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Catastrophes in Context: The Archaeology of Catastrophes from the 1st–8th centuries CE in the Mediterranean Region

An OxREP-UrbNet conference
 

Organised by Professor Rubina Raja (Aarhus University) and Professor Andrew Wilson (University of Oxford)


Date: 17-18 April 2023

Time: 9:15-18:00

Venue: Old Library, All Souls College, University of Oxford, UK


Outline

Past catastrophes and their impacts – also economically speaking – on the societies of their time have been studied for decades. From the wide spectrum of catastrophic events in the ancient world, the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 CE and the study of Pompeii and Herculaneum very famously stands out as ‘frozen moments in time’. These are sites that keep on revealing new evidence. Other much studied catastrophes include numerous epidemics, such as the Justinianic Plague as well as the invasion of Rome by the Visigoths in 410 CE. However, there are countless other examples of local, regional, and much broader impact on the Mediterranean world. Catastrophes in their broadest sense, including invasions, wars, epidemics, and natural catastrophes, have fascinated scholars for centuries.

The study of the immediate impacts these events left behind have often distracted attention from broader issues which also need to be studied, among these the ability of societies to bounce back, depending on the nature of the catastrophe that hit them. This, in turn, is related to their resources and vulnerabilities in the time before they were hit. More often than not, we struggle with compiling, analysing, and disentangling the datasets that would allow us to understand how societies reacted to such events, both in short- and long-term perspectives, through a firmer integration of archaeological and historical approaches to the material evidence. Relatively little scholarship exists on the perspective of ‘what happened before’, namely the time leading up to the events; we need to gain a more firmly contextualized archaeological and historical perspective by considering catastrophes and the response to them in a longue durée perspective including the period before and the effects afterwards.

This OxREP-UrbNet conference, organized jointly by Rubina Raja, Centre for Urban Network Evolutions, Aarhus University, and Andrew Wilson, All Souls College, University of Oxford, aims at tackling such problems and questions through an assessment of datasets from a range of time periods and sites in the Mediterranean from the 1st until the 8th century CE. We are inviting a set of scholars to address particular events, sites, and datasets connected to them in a local and broader perspective to bring to the forefront how we can work with archaeological and historical datasets in a more contextualized manner by not only focusing only on the immediate impacts of catastrophes and crises but also looking at the time before and after.


Confirmed speakers

  • Anderson, Michael A. (San Francisco State University)
  • De Simone, Girolamo Fernando (Independent researcher)
  • Franconi, Tyler (Brown University)
  • Jacobs, Ine (University of Oxford)
  • McDonald, Brandon (University of Basel)
  • Pickett, Jordan (University of Georgia)
  • Raja, Rubina (Aarhus University)
  • Robinson, Damian (University of Oxford)
  • Tuck, Steven (Miami University)
  • Wallace, Lacey (University of Lincoln)
  • Wilson, Andrew (University of Oxford)

Practical information for speakers

Travel 

For invited speakers, up to three nights of accommodation will be covered (16-19 April) as well as travel expenses. Please book your own travel to Oxford, and we will reimburse you after your stay. Please note that we can only reimburse economy-class tickets.

After the event, you will receive a link to AU’s online travel reimbursement form. It is important that you keep your receipts, as you will need to provide documentation for expenses.


Accommodation

All Souls College
University of Oxford
Oxford OX1 4AL
UK

Phone: +44 (0)1865 279379
Website


Diet

We will host a speakers' dinner 17 April and will of course cater for you during the event. 

NOTE: If you have any dietary restrictions (incl. allergies), please let Christina Levisen (levisen@cas.au.dk) know no later than Monday 3 April, so that the caterers can be notified.