land Use Dynamics and Climate
Variability in the First Millennium BCE 277
Anton Bonnier and Martin Finné
10 Volcanic Eruptions, Veiled Suns, and Nile Failure
in Egyptian History: Integrating Hydroclimate
into Understandings of Historical Change 301
Francis Ludlow and J. G. Manning
11 The Environmental Imperialism of the Roman
Empire in Northwestern Europe 321
Tyler V. Franconi
12 Seasonal Drought on Roman Rivers: Transport vs.
Irrigation 347
Cynthia J. Bannon
13 The Antonine Crisis: Climate Change as a Trigger
for Epidemiological and Economic Turmoil 373
Brandon T. McDonald
14 Climate Change and the Productive Landscape
in the Mediterranean Region in the Roman Period 411
Paul Erdkamp
15 Viticulture as a Climate Proxy for the Roman World?
Global Warming as a Comparative Framework
for Interpreting the Ancient Source Material in Italy
and the West (ca. 200 BC–200 AD) 443
Dimitri Van Limbergen and Wim De Clercq
16 Risks for Farming Families in the Roman World 485
Paul V. Kelly
 CONTENTS xxix

17 Figures in an Imperial Landscape: Ecological

and Societal Factors on Settlement Patterns
and Agriculture in Roman Italy 505
Annalisa Marzano
18 Hydrological Changes in Late Antiquity:
Spatio-Temporal Characteristics and Socio-Economic
Impacts in the Eastern Mediterranean 533
E. Xoplaki, J. Luterbacher, N. Luther, L. Behr,
S. Wagner, J. Jungclaus, E. Zorita, A. Toreti,
D. Fleitmann, A. Izdebski, and K. Bloomfield
19 Resilience and Adaptation at the End of Antiquity.
An Evaluation of the Impact of Climate Change
in Late Roman Western-Central Anatolia 561
Paolo Maranzana
20 The Social Metabolism of Past Societies: A New
Approach to Environmental Changes and Societal
Responses in the Territory of Sagalassos (SW Turkey) 587
Dries Daems, Ralf Vandam, Sam Cleymans,
Nils Broothaerts, Stef Boogers, Hideko Matsuo,
and Adnan Mirhanoğlu

Index 615
 Notes on Contributors

Cynthia J. Bannon is Professor of Classical Studies at Indiana Univer-

sity, Bloomington. She has published two books on Roman Water Rights:
Gardens and Neighbors: Private Water Rights in Roman Italy (2009)
and A Casebook on Roman Water Law (2020). Her research investigates
Roman law and society as well as Roman literature.
Lorine Behr is a doctoral student at the Center for International
Development and Environmental Research and the Panel on Planetary
Thinking of Justus Liebig University Giessen. She is working on marine
and terrestrial compound extremes in the Mediterranean and on the
representation of Mediterranean Overflow Waters in climate models. Her
work is part of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research
(BMBF) project ClimXtreme-CROP.
Kevin Bloomfield is currently a doctoral candidate at Cornell University
in the Department of History. His research focuses on the interactions
between climate, climate change and human history in the Roman and
Late Antique world. He is particularly interested in using information
derived from paleoclimate proxies to advance new readings on historical
texts, especially in the area of cultural history.
Anton Bonnier is a Researcher at the Department of Archaeology and
Ancient History, Uppsala University. He is an ancient historian and clas-
sical archaeologist who has worked extensively with ancient economies,
landscape dynamics and land use, and human-environment interactions

xxxi
xxxii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

in Greece during the Archaic to Roman periods. For much of this work,
Bonnier uses GIS as a primary tool and he has designed new GIS-based
methodologies for the study of ancient agricultural land use.
Stef Boogers is a Ph.D. Researcher connected to both the Sagalassos
Archaeological Research Project and the Forest, Nature & Landscape
Division of KU Leuven. His research focuses on sustainability aspects of
wood consumption in the Sagalassos study area (SW Turkey) of the past
with a focus on the Roman period.
Dr. Nils Broothaerts is working at the Department of Earth and
Environmental Sciences at KU Leuven. His research focuses on human-
climate-environment interactions in the past, using a combination of
palynological and geomorphological data. In his recent work, pollen data
were used to reconstruct past human impact on the environment, for
areas in Turkey, Spain and Madagascar. Linking these reconstructions with
geomorphological data provides a better insight on how societies have
shaped the current landscape.
Ann Brysbaert is Professor in Ancient Technologies, Materials and Crafts
and PI of the SETinSTONE project (ERC–CoG–646667) at Leiden
University, Faculty of Archaeology. She has published extensively on
Aegean and East Mediterranean Bronze Age technologies, materials and
technological transfer in monumental architecture, workshop studies and
in ancient economies. Since 2010, her research has broadened further to
include the socio-economic interaction patterns present in the complex
human-environment relationships in the East Mediterranean.
Sam Cleymans wrote a doctoral dissertation at KU Leuven (Belgium)
on the health and quality of life of the Roman and Middle Byzantine
populations of the ancient site of Sagalassos (SW Turkey). For his post-
doctoral research within the Sagalassos Archaeological Research Project
(KU Leuven, Belgium), he focuses on the regional variation and change
of mortuary culture in Hellenistic and Roman Asia Minor.
Dries Daems is Assistant Professor in Settlement Archaeology and Digital
Archaeology at Middle East Technical University. He is also affiliated
with the Sagalassos Project at University of Leuven. His research inter-
ests include social complexity, agent-based modelling, pottery studies and
human–environment interactions.
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xxxiii

Wim Declercq lectures on Historical Archaeology in Northwestern

Europe in the department of Archaeology at Ghent University.
Paul Erdkamp is Professor of Ancient History at the Vrije Universiteit
Brussel. Most of his work deals with the economic history of the Roman
world, with a special interest in nutrition and food supply. His other
research interests include Roman republican historiography and societal
and environmental aspects of warfare.
Maurits Ertsen is Associate Professor within the Water Resources
Management group of Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands.
Maurits studies how longer-term water practices emerge from short-term
actions of human and non-human agents in current, historical and archae-
ological periods in places ranging from Peru to the Near East. Maurits is
one of two editors of the journal Water History and coordinating editor
of the Tijdschrift voor Waterstaatsgeschiedenis.
Martin Finné is Researcher at the Department of Archaeology and
Ancient History, Uppsala University and Senior Lecturer at the Depart-
ment of Social and Economic Geography, Uppsala University. His main
research focus is on paleoclimatology and socio-environmental dynamics
of the Peloponnese, southern mainland Greece. He has written syntheses
about Holocene climate in the Mediterranean and produced paleoclimate
reconstructions from stable isotopes extracted from stalagmites collected
in the Peloponnese.
Dominik Fleitmann is Professor of Quaternary Geology at the Depart-
ment of Environmental Sciences at the University of Basel, Switzerland.
As geochemist and paleoclimatologist, he is using natural climate archives
such as stalagmites to reconstruct climatic and environmental changes
during the Holocene and Late Pleistocene. His recent research activities
focus on climate-human interactions in the Middle East and Europe, with
a particular focus on the Fertile Crescent and southern Arabia.
Tyler V. Franconi is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Archaeology in
the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology & the Ancient World at Brown
University in the United States. His research focuses on the economic
and environmental history of the Roman Empire in western Europe. He
has conducted fieldwork in the United States, Tunisia and with numerous
projects in Italy, where he currently co-directs the Upper Sabina Tiberina
Project in Vacone, Lazio.
xxxiv NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Juan Carlos Moreno García is a CNRS Senior Researcher at the

