Johannes Preiser-Kapeller

Monograph, published in the series "C. H. Beck Geschichte der Antike" (Munich, 352 pp.) on 21 September 2023: https://www.chbeck.de/preiser-kapeller-byzanz/product/35514115

Dieser Band bietet einen Überblick über mehr als 1000 Jahre Geschichte. Das Besondere an dieser Erzählung vom 4. bis zum 15. Jahrhundert ist jedoch, dass sie als ein weiteres Millennium römischer Geschichte über die Geschichte der Antike hinaus dargeboten wird. Sie folgt damit dem Selbstverständnis der Zeitgenossen in Byzanz, die ihr Reich weiterhin als ein die Erdteile übergreifendes, für die Weltordnung unersetzliches Imperium verstanden; damit machten sie sich den römischen Weltherrschaftsanspruch zu eigen und hielten ihn bis 1453 aufrecht.

Die Verwaltungssprache in diesem neuen Römerreich am Bosporus war nicht mehr Latein, sondern Griechisch – aber in den heraufziehenden Jahrhunderten war Latein auch in den traditionellen Herrschaftsräumen der «alten Römer» längst zu einer toten Sprache geworden. Neu in Byzanz war zudem die intensive Verflechtung – nicht selten in Form blutiger Konflikte – mit der islamischen Welt. Doch kaum geringer waren die Gefahren, die aus dem «lateinischen Westen» drohten, verbunden mit den verheerenden Kreuzzügen. Und schließlich steigert Byzanz mit seinen Kontakten nach Ostafrika, in den Indischen Ozean, den Kaukasus, Osteuropa und Zentralasien die Dynamik der Globalisierung historischer Prozesse. Über all das weiß Johannes Preiser-Kapeller gleichermaßen spannend wie informativ zu erzählen.

Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, Taxiarchis G. Kolias und Falko Daim (eds.), Seasides of Byzantium. Harbours and Anchorages of a Mediterranean Empire (Byzanz zwischen Orient und Okzident Vol. 21). Mainz 2022, 264 pp.

Open access online: https://books.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/propylaeum/catalog/book/910

The conference »Seasides of Byzantium. Harbours and Anchorages of a Mediterranean Empire«, from which the papers collected in the present volume emerged, took place in Athens in 2017 as part of a cooperation between the DFG-funded Special Research Programme (SPP-1630) »Harbours from the Roman Period to the Middle Ages« and the National Hellenic Research Foundation. It united historians, archaeologists and geoarchaeologists to explore harbours and anchorages as core maritime infrastructure to the Late Roman and Byzantine Empire.
General phenomena such as the organisation of the Byzantine navy and its operations or lighthouses are discussed in this volume as well as new geoarchaeological research methodologies in harbour archaeology. Most contributions in the present volume examine case studies for the most important maritime core region of the Byzantine Empire, the Aegean. This sea connected the remaining provinces of the empire in Southeastern Europe and Asia Minor after the loss of Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and North Africa to the Arabs in the 7th century A.D. In addition to technical and geographical aspect, the studies in this volume make clear that we need to explore more and more the social embedding of the seasides of Byzantium to understand their dynamics in all their complexity.

Monograph, 2 Volumes, 830 pages, published in March 2021 with Mandelbaum Verlag, Vienna:
https://www.mandelbaum.at/buecher/johannes-preiser-kapeller/die-erste-ernte-und-der-grosse-hunger/
and
https://www.mandelbaum.at/buecher/johannes-preiser-kapeller/der-lange-sommer-und-die-kleine-eiszeit/

Vol. 1: Die erste Ernte und der große Hunger. Klima, Pandemien und der Wandel der Alten Welt bis 500 n. Chr.
Book trailer: https://youtu.be/xmOmGL94taQ

Vol. 2: Der Lange Sommer und die Kleine Eiszeit. Klima, Pandemien und der Wandel der Alten Welt von 500 bis 1500 n. Chr.
Book trailer: https://youtu.be/mg15pkgNxnA