Sorbonne University, specialized in pharaonic administration and socio-
economic history. Recent publications include The State in Ancient Egypt
(2019) and Dynamics of Production in the Ancient Near East (2016). He
is also chief-editor of The Journal of Egyptian History (Brill), of the series
Ancient Egypt in Context (Cambridge University Press) and Multidisci-
plinary Approaches to Ancient Societies (Oxbow Books), and area editor
of the UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology.
Albert Hafner holds a full professorship in Prehistoric Archaeology
and is member of the Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research
(OCCR) at the University of Bern, Switzerland. His research interests
include Holocene human-environment relationships, social developments
and elites, burial rites, underwater archaeology and alpine archaeology.
Main ongoing research projects funded by the Swiss National Science
Foundation and the European Research Council are related to lake-side
settlements in the Alpine Space and the Balkans.
Annette M. Hansen studied Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology
and Arabic Studies (BA, 2010) at Bryn Mawr College and obtained
an M.Sc. in Archaeological Science at the University of Oxford (Keble
College, 2012). She is currently completing her Ph.D. project: The
Agricultural Economy of Islamic Jordan, from the Arab Conquest until
the Early Ottoman Period in which she combines written and (ethno-
)archaeobotanical sources. She is senior archaeobotanist at different
archaeological projects in Jordan and Israel.
Frits Heinrich is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Departments of History
and Chemistry at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. His main interests are
premodern agricultural economics, historical climate change, diet, and
the nutritional biochemistry of ancient crops and foodstuffs, in particular
for Greco-Roman Egypt. He approaches these topics through combining
(ethno-)archaeobotany, (stable isotope) biochemistry, economics and
papyrology. He is also senior archaeobotanist on projects in Egypt and
Sudan and leads several historical farming experiments.
Caroline Heitz is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the School of
Archaeology, University of Oxford (UK). Her current research is focused
on resilience and vulnerability, mobility and translocality as well as human-
thing and human-environment relations in the prehistoric past. She
uses practice-theoretical and social-archaeological approaches, which she
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xxxv

combines with methods from the natural sciences and humanities. In her
doctoral thesis, conducted at the Institute of Archaeological Sciences at
the University of Bern, she used pottery practices to investigate ques-
tions of mobility, entanglements and transformations in Neolithic wetland
settlement communities in the northern Alpine Foreland.
Martin Hinz is a Senior Researcher at the Institute of Archaeolog-
ical Sciences, Department of Prehistoric Archaeology at the University
of Bern, Switzerland. He explores quantitative methods and theoretical
issues in the context of the European Neolithic and Early Bronze Age.
For the analysis of the long–term development of human–environment
interactions, this involves the integration of archaeological and scientific
analyses and the causal identification and interpretation of environmental
impacts on human activities.
Adam Izdebski is independent group leader at the Max Planck Insti-
tute of the Science of Human History in Jena and Associate Professor
at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. An interdisciplinary historian,
he focuses on the Mediterranean and Central Europe, trying to integrate
natural scientific and humanistic approaches to the past.
Johann Jungclaus is a Senior Scientist and Research Group Leader at
the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg. He has long-
standing expertise in the development and application of climate models.
The focus of his research is coupled ocean-atmosphere variability on inter-
annual to centennial timescales. He coordinates the simulations of climate
over the Common Era in the framework of the Paleo Model Intercom-
parison Project. He is member of the WCRP Working Group on Coupled
Models.
Paul V. Kelly recently completed his doctorate in Ancient History
at King’s College London after retiring from a successful career as a
consulting actuary. He has degrees in Mathematics and Physics, History
and Archaeology and Classical Civilisation. He lived and worked in
Brussels, Dublin, London and Paris for more than 30 years, advising
multinational companies and pension funds. He represented the actuarial
profession at EU level at the European Insurance and Occupational
Pensions Authority.
xxxvi NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Julian Laabs is a Prehistoric Archaeologist and a Postdoctoral Researcher

at the Institute of Pre- and Protohistoric Archaeology at the Christian-
Albrechts University Kiel, Germany. He conducted his Ph.D. Population
and Land-Use Modelling of Neolithic and Bronze Age Western Switzerland
at the Institute of Archaeological Sciences, Department of Prehistoric
Archaeology at the University of Bern, Switzerland. His current research
focuses on archaeodemography and socio-ecological systems in prehistory
and classical antiquity.
Francis Ludlow is Assistant Professor of Medieval Environmental
History at the Trinity Centre for Environmental Humanities, and Depart-
ment of History, Trinity College Dublin. He is a climate historian (and
historical climatologist) with expertise in the integration of human and
natural archives from the Ancient and Medieval periods. He has previously
held fellowships in Harvard, Yale and LMU Munich.
Jürg Luterbacher is the Director of Science and Innovation and the
Chief Scientist of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). He
has demonstrated leadership and excellence in a broad spectrum of climate
science and contributed significantly to the holistic Climate-Earth System
approach. He is a pioneer in paleoclimate science of Europe and Asia.
He was a lead author of the 5th IPCC Assessment Report chapter 5
‘Information from Paleoclimate Archives’.
Niklas Luther achieved a Bachelor Degree in Mathematics and Geog-
raphy and is currently completing his Master Degree in Mathematics at
the Justus Liebig University Giessen. His focus has been on statistics in
climate science, mainly working on long-memory processes, structural
change and stable distributions. After his M.Sc. Degree, he will start
his Ph.D. studies in the frame of the H2020 project ‘CLImate INTel-
ligence: Extreme Events Detection, Attribution and Adaptation Design
using Machine Learning’.
Paolo Malanima is Professor of Compared Economies and Develop-
ment Economics in the «Magna Graecia» University (Catanzaro). Among
his publications are: ‘Italy in the Renaissance: A Leading Economy in
the European Context, 1350–1550’, in ‘Economic History Review’,
71, 1, 2018; ‘The Italian Economy Before Unification’, in Oxford
Research Encyclopedia, Economics and Finance, 2020; ‘The Limiting
Factor: Energy, Growth, and Divergence, 1820–1913’, in Economic
History Review, 73, 2, 2020.
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xxxvii

Joseph G. Manning is the William K. and Marilyn M. Simpson Professor

of History and of Classics, with appointments also in the Department
of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Yale Law School, and the
School of the Environment. His research has two primary research foci,
the economic and legal History of the Hellenistic world, with a focus on
Ptolemaic Egypt, and Egyptian history in the long run.
Paolo Maranzana is an Assistant Professor in Roman Archaeology and
History, the Department of History at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul.
His research focuses on the development and breakdown of the Roman
urban system at the end of Antiquity (4th–7th c. CE) in modern-day
Turkey (especially Central Anatolia and Black Sea coast) in the light of
significant political, economic and environmental change.
Annalisa Marzano (Ph.D. 2004, Columbia University, NY) is Professor
of Ancient History at the University of Reading. She has published on
a wide range of topics related to the social and economic history of the
Roman world. She is the author of two monographs, Roman Villas in
Central Italy (Leiden, 2007) and Harvesting the Sea (Oxford, 2013) and
has participated in numerous archaeological projects. Currently, she co-
directs the ‘Casa della Regina Carolina Project’ at Pompeii.
Hideko Matsuo is affiliated with the Center for Sociological Research
(CeSO) at University of Leuven. She worked as a Senior Researcher and
the Project Coordinator for the University of Leuven Geconcerteerde
Onderzoeksactie (GOA) project ‘New Approaches to the Social Dynamics
of Long-Term Fertility Change’ (Grant GOA/14/001, https://soc.kul
euven.be/ceso/fapos/nasdltfc/index).
Brandon T. McDonald is a Postdoctoral Researcher and Lecturer in
the Department of Ancient History at the University of Basel, currently
working on the influence of climate change and disease in third-century
Roman Egypt. Trained first as a historian and classicist at Columbia
University, he completed his doctoral studies in Classical Archaeology at
Oxford, with a thesis titled, Climate Change and Major Plagues in the
Roman Period, which he is now turning into a monograph.
Adnan Mirhanoğlu is a Ph.D. Researcher at the Department of Earth
and Environmental Sciences in the University of Leuven as a part of the
Sagalassos Archeological Research Project. His research mainly focuses
on how technology, social relations and infrastructure affect access to
irrigation water.
xxxviii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Riia Timonen is a Ph.D. Candidate at Leiden University, Faculty of