Mit der Debatte um den Klimawandel wächst das Interesse am möglichen Einfluss klimatischer Veränderungen auf Gesellschaften der Vergangenheit. Doch oft werden historische Erkenntnisse missbräuchlich gedeutet-sei es als Beleg, dass das Klima sich ohnehin immer ohne menschliches Zutun ändert, sei es als Katastrophenszenarien. Der Autor spürt auf der Grundlage neuester naturwissenschaftlicher, archäologischer und historischer Daten der Komplexität des Wechselspiels zwischen Klimaveränderungen, Epidemien und der nachfolgenden Reaktion menschlicher Gemeinschaften nach. Dabei wird deutlich, wie sehr der tatsächliche Effekt von klimatischen Krisen und Epidemien auf diese Gesellschaften vom kurz-und langfristigen Handeln der menschlichen Akteure abhing.

Der erste Band beleuchtet in einer Langzeitperspektive die Entwicklungen in Europa, im Nahen Osten und Ostasien von den ersten Großreichen des Altertums in Ägypten und Mesopotamien bis zu den Imperien der Römer und Chinesen und geht auch der Frage des Beitrags von Klima und Seuchen zum "Untergang" dieser Staaten nach.

Der zweite Band beleuchtet in einer Langzeitperspektive das mittelalterliche Jahrtausend zwischen zwei verheerenden Pestpandemien, aber auch die Rolle von Klima und Seuchen bei der Geschichte der Wikinger, der Kreuzzüge und der Mongolen – und schließlich beim Anbruch der europäischen Expansion im 15. Jahrhundert n. Chr.

Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, Beyond Rome and Charlemagne. Aspects of Global Entanglement in Long Late Antiquity, 300-800 CE, Vienna – Mandelbaum Verlag, 292 pp.; 19.90 € (in German language)
ISBN: 978385476-554-7; published in February 2018

https://www.mandelbaum.at/buch.php?id=777

Booktrailer in German: https://youtu.be/-OHYfqyqEdY

Booktrailer in English: http://files.das-andere-mittelalter.webnode.com/200000216-e18c7e2873/Booktrailer%20Beyond%20Rome%20and%20Charlemagne.mp4

Review copies: https://www.mandelbaum.at/bestellung_rezensionsexemplar.php?menu=presse

From the perspective of Western Europe or the Mediterranean, the late antique centuries have long been regarded as a period of complete fragmentation of the political and economic networks that formerly existed under Roman rule. It is worthwhile, however, to look away from Europe and towards the great empires of the eastern Mediterranean, East Africa, the Middle East, India and Central and East Asia: Here, too, great empires break down in the 3rd to 7th centuries CE,  but are replaced by new, often even larger imperial formations.
The aim of the volume is to contrast the dynamics of global entanglements in the political and economic central areas of Afro-Eurasian late antiquity with the »dark centuries« of the Western European periphery for a period before the dawn of »European expansion«. The dissemination of religious ideas and the "reorientation" of networks and spatial ideas are considered more closely. Among other things, the focus is also on imperial ecologies and networks of commerce: goods, techniques, trade routes and urban dynamics.

Table of Contents
Foreword
Introduction: Emperors, Caliphs and Channels
1 World Rulers on recall: Rhythms of imperial formations, 300-800 AD
2 The world as a polo field: the mediation of power and the mobility of elites
3 Holy men, women and countries: the spread of religious ideas and communities
4 Traders, artists, cooks, slaves. Mobility and Diaspora communities alongside the elites
5 The power of the silkworm and the mobility of non-human actors
6 World cities on recall. Climate change, imperial ecology and urban dynamics
7 Conclusion: beyond Rome and Charlemagne
Maps
Sources and literature