Archaeology, where she furthers her research on Mycenaean farming prac-
tices and the agricultural potential of the Late Bronze Age Argive Plain,
Greece. Her research interests include ancient agricultural economies, the
Aegean Bronze Age, and environmental and landscape archaeology.
Andrea Toreti is a Senior Scientist at the Joint Research Centre of the
European Commission. He graduated in Mathematics at the University of
Rome ‘La Sapienza’ and got a Ph.D. in Climate Sciences at the University
of Bern. His research is focused on: climate variability, predictability and
extremes; climate change, impacts and adaptation in agriculture; climate
services; statistical climatology.
Ralf Vandam is a Senior Postdoctoral Fellow of the Research Founda-
tion—Flanders (FWO) at the Sagalassos Archaeological Research Project
of the KU Leuven and a part-time Professor of Archaeology in the
Department of Art Studies and Archaeology at the Vrije Universiteit
Brussel. He is a landscape archaeologist with a special focus on human-
environment interactions in the past.
Dimitri Van Limbergen is currently a Senior Postdoctoral Fellow of
the Research Foundation—Flanders (FWO) in the department of Archae-
ology at Ghent University.
Koenraad Verboven is Professor of Ancient History at Ghent University,
Belgium. He has published extensively on ancient social and economic
history, including the monograph The Economy of friends: Economic aspects
of amicitia and patronage in the late Republic and six edited volumes on
Roman economic and legal history.
Sebastian Wagner is a Research Scientist at the Climate Extremes and
Impacts group at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht. His main focus is
on regional and global climate simulations for the Holocene and the last
two millennia. A second focus of his work is the application of pseudo
proxy experiments for testing climate reconstructions. He was involved in
the core group of the PAGES2k initiative EuroMed2k reconstructing the
climate over Europe during the last 2,000 years.
Erika Weiberg is Researcher and Associated Professor at the Department
of Archaeology and Ancient History, Uppsala University. She is an Aegean
prehistorian with a strong interdisciplinary profile, specializing in soci-
etal transformations and studies of human-environment dynamics. She has
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xxxix

published extensively and directed several projects that all serve to high-
light the interplay between humans and their surroundings over different
timescales by utilizing a wide variety of datasets, theories and methods
and producing a synthetic whole.
Elena Xoplaki is Senior Scientist, currently Acting Head of the Clima-
tology, Climate Dynamics and Climate Change Research Group at
Justus Liebig University Giessen. She is an expert on climate variability
and change in the past, present and future with spatial focus on the
greater Mediterranean region. She conducts multi- and interdisciplinary
research and promotes collaboration between humanities, social and
natural sciences on an international level. She is a Fellow of the European
Academy of Sciences.
Eduardo Zorita Senior Scientist at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht
is focused on the analysis of climate variability over the past centuries,
based on climate simulations and the analysis of proxy data (e.g. tree
rings). The goals are the identification of the fingerprint of the external
drivers of past climate (solar variability, volcanic eruptions), and the anal-
ysis of the internal mechanisms and their potential predictability. Main
tool is the statistical data analysis, including machine learning methods.
 List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Grain field with different cereal taxa (detail, bottom
right) nearby the archaeological site of Qara el-Hamra
in the Karanis concession, Fayum, Egypt. August 14,
2018 (Photo F. B. J. Heinrich) 39
Fig. 2.2 Sheep stubble grazing on a tomato field outside of Safi,
Jordan, February 12, 2018 (Photo A. M. Hansen) 65
Fig. 4.1 The population of central and northern Italy
in 1310–1910 (decadal data) and 1650–1913 (yearly
data) (000) (Sources For the period 1650–1913
the sources are the same of Table 4.1. For the previous
period, see Malanima 2002, 359–369) 106
Fig. 4.2 Yearly rates of demographic increase in central-northern
Italy 1650–1913 (%) (Note The dates refer to the most
negative yearly percentages. The trend is calculated
through the Hodrick-Prescott filter [L = 1600]. Natural
demographic increase is computed for any year as:
[Births–Deaths]/Population; Sources See the sources
of Fig. 4.4) 107
Fig. 4.3 Set of causal linkages from climate change to mortality
and fertility 108

xli
xlii LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 4.4 Birth (CBR), death (CDR) and marriage rates (CMR)
in central-northern Italy (per thousand) 1650–1913
(Sources Galloway [1994]. Since the article by Galloway
stops in 1881, I completed the series of CBR, CDR
and CMR through the following sources [including
also the period 1861–1881 in order to verify the already
available data]: ISTAT [1958]; ISTAT [1965]; Tendenze
evolutive della mortalità infantile in Italia [1975]) 109
Fig. 4.5 Deviations from the Hodrick-Prescott (L = 1600) trend
of Crude Death Rates (CDR) and Crude Birth Rates
(CBR) in central-northern Italy 1650–1913 (%) (Sources
See Fig. 4.3) 110
Fig. 4.6 Daily real wages of masons and yearly per capita GDP
(1861 Italian lire) (Sources Malanima [2013] for wages
and Malanima [2011] for GDP) 111
Fig. 4.7 Deviations from the trend of real wage and per capita
GDP rates in central-northern Italy 1650–1913 (Source
Malanima 2011, 2007) 112
Fig. 4.8 Deviations of yearly temperatures from the trend
in Italy 1650–1913 (%) (Source Leonelli et al. [2017],
Supplement to the article) 118
Fig. 5.1 Absolute and relative frequencies of publications
with the keyword combinations ‘archaeology + collapse’
and ‘archaeology + resilience’ since 1950 (Data:
WorldCat) 130
Fig. 5.2 Cultural cycles from the Neolithic to the Iron Age
in central Europe in relation to the size of deliberately
cooperating groups, regional variability is displayed
by dashed lines according to personal judgement, LBK
Bandkeramik (Linear Pottery), MN Middle Neolithic,
MK Michelsberg Culture, eBA early Bronze Age, UK
Urnfield Culture, lHA Iron Age late Hallstatt/early
Latène princely sites, lLT Iron Age oppida of late Latène
(Zimmermann 2012, Fig. 3, reprinted from Quaternary
International, Vol. 274, Zimmermann, ‘Cultural cycles
in central Europe during the Holocene’, 251–258,
Copyright (2012), with permission from Elsevier) 138
 LIST OF FIGURES xliii

Fig. 5.3 Adaptive cycles for RT appropriated for archaeology,

Build-up of adaptive cycles and nested cycles in time
(a–c) (Gronenborn et al. 2014, Fig. 2, reprinted
from Journal of Archaeological Science, Vol. 51,
Gronenborn et al., ‘Adaptive cycles’ and climate
fluctuations: A case study from Linear Pottery Culture
in western Central Europe, 73–83, Copyright (2014),
with permission from Elsevier) and the concept
of cyclical social resilience strategies (social diversity)
and archaeological markers (stylistic diversity)
(d) (Gronenborn et al. 2017, Fig. 1, reprinted
from Quaternary International, Vol. 446, Gronenborn
et al., ‘Population dynamics, social resilience strategies,
and Adaptive Cycles in early farming societies
of SW Central Europe’, 54–65, Copyright (2017),
with permission from Elsevier) 140
Fig. 5.4 Adaptive Cycle (AC) of the LBK based on data
from Württemberg with phases of increased precipitation
shaded (a) (Gronenborn et al. 2014, Fig. 4, reprinted
from Journal of Archaeological Science, Vol. 51,
Gronenborn et al., ‘Adaptive cycles’ and climate
fluctuations: A case study from Linear Pottery Culture
in western Central Europe, 73–83, Copyright (2014),
with permission from Elsevier) and their latest model
using additional archaeological and paleoclimatic
proxies (b) (Gronenborn et al. 2017, Fig. 4, reprinted
from Quaternary International, Vol. 446, Gronenborn
et al., ‘Population dynamics, social resilience strategies,
and Adaptive Cycles in early farming societies
of SW Central Europe’, 54–65, Copyright (2017),
with permission from Elsevier) 141
Fig. 5.5 Distribution of Neolithic wetland and dry land sites,
burials as well as scatter finds in the northern Alpine
foreland, data is only representive for the area of today’s
Switzerland (Doppler and Ebersbach 2014, 59, data
after Ebersbach (unpubl.), reprinted with permission
from the authors) 146
Fig. 5.6 Absolute frequency of tree cutting (felling) phases
of wooden piles in years, calculated for Neolithic
and Bronze Age settlements in western Switzerland,
subdivided by periods (after Laabs 2019) 148
xliv LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 5.7 Lakeshore settlement layouts from the 5th to the 3rd
millennium BCE in eastern France, Switzerland
and southern Germany (after Hafner et al. 2016,
Fig. 61, © Landesdenkmalamt Baden-Württemberg,
reprinted with permission) 149
Fig. 5.8 Correlation of warmer and colder periods
with dendrochronologically dated wetland sites
between 4500 and 1350 BCE. Settlement gaps
with no preserved sites are indicated (after Suter et al.
2005, Fig. 37, © Archäologischer Dienst Bern, Max
Stöckli, reprinted with permission) 153
Fig. 5.9 Holocene climate fluctuations and archaeological
findings at the Schnidejoch as well as comparison
of different Holocene climate indicators. (a) Total
solar irradiance. (b) Alpine glacier fluctuations. (c)
Radiocarbon data Schnidejoch (2011). (d) Tree line
eastern central Alps relative to today. e. Average solar
irradiance relative to today (after Nussbaumer, S., F.
Steinhilber, M. Trachsel et al. 2011. ‘Alpine climate
during the Holocene: a comparison between records
of glaciers, lake sediments and solar activity’, Journal
of quaternary science JQS, 26 (7): Fig. 7. Reprinted
with permission from John Wiley and Sons) 160
Fig. 5.10 Summary of the climate proxies/forces (A) volcanic
sulphates (Zielinski-Mershon 1997), (B) total solar
radiation (TSI) (Data: Steinhilber et al. 2012), (C) 14 C
(data: Reimer et al. 2004), (D) homogeneity curve
(Data: Schmidt and Gruhle 2003) (after Laabs 2019,
Fig. 143) 161
Fig. 5.11 Alpine tree line (after Nicolussi 2009, Fig. 6, reprinted
with the permission from IUP-Innsbruck University
Press) 162
Fig. 5.12 Holocene climate fluctuations, percentage concentration
of rock abrasion in drill cores of the North Atlantic,
high peaks are regarded as tracers for the increased
penetration of icebergs to the south (from Bond et al.
[2001]. ‘Persistent Solar Influence on North Atlantic
Climate During the Holocene’, Science 294: Fig. 2.
Reprinted with permission from AAAS) 163
 LIST OF FIGURES xlv

Fig. 5.13 Lakeshore settlements in the Three-Lake-Region

mapped out in third century steps from 3600 to 3467
cal. BCE as well as the variations of Be10 -concentrations,
for the symbol legend see Fig. 5.16 164
Fig. 5.14 Lakeshore settlements in the Three-Lake-Region
mapped out in third century steps from 3467 to 3334
cal. BCE as well as the variations of Be10 -concentrations,
for the symbol legend see Fig. 5.16 165
Fig. 5.15 Lakeshore settlements in the Three-Lake-Region
mapped out in third century steps from 3334 to 3200
cal. BCE as well as the variations of Be10 -concentrations,
for the symbol legend see Fig. 5.16 166
Fig. 5.16 Lakeshore settlements in the Three-Lake-Region
mapped out in third century steps from 3200 to 3100
cal. BCE as well as the variations of Be10 -concentrations 167
Fig. 5.17 Settlement layouts and histories of Murten-Pantschau
at Lake Murten (a) and Sutz-Lattrigen-Riedstation
at Lake Bienne (b) (after Crivelli et al. 2012, Fig. 22,
© Service archéologique de l’Etat de Fribourg (SAEF),
Michel Mauvilly; after Hafner and Suter 2000, Fig. 49,
© Archäologischer Dienst des Kantons Bern, René
Buschor, reprinted with permission) 169
Fig. 5.18 The bay of Lattrigen at Lake Bienne with the settlements
of Sutz-Lattrigen-Hauptstation-Innen, Riedstation
and Neue Station (after Hafner 2010, Fig. 1 and 3, ©
Archäologischer Dienst Bern, Andreas Zwahlen; Hafner
2005, Fig. 43, © Archäologischer Dienst Bern, René
Buschor, reprinted with permission) 172
Fig. 5.19 Temporal rhythms of settlement construction practices
and indications of failed settlements at Lake Morat
and Bienne around 3400 BCE 173
Fig. 5.20 Fluctuation in settlement activities based on absolute
frequencies of settlements on Lake Morat, Bienne
and Neuchâtel (4300–800 BCE), black: felling phases
indicating maximum settlement duration <= 35 years,
grey: >= 35 years (Laabs 2019) 176
Fig. 5.21 Map of the 5 speleothem datasets used in relation
to the location of the Three-Lake-Region (Background
Map: Natural Earth Data) 177
xlvi LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 5.22 Comparison of settlement intensity with the number

of dry events according to Wanner et al. (2011).
Left: the respective curves. Top right: representation
of the coincidence of the identified events as trigger
or precursor. Bottom right: result of the significance
tests against the random models, the shuffle p-value is
mostly considered 178
Fig. 5.23 Comparison of settlement intensity with the δO18 values
from speleothems (see text) extracted from the SISAL
database. Structure like Fig. 5.21 179
Fig. 5.24 Comparison of settlement intensity with the Be10 values
according to Nussbaumer et al. (2011). Structure like
Fig. 5.21, coincidence of maxima 180
Fig. 5.25 Comparison of settlement intensity with the Be10 values
according to Nussbaumer et al. (2011). Structure like
Fig. 5.21, coincidence of minima 181
Fig. 7.1 Map of the Peloponnese showing areas of intensive
archaeological survey projects utilized in the present
study (A–D), as well as the locations of the Mycenaean
palaces in Pylos, Mycenae and Tiryns and the Mavri
Trypa Cave. (A) Southern Argolid Exploration
Project (Jameson et al. 1994), (B) Methana Survey
Project (Mee and Forbes 1997), (C) Berbati-Limnes
Archaeological Survey (Wells and Runnels 1996),
and (D) Pylos Regional Archaeological Project
(Davis et al. 1996, 1997). Note that not all land
within the red areas was surveyed. Green to brown
shading shows the current day interpolated mean annual
precipitation on the Peloponnese and in surrounding
areas (in the range of 374–906 mm per year).
The interpolation is based on precipitation data
from the meteorological stations indicated by black dots 217
 LIST OF FIGURES xlvii