Johannes Preiser-Kapeller – Falko Daim (eds.), Harbours and Maritime Networks as Complex Adaptive Systems (RGZM Tagungen). Mainz 2014 [forthcoming]
This volume collects selected papers given at the International Workshop “Harbours and maritime Networks as Complex Adaptive Systems” at the Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum in Mainz, 17.-18. 10. 2013, within the framework of the Special Research Programme (SPP-1630) “Harbours from the Roman Period to the Middle Ages”, funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (http://www.spp-haefen.de/en/home/). The volume is devoted to the conceptualisation and analysis of maritime history within the framework of complexity theory on various levels: the selection, construction, utilisation, maintenance or abandonment of a harbour site depended on the interactions of a multiplicity of actors (population on-site and in the hinterland; local, regional and central authorities; merchants and sailors, etc.) against the background of an equally complex interplay between society and environment (natural conditions on land and on sea and their dynamics). Within this framework, also the concept of path dependence is of relevance: decisions and efforts made for the selection and construction of a harbour determine the parameters for subsequent contexts of decision making. Ports are integrated into local and regional settlement systems via multiplex connections with their hinterland and co-determine the distribution of demographic and economic potentials within these systems. Local, regional and over-regional sea-routes link ports of various sizes and importance in complex maritime networks, which are equally characterized by the emergence of hierarchies of harbours. On the basis of these sea-routes, also individuals and groups in various localities are connected in social networks, which can be characterised by mercantile, political, religious or cultural interactions, but especially through the mobility of individuals. A systematic survey of these entanglements between individuals, groups and localities contributes to a more adequate analysis of the complexity of these phenomena as do detail studies on the interplay between social and environmental factors for the development of selected ports.
Contributions:
Falko Daim, Foreword
Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, Harbours and Maritime Networks as Complex Adaptive Systems - Thematic Introduction
Franck Goddio, Damian Robinson and David Fabre, The life-cycle of the harbour of Thonis-Heracleion: the interaction of the environment, politics and trading networks on the maritime space of Egypt’s northwestern Delta
Myrto Veikou, Byzantine ports and harbours within the complex interplay between environment and society. Spatial, socio-economic and cultural considerations based on archaeological evidence from Greece, Cyprus and Asia Minor
Pascal Arnaud, The interplay between actors and decision-makers for the selection, organisation, utilisation and maintenance of ports under the Roman Empire
Flora Karagianni, Networks of Medieval City-Ports in the Black Sea (7th-15th cent.). The Archaeological Testimony
Søren M. Sindbæk, Northern Emporia and Maritime Networks. Modelling past Communication using Archaeological Network Analysis
Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, The Maritime Mobility of Individuals and Objects: Networks and Entanglements

This volume brings together a rich variety of papers, which were given at an international conference entitled «Between Worlds: The Age of the Jagiellonians» in Cluj-Napoca in October 2010. They cover various aspects of the impact of this important dynasty on Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe, and its reign in Lithuania, Poland, Hungary and Bohemia between the 14th and the 16th century. Thus, the relevance of the Age of the Jagiellonians for the transformation of Europe between the late Middle Ages and the Early Modern period becomes visible. Various approaches to the overall topic can be found in this volume, be it from the viewpoint of war and religion, frontier studies, politics, theology, historiography or art history.

The thesis analyses the development of the Late Roman and Early Byzantine administration of those territories which are called "Armenian" in the sources of the time from the 4th century until the development of the thema Armeniakon and the establishment of Arab supremacy in Greater Armenia (around 700 CE). Latin, Greek and Armenian source (in original language) as well as Arab sources (in translation) are taken into consideration. Highlighted is also the relationship between Roman administrative institution and the Armenian aristocracy and its traditional framework of power and influence.

The volume contains a systematic list of all documents and laws issued by Byzantine Emperors in the time between 565 and 867 CE and of all embassies and missions sent beyond the borders of the realm, thus covering relations with all neighbours in the East and in the West. New results in comparison to the earlier edition of Dögler were especially achieved on the basis of a systematic new reading of Arabic (done especially by Alexander Beihammer) and Armenian (by Johannes Preiser-Kapeller) sources. In total, the contribution of J. Preiser-Kapeller covers more than 350 entries on church history as well as the diplomatic relations to Persia, the Caucasus region, Western Turks in Central Asia, Avars, Bulgarians, Franks, Visigoths and Lombards.