Fig. 7.2 Paleoclimate and paleoenvironmental information

presented on an absolute time scale. (a) Climate
stability as indicated by the calculated standard
deviation of stable oxygen isotopes in Mavri Trypa Cave
in 100-year blocks. Lower values (up) indicate more
stable climate conditions. (b) Stable oxygen isotope data
from Mavri Trypa Cave interpreted to reflect variability
in moisture during the growth period 1860–1000 BC
(for details regarding interpretations see Finné et al.
2017). More negative values indicate more moisture.
The LBA growth period is preceded and superseded
by growth hiatuses interpreted to reflect dry conditions.
(c) Synthesised Anthropogenic Pollen Indicators (API)
from southern mainland Greece providing a measure
of overall human pressure on the landscape based
on pollen data from sites located on the Peloponnese
and adjacent areas (for details, see Weiberg et al. 2019a;
Woodbridge et al. 2019) 221
Fig. 7.3 Examples of site clusters and resulting EPLU surfaces
based on data for LH IIIA–B (each including two
sub phases) from the Berbati-Limnes Archaeological
Project (Wells and Runnels 1996). Kernels illustrate
three different density levels: maximum (yellow
shading), medium (orange) and high-density (red).
Site size levels are based on the following division: 1
= Very small, 0–0.2 ha, 2 = Small, 0.3–0.19 ha, 3
= Intermediate, 1.0–4.9, 4 = Medium, 5.0–9.99 ha
(Adapted from Bonnier et al. 2019: Fig. 2) 225
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thought of.
“I don’t exactly see,” said Paul to his cousin, when they were both
in the park after breakfast, “why my father should wish to have a
house built for my sister, since he thinks it so desirable to keep for
himself and for us the old mansion in which we were born.”
“It is not a matter of very easy explanation; but you are old
enough, Paul, to understand it. In the first place, your sister Marie
now bears another name than yours; and a well-known respected
name has a similar standing in the neighbourhood with the old house
to which, so to speak, it is attached. If you had not been born, and
your parents were no longer living, Madame N——, your sister, on
coming to live on this estate, might safely pull down the old house
and build a new one, for it would not be more difficult to introduce the
new house than the name of a new proprietor. She would have to
create new ties with all this little world that surrounds you, and
consequently to establish between this world and her new family
relations differing probably from those which now exist between your
father and the people of your neighbourhood. Your father’s
connection with the peasants of Berri, among whom he has always
lived, is intertwined with traditions handed down through several
generations without interruption. He can therefore obtain services
from them, and inspire them with a confidence which would not be
accorded to new-comers, or to any name but his; while these
peasants on their part unsuspectingly accept favours which they
know from long experience to be disinterested. The old manor-
house, occupied by a stranger bearing a new name, would lose the
prestige which your father so justly appreciated; there would in that
case be no advantage in preserving its time-honoured aspect. M. de
Gandelau, therefore, who does nothing without consideration,
perceives that some day or other, by the pressure of circumstances,
his house might be no longer suitable for his children, so that before
its possible disappearance, he builds a new one for your sister; a
house to which the neighbourhood will become gradually
accustomed, and which will form a new family centre; for Madame
Marie is beloved and esteemed throughout the neighbourhood.
People will become accustomed to the more modern habits of the
new manor-house, and no one will then think it strange that the old
one should be demolished. Your father is preparing a gradual
transition from a social condition, which, though on the decline even
in the country districts, still exists, to that which is destined to replace
it. You see, then, that though he values the past, and endeavours to
preserve its advantages, he does not believe in its perpetuity, and
foresees the time when it must vanish before the habits and
requirements of the present. Natural as is your father’s mode of
living, because it is the result of habits that have not been interrupted
for many generations, it would be difficult for a new-comer to
conform to these habits. Besides, this estate which M. de Gandelau
has rendered so productive, and which he has increased in extent,
will have to be divided at his decease amongst his three children.
Already he has detached a portion of it to form your sister’s dowry.
He intends, then, by the residence we are going to build, to have this
part now brought into harmony with the habits of the new proprietors,
who are young, and whose mode of life must be different from that
which still suits your father. When you are older you will appreciate
all these things better. Let us go and resume our work.”
Paul was endeavouring to gain a clear view of the grave subjects
his cousin had been discussing. He recalled the conversation of the
preceding days between his father and mother, and his mind was
evidently full of ideas, new to him, which had been thus suggested.
At any rate, the old house began to assume in his eyes a venerable
appearance, and he was no longer inclined to censure its
inconvenient arrangements and somewhat inelegant exterior.
 CHAPTER IV.
PAUL’S IDEAS RESPECTING ART, AND HOW THEY WERE
MODIFIED.

“Before resuming our pencil,” said Eugène, as soon as they were

seated once more in his study, “you must know how you are going to
proceed. We have sketched the ground plans. We know that they
can be realized, that the construction will present no special
difficulties; that the partition walls of the upper stories stand vertically
on those of the lower ones; that the bearings of the floors are
reasonable, and that the openings are conveniently placed. That is
satisfactory so far.... But now, do you realize these plans in
elevation? That is, can you fancy the house as standing, with its
stories, its roofing, its windows, &c.?”
“Well, I can’t say I do.”
“You must then first picture the building to yourself as if it actually
existed.... I know that this is hardly possible for you, since there are
many architects who are as far off as you from being able to do so
when they have drawn horizontal plans on paper, and who in
drawing these plans do not see the building for which they are
designed. Reflect a little; examine their outlines well, and endeavour
to give them in elevation some definite form in your mind’s eye
before making use of the pencil.... Take your time. I have a letter to
write, and some accounts to attend to; so while I am engaged, try to
give me the elevation of one of the fronts of the house,—the
entrance-front, for example, on the north side,—and we will discuss
your design. I only give you one piece of advice,—that is, to put
nothing upon paper without having previously considered whether
your design is appropriate and useful.
“Come, try your best; and don’t forget the scale of proportions.”
Paul was much embarrassed, and found the work by no means
easy. The ideas which had suggested themselves in abundance at
his first attempt were not forthcoming now. However, at the end of a
good hour and a half he presented a sketch to his cousin.
“It might be worse,” said Eugène. “You have given the ground floor
15 feet from floor to floor,—that was about what we said; but why the
same height for the first floor? The rooms are smaller, and more airy;
there is therefore no need to give an equal height to this story, and
13 feet 6 inches would be quite enough. And why put round arched
windows on the ground floor? Arched windows are difficult to fit with
casements, and there is a difficulty with shutters, jalousies, or
outside blinds. Again, the windows of your principal staircase do not
ramp with the stairs, and would be cut in the middle by it; which
would prevent their being opened, and expose them to danger from
the feet in ascending or descending. In the next place, your stair
turret does not rise above the cornice, and would not enable you to
enter the attics. And so with the servants’ staircase. Your roofs are
double pitched; that is, with two angles of inclination. That is not
quite the thing for this district. The roofs should be simply triangular,
and without hips, which are difficult to keep in repair. Gables are
preferable. You have marked quoins of stone at the angles. I see no
harm in that; but how would you form your window reveals thus
enframed by a kind of pilaster? None of your chimney-stacks rise
above your roof; yet you are aware that they usually show. Your attic
windows are too low, and you would run your head against the top in
looking out of them. The lintels of these dormer windows must be at
least 6 feet 6 inches above the floor. And why make your dormer
windows oval? It is a very inconvenient shape, and they are difficult
to open and shut. You have drawn the entrance flight of steps in
perspective, as the Chinese do ... but that is a trifle. What will you
build your walls with? Masonry, rubble-work, masonry and rubble
mingled, or stone and bricks?
 Fig. 3.—Roof Plan.
“Let us study this together. When you draw a horizontal or ground
plan, independently of the arrangements, you have to consider how
your buildings shall be covered in. For the most important question in
a building is that of the manner of roofing it, as every building
intended for internal use is a shelter. That is unquestionable, is it
not? Well, then, in your building, the plans of which you have now
before you, what is observable in the general form of the main
block? Two parallelograms intersecting—so (Fig. 3). One
parallelogram, a b c d, intersected by another, e f g h. We do not
now take into account the bay windows and staircases. If then we
raise gables upon the walls, a c, b d, with a length of slope equal to
the line a c, we shall have two equilateral triangles whose bases will
be a c and b d, and the angles of inclination 60°, which is the most
suitable pitch for slating, inasmuch as it gives no hold to the snow or
opportunity for mischief to the wind. If in like manner we erect upon
the walls e f g h two gables having a similar inclination, these walls
being less in length than those marked a b c d, the triangles will be
smaller and their summits less elevated than the first. Consequently
the roof raised upon the smaller parallelogram will penetrate that
raised upon the larger, and will form by its penetration internal angles
which we call valleys; I draw these valleys i k, k l, m n, m o. The
inclination of the two roofs being equal, these valleys will, in plan,
divide the right angle into two equal angles: you know enough of
geometry to understand that.
 “Here, then, we see the simplest way of roofing our building; and
when roofing is in question, the simplest methods are always the
best. Now, in order that our two stairs may give access to the third
story, it is necessary that their walls should rise above the cornice of
the building and form for them alone an additional story. We will then
raise these stair-walls and will give them roofs of their own. One—
that of the principal stairs—shall be pyramidal; and the other—that of
the small stairs—conical.
“There is no reason why we should not erect upon the two walls g
z, s t, of the bay windows, small gables, always with the same
inclination of 60°, and cover these projections with two small roofs
abutting against the great gables a c, b d. As to the building
appropriated on the ground floor to the kitchen and on the first floor
to the linen-room, we will follow the same method, and, erecting a
gable on the wall u v, we shall have upon this wing a triangular roof,
which will also abut against the great gable b d. We shall then have
a meeting of two slopes at the bottom of the roof of the bay window s
t, and of that of the linen-room wing. We shall form a lean-to (so as
to do without inner gutters,) which will penetrate these two roofs and
discharge the water at t. The horizontal projection, therefore, of this
assemblage of roofs, will be as the drawing shows in Fig. 3. The
chimney-stacks will pass through these roofs, as I indicate to you;
and in order to prevent the chimneys from smoking, these stacks
should rise at least to the level of the ridge, that is, a little above the
topmost crest of the highest roof. With regard to the roofs of the
outbuildings, as they are lower—being only one story in height—we
need not trouble ourselves about them just now.
“Observe that, as these gables rise perpendicularly, we are
enabled to get in the roof a third story, affording some very
convenient bedrooms for guests, besides the servants’ rooms (in the
attics), which we must provide, and light by means of dormer
windows; while we shall be able to provide for the bedrooms in the
gables handsome windows with balconies, if we wish.
“That settled, in principle, it will be as well to arrange the divisions
of this story in the roof. Lay a piece of tracing-paper upon the plan of
the first floor. Good: now trace all the thick walls which must of
necessity be carried up under the roof, since they contain fireplaces.
Draw 3 feet 3 inches within the eave walls—i.e. those which do not
carry gables—a line that indicates the space rendered useless by
the slope of the roof; thus you will get the space of which you are
able to make use. The principal stairs reach to this floor, as well as
the servants’ stairs. To the left of the thick division wall, which, from
the principal staircase, goes to join the angle of the main building
towards the south-east—the desirable aspect—we are going to
dispose the bedrooms for guests, which will thus form a separate
quarter communicating with the chief apartments by the principal
stairs. We can in this part get two good bedrooms, a and b, with their
dressing-rooms a and b; and two smaller bedrooms c and d, all
having fireplaces. We must not forget the water-closet for these
rooms, at w. On the other side, in immediate communication with the
servants’ stairs, we can easily get four servants’ bedrooms, e, f, g,
h, a lumber-room i, and a water-closet l, for the servants. (Fig. 4.)

Fig. 4.—Plan of the Second Floor.

“In the upper part of the coach-house and stable building and over
the wash-house, we shall also be able in the roofs to arrange three
or four bedrooms for the coachman, groom, &c.
“And now for the elevations.
 “We will raise the ground floor 4 feet above the exterior ground
level, in order to give air to our cellars, and to preserve the ground
floor from the moisture of the earth. We will give the lower rooms a
height of 14 feet to the ceiling. Draw at this level a horizontal string
course 12 inches deep, which will be the thickness of the floor. To
the rooms of the first floor, which are smaller than those of the
ground floor, we will give a height of 12 feet in the clear. Now, mark
the thickness of the cornice, with its tabling, 1 foot 9 inches. Then will
begin the roofs, whose height will be fixed by that of the gables.
Taking the entrance front we project the angles of the building, the
doors and the windows from the plan. Here, then, we have the
outline of the façade arranged.”
Eugène then took the board and sketched the façade. (Fig. 5).

Fig. 5.—The Entrance Front

A fair copy on a small scale of all this was soon made, to be sent
to Madame Marie N——, that they might know what she thought of
it, and might proceed to execute the plan as soon as her reply was
received.
Paul was beginning to perceive some of the difficulties
accompanying even the most modest architectural undertaking, and
to ask himself how Master Branchu, who could but just manage to
write and cipher, had been able to build the Mayor’s house, which
was not such a bad one to look at.
His cousin, to whom he referred the question, replied as follows:—
“Branchu has a practical knowledge of his business; he is a good
country mason, who began by carrying the hod: he is the son of a
mason, and does what he has seen his father do before him.
Besides this, he is intelligent, laborious, and honest. By practice
alone he has succeeded in building as well as is usual in the country
—perhaps a little better, because he sets himself to work to reason
about what he is doing. He observes; he is no simpleton, nor is he
vain; he avoids faults, and copies excellences wherever he sees
them. You shall see him at work, and you will sometimes be
surprised at the justness of his observations, the persistency with
which he defends his opinions, and the practical methods of which
he is master. If you give him instructions, and he does not quite
understand them, he says nothing, but comes again next day to
explain to you what he supposes was intended; thus obliging you to
repeat one by one all the doubtful points, and to complete what
seemed to him incomplete or vague in your statements. I like
Branchu because of his persistent determination to understand the
orders given him; and what makes him seem troublesome to some
appears to me a virtue; for if you have to do with him, you must have
foreseen everything, have an answer to every objection, and know
exactly what you wish in every particular. He gave up working for
Count ——, your neighbour, because he had to undo next day what
he had been ordered to do the day before. Ask him about it—the
story is worth hearing. This good man, who has had only the most
elementary experience in his business, but is thoroughly master of it
so far, who knows the materials of the district well, and how to make
use of them, will tell you that the architect of that interminable
château is an ignoramus, and will prove it to you, after his fashion.
Yet it is evident that the architect in question is a much more learned
man than Master Branchu.
“As a general rule, in giving an order, you should have thought
seven times of the objections to which it is liable, otherwise some
Master Branchu may start up who, with a single word will
demonstrate your thoughtlessness. An architect may, indeed, if he
chooses, stop the mouth of objectors when placed under his
authority; but to impose silence on people is not to prove that they
are wrong, especially if a few days afterwards the director of the
works gives contrary orders. Every one has his share of amour-
propre, which must not be disregarded. As a subordinate takes
kindly and is flattered by the attention you give to his observations
when they are well founded, so, on the other hand, he is disposed to
doubt your capability if you reject them without examination;
especially if, a short time afterwards, facts seem to prove that he
might have been right. There is only one means of establishing
discipline among a body of workmen; and that is proving to all that
you know more about matters than they do, and that you have duly
taken account of difficulties.”
 CHAPTER V.
PAUL PURSUES A COURSE OF STUDY IN PRACTICAL
ARCHITECTURE.