See also: http://books.google.at/books?id=JtoidTRKFuUC&pg=PR35&lpg=PR35&dq=Preiser-Kapeller+regesten&source=bl&ots=HkTMjMm1q1&sig=Rq8SIYYzqraORDCyGNk4JHBfcIM&hl=de&sa=X&ei=tnb0Us-iHIHdswb62IC4Bg&ved=0CDYQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=Preiser-Kapeller%20regesten&f=false

Papers in this volume:

Eirini AFENTOULIDOU-LEITGEB (Wien), Die Prosopopoiia in der Dioptra: Didaktisches Mittel oder literarische Charaktere?

Despoina ARIANTZI (Wien), Der Taufpate und seine Funktion in früh- und mittelbyzantinischer Zeit auf Grund der hagiographischen Quellen

Eftichia ARVANITI (Wien), Orthodoxe und Katholiken in einer Kirche. Das Zusammenleben der Dogmen und die Doppelkirchen auf den griechischen Inseln (13.–18. Jh.)

Alkiviadis GINALIS (Wien), Die byzantinische Seefahrt in den nördlichen Sporaden – Eine regionale Fallstudie auf archäologischer Basis

Johannes GROSSMANN (Wien), Die Legende von Pachomios dem Rekruten

Laura ISNENGHI (Wien), Konstantinos Stilbes und die Fehler der Lateiner. Gedanken zum Bild der westeuropäischen Christen in Byzanz

Christof R. KRAUS (Jena), Patriarchale Konfliktführungs- und Konfliktvermeidungsstrategien. Einige Beispiele aus dem Patriarchatsregister von Konstantinopel

Bettina LIENHARD (Berlin), Marianos Argyros reist nach Afrika – Über die Vermittlungsversuche eines kaiserlichen Würdenträgers im byzantinisch-fATimidischen Konflikt im 10. Jh.

Susanne METAXAS (Athen – Wien), Paolo Orsis Beitrag zur Kenntnis der byzantinischen Alltagskultur

Ekaterini MITSIOU (Wien), Historisch-Geographisches aus dem Patriarchatsregister. Angaben zu den konstantinopolitanischen Klöstern

Doretta PAPADOPOULOU (Athen), Michael Psellos und Theodoros II. Laskaris, ein Treffen an den Quellen griechischer Philosophie

Mihailo POPOVIĆ (Wien), Neue Überlegungen zu der alten Metropolitankirche Sveti Nikola in Melnik als Ergänzung zur Forschung des Vladimir Petković

Johannes PREISER-KAPELLER (Wien), Kaysr, tun und ‛asabīyya. Der armenische Adel und das Byzantinische Reich im späten 6. Jh. in der Darstellung des Sebēos zugeschriebenen Geschichtswerks

Andreas RHOBY (Wien), Zur Rezeption eines byzantinischen Epigramms im Athos-Kloster Vatopaidi

Martin SCHALLER (Wien), „σημειωτέον γράμμα - σημειωτέον ἔγγραφον“. Beobachtungen zu einer byzantinischen Gerichtsurkunde

Ioannis STOURAITIS (Wien), Der Mord als Mittel zur Machtergreifung anhand von Quellenbeispielen aus der mittelbyzantinischen Zeit

Nina-Maria WANEK (Wien), „[…] und in mir wurlt etwas wie ein Streichquartett“: Die Korrespondenz Egon Wellesz’ als Zeugnis der Entstehung seiner Werke

Nerina WEISZ (Oslo), Grenzüberschreitung und Abgrenzung auf Zypern bis 2004

Konstantinos J. ZOGRAFOPULOS (Wien), Bemerkungen zu den byzantinischen Bleisiegeln aus Karthago