Meantime, letters and newspapers were daily bringing the most

distressing intelligence. The enemy had crossed the French
boundary a week ago. Building was a matter scarcely to be thought
of. M. de Gandelau was visited almost incessantly by country people
coming to impart to him their fears and to ask his advice. The able-
bodied youths of the district were summoned to be incorporated in
the mobile. The manufactories of the neighbourhood were being
closed for want of hands. Groups of peasants—men and women—
might be met on the roads, who, contrary to the quiet habits of this
province, were speaking in excited tones; some of the women were
crying. The labours of the fields were suspended; a painful shudder
seemed to pass through the country; lights were seen in the cottages
at a late hour of the night; voices were heard calling to each other.
The cattle were brought in earlier than usual, and were driven afield
later in the morning. When people met each other on the roads they
would stay long talking. Sometimes, instead of returning to their own
abodes, they would walk rapidly on together in the direction of the
neighbouring town.
It was the 20th of August, 1870, when, going into his father’s room
early in the morning, Paul found him still more depressed than on the
previous days and it was not merely his aggravated gout that caused
the depression. Eugène was there.—“Some are too old, others too
young. If this boy was four or five years older,” said M. de Gandelau,
embracing his son, “I would send him with all these young fellows
who are summoned to the service; but he is too young, happily for
his mother. It will be a long struggle, they say; God only knows what
will become of our poor country engaged in an insensate war; but
our duty is clear—to remain here among all these families,
distressed as they are, and bereaved of their children; to wait, and
try to calm down this distracted multitude. Do not let us surrender our
self-possession, or give way to useless disquietude; let us work—
that is the remedy for all evils; and misfortune will not find us more
destitute of courage after days of labour than after a period of
feverish inactivity. I see that Paul will not be able to return so soon to
college. As to yourself, Eugène, nothing obliges you just now to stay
in one place rather than another. Your business will be suspended in
every quarter; remain here, where you can make yourself useful as
long as the country does not require your services.
“Who knows what may happen! But even if this state of things
continues, we will try to build Marie’s house; it will give employment
to those who have been thrown out of work. You will be able to give
Paul practical lessons in the elements of construction. We shall,
perhaps, run short of the one thing needful for building—money. Ah,
well! that will oblige us to discover the means of doing without it. We
have the raw material; we have hands, and enough to keep them for
some time to come. Let us, then, not give way to despondency and
useless recriminations; let us work; we shall be only the better
prepared if in one last effort we have to call upon all—old men and
children with the rest—to defend our native soil.”
Madame de Gandelau uniting her entreaties with those of her
husband, it was not difficult to persuade Eugène to take up his
quarters at the château. In fact, three days subsequently, after
having gone away to settle some affairs, he was on his way back
with an ample store of paper and instruments required for the details
of a building plan.
They could not set to work till the sketch sent to Paul’s sister
should be returned, approved or amended. It was decided that
during the interval Eugène should give Paul the first notions of the
building of a house, that the morning should be the time for
instruction, and that in the afternoon our architectural tyro should
reproduce the lesson in writing, and have his work corrected at the
family gatherings in the evening. Thus the days would be well
occupied.

Lesson the First.

 “If you please, Paul, we will take our lessons walking, and for a
good reason.”
This arrangement was quite satisfactory to Paul, who was certainly
not accustomed to this mode of teaching at the Lyceum. The
prospect of a course of lessons delivered, re-produced in writing by
the pupil, and corrected indoors, had not seemed to him at the first
blush quite to harmonize with the idea which a youth of sixteen forms
of hours consecrated to recreation; and although after his first
attempts architecture seemed to him a very noble study, and he was
proud enough to think that his plan was perhaps at this moment
being inspected by his sister Marie and her husband, yet, at the
moment he was directing his steps towards his cousin’s apartment,
he had looked with a somewhat longing eye at the fine old trees in
the park, and the brilliant green of the meadows between their dark
trunks. A sigh of satisfaction escaped him as he tripped down the
steps.
“Let us proceed leisurely towards that part of the estate where we
are to build the house,” said his cousin, as soon as they were
outside; “a knowledge of the ground is indispensable to the
architect’s further progress. There are, as you know, several kinds of
soils; some resisting, others soft and compressible in various
degrees. Rocks form the firmest foundation—one on which we may
build with confidence—provided they have not been excavated or
disturbed. The name of virgin soil is given to that which presents
itself in the condition in which geological phenomena have placed it;
that of ‘made ground’ to soil which has been disturbed or deposited
by man, or produced by vegetation, or brought to the spot by the
sudden violence of torrents. As a general rule, we should give an
exclusive preference to virgin soils; yet even some of these must be
mistrusted, as I shall explain to you directly.
“We must then endeavour to distinguish a virgin soil from ‘made’
or disturbed ground; and to do so, some acquaintance with
elementary geology is indispensable. Thus, the crystalliform rocks,
granites, gneiss, and crystalline schists remain in the condition in
which the cooling of the globe and the upheavals of its crust have
placed them. The sandstones, the calcareous rocks, the marls, the
gravels, even the clays deposited by water under an enormous
pressure, are stratified—that is to say, deposited in layers, like the
courses of a building, and present an excellent foundation. The hill
there on the right, in whose direction your sister’s wood extends,
presents, as you see from this point, escarpments laid bare by the
waters of the brook we are going to cross; observe that the stone,
which seems denuded, presents itself in almost horizontal layers. It
is an oolitic limestone, excellent for building, and on which you may
confidently rely as a foundation also. In these strata, therefore, we
may excavate cellars, and make use of what we have taken from the
excavations to raise the walls. Here we are walking on sandy clays,
intermingled with millstone grit. This also forms a good and
incompressible foundation. It is otherwise with pure clays; not that
they are compressible, but, if they are not secured—if, for instance,
they lie on a declivity—they are liable to slip in consequence of the
infiltration of water between their layers, and the house built on them
goes down with them. And thus you may sometimes see whole
villages built on clayey declivities, descending into the valley. Great
attention, therefore, must be paid to the method in which you build in
clays, if you would avoid these dangers. Sometimes also, when they
are greatly compressed by a heavy building, the clays sink down
under the weight, and rise proportionally at a little distance, in see-
saw fashion. Marine sands, pure, fine or gravelly, are well adapted to
receive foundations, because the sand settles naturally, however
slightly moistened it may be. To such a degree is this the case, that
we can form an artificial foundation if needful by depositing good
beds of sea-sand on a questionable soil, and moistening these beds
thoroughly. The finer the sand is and the freer from clay the better,
for its small, hard, equal grains leave only very slight intervals
between them and touch on several points. If the weight compresses
the layer of sand, and forces it to settle down, the settling down is
regular, and consequently harmless. The building settles thus to the
extent of some fractions of an inch, according to its weight; but it
does not dislocate, because it settles uniformly. The alluvial deposits
formed by slowly-flowing waters, such as rivers or lakes, also
compose good foundations, because the layers of gravel or mud
have been gradually deposited, and are closely heaped together by
the liquid that transported them. It is quite otherwise with marshy
soils, for the water, having no current, has allowed vegetables to
grow in its bed. These vegetables on dying are annually replaced by
others. Successive layers of detritus are then formed under very
trifling pressure, leaving between them innumerable cavities, just like
a heap of rotten hay. These deposits are called peat-bogs. Nothing
can be safely placed on these deposits, for they sink down under the
lightest burden. Stop! here we are near the stream, at a point which
exhibits this phenomenon. Stamp on this closely-turfed soil. You
perceive that the ground sounds hollow, and shakes beneath the
shock. Sometimes these peat-beds reach to such a depth, through
the accumulation of vegetable detritus, that the bottom can scarcely
be reached. If you build upon these, your construction will gradually
sink, often unequally, on account of the inclination of the sub-soil, so
that the building will lean to one side. It is thus that at Pisa and at
Bologna, in Italy, there are towers which inclined thus while they
were being built, until the turf was completely compressed under
their weight. When these soils occur, the turf must be removed, the
rock or gravel must be reached, or piles must be driven in very close
to each other, until they can be forced no deeper. Then, on the
heads of these piles is placed what is called a raft, a kind of wooden
framing, between the spaces of which concrete is poured, and on
which the first courses of masonry are placed. Whole cities are built
thus. Venice and Amsterdam rest only upon forests of piles driven in
mud, which is spongy, because it was formed under a shallow sheet
of water which had not power to compress it.
 Fig. 6.
“But it is not enough to know the nature of the soil on which a
building is to be erected; we must also examine the subjacent water-
courses, and how the rain-water flows off on the surface of the
ground, or beneath it. The presence of a bed of clay, however thin,
between strata of limestone, grit or sand, is a most important fact to
the builder; for such beds being impervious—that is, not allowing the
rain-water to penetrate them—give rise to currents or sheets of
water, which may occasion most disastrous consequences to the
foundations. Examine this greenish layer just here, along the
escarpment;—it is of clay; it is very thin, and cannot retain water; but
suppose it were 20 inches thick. The rains, which will easily
penetrate the gravel placed above, will be arrested by this layer of
clay, and pursue their course along its plane of inclination, and they
will gradually form cavities like small grottoes, and a concealed
current. If you build a cellar wall or a foundation descending below
that accumulation of water, it will reach your wall and penetrate it, in
spite of your efforts, and will fill your cellars. It will consequently be
necessary at the outset to divert this accumulation of water by
collecting it in a drain to keep it away from your buildings. Give me
your note-book, that I may show clearly what I mean by a sketch—
(Fig. 6). Let a b be the stratum of clay, c d the pervious stratum of
gravel or sand. A sheet of water running from e to f will be formed
after every shower. This sheet will be arrested by the foundation or
cellar wall g h, and will soon permeate it, since it cannot reascend
nor penetrate the clay. We must, therefore, provide, at i, a transverse
drain, with openings on the upper side, through which water will find
its way into the channel shown in sketch k. This drain will take the
water thus collected wherever you like, and leave the wall g h
perfectly dry. You understand, don’t you?
“But if you have to lay your foundations entirely in clay, you must
adopt much more serious precautions: for, as I told you just now, the
whole bed of clay may chance to slip.