Content:

Vorwort 7

Franck COLLARD
D’Henri VII à Sigismond de Luxembourg: une dynastie impériale à l’épreuve du poison 9

Julia DÜCKER
Sigismund und der Konflikt um die Königskrönung Witolds von Litauen (1429/30) 17

Ekaterini MITSIOU
Vier byzantinische rhetorische Texte auf westliche Herrscher 27

Dan Ioan MUREŞAN
Une histoire de trois empereurs.
Aspects des relations de Sigismond de Luxembourg avec Manuel II et Jean VIII Paléologue 41

Mihailo POPOVIĆ
The Order of the Dragon and the Serbian despot Stefan Lazarević 103

Johannes PREISER-KAPELLER
„Denn der Krieg umschließt uns von allen Seiten“. Vorboten und Nachwehen der Schlacht von Nikopolis 1396 im Sprengel des Patriarchats von Konstantinopel 107

Alexandru SIMON
Annus mirabilis 1387: King Sigismund, the Ottomans and the Orthodox Christians in the Late 1380s and Early 1390s 127

Verzeichnis der Autorinnen und Autoren 153

Personenindex 155

Introduction to De Medio Aevo Vol. 13 No. 1 (2024): Moral Meteorologies. The interpretation of celestial phenomena and climate anomalies in the global Middle Ages: https://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/DMAE/article/view/94976

The concept of "moral meteorology" has been first introduced into the study of Late Imperial China. With several examples, this introduction demonstrates its applicability to earlier periods of East Asian history and beyond across the ancient and medieval word before briefly referring to the contents of the special issue devoted to this topic.

Existing global volcanic radiative aerosol forcing estimates portray the period 700 to 1000 as volcanically quiescent, void of major volcanic eruptions. However, this disagrees with proximal Icelandic geological records and regional Greenland ice-core records of sulfate. Here, we use cryptotephra analyses, high-resolution sulfur isotope analyses, and glaciochemical volcanic tracers on an array of Greenland ice cores to characterise volcanic activity and climatically important sulfuric aerosols across the period 700 to 1000. We identify a prolonged episode of volcanic sulfur dioxide emissions (751–940) dominated by Icelandic volcanism, that we term the Icelandic Active Period. This period commences with the Hrafnkatla episode (751–763), which coincided with strong winter cooling anomalies across Europe. This study reveals an important contribution of prolonged volcanic sulfate emissions to the pre-industrial atmospheric aerosol burden, currently not considered in existing forcing estimates, and highlights the need for further research to disentangle their associated climate feedbacks.

Introduction to: Adam Izdebski - Johannes Preiser-Kapeller (eds.), A Companion to the Environmental History of Byzantium. Leiden - Boston 2024, pp. 1-23, see https://brill.com/display/title/24910

In this introduction, we present the reader with the rationale behind the current volume and its structure. We also introduce the reader to the field of environmental history, within both the European and US traditions. Finally, we also describe those environmental history projects currently working on the medieval Eastern Mediterranean.

Book chapter from: Adam Izdebski - Johannes Preiser-Kapeller (eds.), A Companion to the Environmental History of Byzantium. Leiden - Boston 2024, pp. 405-488, see https://brill.com/display/title/24910

In memory of Ronnie Ellenblum (1952–2021)

The following chapter examines the palaeoclimatic background and the regional manifestations of the so-called “Medieval Climate Anomaly” in the Eastern Mediterranean, with a focus on the Byzantine Empire, but also including neighbouring polities. It explores the interplay between climatic factors and the socio-economic dynamics between the 10th and 12th centuries, concentrating on the late 10th and 11th centuries (also overlapping with the “Oort Solar Minimum”). In particular, it contrasts scenarios of an “economic boom” and of a “collapse of the Eastern Mediterranean” created in recent scholarship for this period and evaluates these notions based on a close reading (and citation) of historiographical and other written sources. Thereby, both the potentials and the problems of a combination of “archives of society” and “archives of nature” become evident.

Book chapter from: Adam Izdebski - Johannes Preiser-Kapeller (eds.), A Companion to the Environmental History of Byzantium. Leiden - Boston 2024, pp. 308-345, see https://brill.com/display/title/24910.

This chapter describes the interplay between socio-political complexity and the establishment of hydraulic infrastructure for the region around Lake Van in Eastern Anatolia from the early first millennium AD to the 20th century, with a focus on the medieval centuries and the Kingdom of Vaspurakan of the Armenian Arcruni dynasty between the 9th and 11th centuries AD. The dynamics of power and irrigation systems in this core region of historical Armenia are thus embedded in a wider chronological framework which allows for the identification of continuities and interruptions in the political and agricultural utilization of an ecology characterized by a delicate balance of precipitation, evaporation, and temperature. Furthermore, the findings from Vaspurakan are compared with information from other regions of medieval Armenia and neighbouring (Sasanian) Azerbaijan. Finally, the written and archaeological evidence is contrasted with palaeoclimatological reconstructions based on sediment cores from Lake Van.

Book chapter in: Empires and Gods. The Role of Religions in Imperial History, ed. Jörg Rüpke , Michal Biran and Yuri Pines. Berlin, de Gruyter 2024, pp. 175-206 (open access): https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783111342009-009/html

Paper for a special issue of De Medio Aevo (13/1 "Moral Meteorologies. The interpretation of celestial phenomena and climate anomalies in the global Middle Ages", ed. Johannes Preiser-Kapeller) in May 2024, see https://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/DMAE/issue/view/4404

Around the turn of the first Millennium AD, both in Christian polities such as the Byzantine Empire as well as in regions with Buddhist communities such as in Heian Japan, expectations of an end of times emerged. Although based on different religious and independent chronological interpretations, they gained attraction at the same time due to the parallel observation and interpretation of the same astronomical phenomena (such as sightings of Halley´s comet in 989 AD) or of simultaneous climate anomalies, which can partly be connected with the Oort Solar Minimum of the 11th century. This paper explores and compares the interplay between natural phenomena, religious and political unrest, apocalyptic interpretations and individual decision-making for Byzantium and Japan on the basis of historical and natural scientific evidence.

To be published in the Handbuch der Bodenkunde, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1002/9783527678495