Fig. 7.
“Banks of clay are apt to slip, especially when they present such a
section as I have drawn—(Fig 7). Let a be a bed of rock, b a bed of
clay. Rain-water falling on the upper side from d to c, will pass at c
below the bed of clay; and if the rain is persistent, it will form from c
to e a soft, slippery, soapy stratum, so that the clay bed c b e will
slide over it by its own weight, but especially if at g you have
burdened it with a building.
“How, then, can we guard against the danger? First, by collecting
the water at c into a sewer, or a dry stone drain, so that it may not
pass under the clay bed,—in case the latter is very thick. Secondly, if
it is only a few yards thick, by getting down to the rock or gravel for
the foundation wall, and placing a collecting sewer at i, as above.
Then the triangular bed of clay, c i k, will not be able to slide, being
kept up by the firmly-planted and loaded wall. The part of the clay
lying below, not being moistened from above, will not slip. But this
wall, h, and its drain, i, must be thick enough to resist the pressure of
the triangle c i k.
“You perceive, then, how important it is to understand the soils on
which you have to build; and how essential it is for an architect to
have some acquaintance with geology. Remember this well, for the
architects of the preceding generation have shown a contempt for
these studies, and have relied on their contractors in many instances
where that knowledge was required.
“We shall also take into consideration muddy low-lying soils,
permeated by water, which cannot be dug into, because their
consistency is little better than that of compact mud, and in which the
deeper you dig the less resistance you meet. When these soils are
not of a turfy description, contain little vegetable detritus, and always
retain the same quantity of water, you can build upon them, for water
is not compressible. Your building is then a kind of boat; the only
question is, how to prevent the water from escaping, from receding
under the weight of the structure as it does under that of a boat.
When you plunge into a bath half full of water, the liquid rises along
the brim proportionately to the volume of your body. But suppose
that a board cut out so as exactly to fit the outline of your body,
prevents the water from rising around you, you will not be able to
sink into the water, and it will bear you on its surface. Well, then, the
problem of building in a muddy soil consists in preventing the mud
from rising around the house in proportion to the pressure. I must
once more give you a sketch, showing the method of securing a
successful result in this particular case. (Fig. 8.)
 Fig. 8.
“Let us suppose we have been digging in ‘made ground’ a, i.e.,
ground in which we cannot build with security. At b we reach the
virgin soil, but it is very moist—mud of old formation, permeated by
water, and in which one sinks in walking. The deeper we go into it
the softer we find it. A bar thrust down to the depth of two or three
yards discovers no bottom, and the holes made in it are immediately
filled with water. Piles driven in sink up to the head. Now, there can
be no doubt that for an ordinary building it will not do to spend in
foundations double what the building itself would cost. We must
consider, therefore. In this case we shall dig a trench of about 1 foot
6 inches to 2 feet deep, to receive the walls forming the perimeter of
the house, as drawn at e; then, in these trenches, and over the
whole area of the building, we shall pour concrete, having a
thickness of 2 feet to 2 feet 6 inches, between the trenches, as at f.
We shall thus have formed a cover of homogeneous material, which
will prevent the mud, g h, comprised within its edges, from rising.
The weight of the made ground a will suffice to keep down the rest.
On a plateau of this kind you will be able to build securely.
“You will, perhaps, ask me what ‘concrete’ is, and how it is made.
You will learn this later on.”
Talking and making sketches, Paul and his cousin had reached the
slope of the hill on which the house was to be built.
“The situation is good,” said Eugène. “We have an excellent
calcareous soil, from which we shall even be able to get stone or
rubble fit for building. Here, on the lower slopes, we have fairly clean
sandy clay, with which we shall make brick. And there is the spring of
fresh water coming from the wood, and passing out below the lowest
of the limestone beds; we shall easily secure it, and lead it along the
house, where it will be doubly useful, for it will give us water for the
requirements of the household, and carry off in a drain all the house
sewage and impurities, which we will discharge into that old
excavation which I see on our left.
“However, we must examine before we proceed, for it seems to
me that these beds have already been worked at some points. We
should be very likely to meet with some of those carelessly-
conducted quarryings which are too common in this neighbourhood.”
“How,” asked Paul, “can good building-stone be distinguished from
that of inferior quality?”
“It is not always easy to distinguish it, and in this, as in many other
branches of knowledge, experience must confirm theory. Among
calcareous stones, which comprise, with certain sandstones, the
materials that can be easily quarried and worked, some are hard,
others soft; but the hardest are not always those which best resist
the effects of time. Many limestones contain clay, and as this retains
water, when frosts supervene, these clayey parts swell, and burst
blocks whose substance is composed of carbonate of lime, and also
of silica, in larger or smaller quantity. Limestones free from clay are
those which best resist moisture, and are least liable to be damaged
by frost. When, as here, we have beds laid bare by erosion, it is easy
to distinguish the good from the defective ones. Thus, observe that
large dark-looking mass, whose smooth bare edge has been
covered with lichens for centuries; it is of an excellent quality, for
lichens spread over a rock very slowly; and to enable them to attach
themselves to this stone and give it that grey speckled appearance,
the limestone must have resisted the decomposing action of the
atmosphere. Now, look at that bed of nearly pure white, and which
seems so sound. Well; it has this fair appearance only because at
every frost it has lost its skin; its surface has been decomposed.
Touch this rock, and you will observe a white dust remaining on your
hands. It is so, is it not? The quality of this block is consequently
bad; in fact, you see that below it the grass is covered with small
calcareous exfoliations, whereas the turf under the grey block is
quite free from dust. It is then very desirable for an architect, when