Die Definition der Antike unterliegt wie jede Periodisierung ständigen Debatten. Üblicherweise scheidet man die Antike von der „Ur- und Frühgeschichte“ mit der Entstehung komplexer urbaner Gesellschaften und schriftlicher Aufzeichnungen in Mesopotamien und Ägypten um 3000 v. Chr. Bodenkundlich wäre der dramatischere Einschnitt aber der Beginn der Landwirtschaft, der im Nahen Osten und im Mittelmeerraum je nach Region zwischen 9600 und 5600 v. Chr. datiert (Gronenborn, Horejs 2023).
Im folgenden Kapitel liegt der Fokus aber auf der traditionell als „klassisch“ bezeichneten griechisch-römischen Antike, die von den Anfängen der altgriechischen Literatur mit den Epen Homers um 800 v. Chr. bis zum Zerfall des weströmischen Reichs im 5. Jh. n. Chr. reicht. Diese Periodisierung ist aber auch forschungspragmatisch. Aus dieser Zeit ist uns ein erster umfangreicherer Bestand an agrarischen Fachschriften in griechischer und lateinischer Sprache erhalten, in dem sich ausführlichere Überlegungen zum Boden, dessen Beschreibung und Bearbeitung finden (Rex 2001; Winiwarter 2006a; Winiwarter 2006b, 2014). Diese Texte wurden auch in spätere Jahrhunderte des Mittelalters tradiert (siehe Myrdal 2020; Kozłowska-Szyc 2023) und dienten als Anknüpfungspunkte für die moderne Bodenwissenschaft in Europa (Winiwarter 2006b).
Gleichzeitig ging mit dieser Periode eine Intensivierung der landwirtschaftlichen Nutzung in vielen Regionen des Mittelmeerraums einher; im östlichen Mediterraneum spricht man etwa von der „Beyşehir Occupation Phase“ (BOP), benannt nach einem archäologischen Fundort im Südwesten der Türkei (Eastwood, Roberts, Lamb 1998; Butzer 2005; Walsh 2014, 141-142). Sie zeichnet sich im Pollenbefund mit dem verstärkten Auftreten der „klassischen“ mediterranen Dreiheit von Olive, Weizen und Wein ab, aber auch durch Fruchtbäume wie die Walnuss. Je nach Region setzte die BOP zwischen 800 v. Chr. und dem 1. Jh. v. Chr. ein und endete wieder je unterschiedlich zwischen dem 4. und 8. Jh. n. Chr. (in manchen Gebieten besteht auch eine Kontinuität bis ins Mittelalter, siehe Izdebski 2013). Solche Formen der Landnutzung verbreiteten sich mit der Gründung von griechischen Kolonien ab dem 8. Jh. v. Chr. vom Schwarzen Meer bis nach Sizilien und Süditalien. In Italien übernahmen wiederum Etrusker und später Römer einige Praktiken der griechischen Landwirtschaft (Walthall 2019; Andrews 2019). Auf Grundlage dieser schriftlichen, archäologischen und geoarchäologischen Befunde beschränkt sich das Kapitel auf den Mittelmeerraum und vor allem die Gebiete der heutigen Staaten Griechenland, Türkei und Italien, aber mit einigen Ausflügen in andere Provinzen des Römischen Reichs, das um 100 n. Chr. von Britannien bis Ägypten und von Spanien bis an die Grenzen des heutigen Irak reichte. Zeitgleiche, nicht weniger interessante Fachliteraturen zu Fragen der Bodenbearbeitung und -klassifizierung wie jene der Chinesen (Gong u. a. 2003) werden nicht berücksichtig, auch aufgrund der Sprachkenntnisse des Autors.
Im Folgenden wird zuerst der Bestand an schriftlichen Quellen gesichtet; dann werden deren Angaben zur Charakterisierung und Bearbeitung von Böden mit der Praxis kontrastiert, soweit sie sich aus Untersuchungen zur vorindustriellen Landwirtschaft im Mittelmeerraum und archäologischen und insbesondere neueren geoarchäologischen Befunden zur antiken Landwirtschaft rekonstruieren lässt (Rapp, Hill 2006; Codova 2019). Besonderes Augenmerk wird dem immer noch verbreiteten Narrativ einer in der Antike beginnenden und allgemeinen Degradierung der Böden und Landschaft des Mittelmeerraums aufgrund vermeintlicher Über- oder Fehlnutzung gewidmet, das sich aufgrund der neueren Erkenntnisse aber nicht mehr aufrecht erhalten lässt.

Ungekürzter Pre-Print, gedruckte gekürzte Fassung in: Philipp A. Sutner (Hg.): Landhandelsrouten. Adern des Waren- und Ideenaustauschs 500 v.–1500 n. Chr., Wien 2022 (Mandelbaum Verlag, im Druck).

Nicht zuletzt unter dem Eindruck des aktuellen Angriffskriegs des Putinregimes gegen die Ukraine wird die Ursache der "Andersartigkeit" Russland auch in neuesten Überblickswerken und Kommentaren in der traditionellen "Isolation" des Landes von Westeuropa gesucht. Demgegenüber beleuchtet der vorliegende Beitrag in einer globalhistorischen Langzeitperspektive die weit über Europa nach West-, Zentral- , Süd- und Ostasien hinausweisenden Fernverbindungen des Wolgaraums von der Antike bis in die frühe Neuzeit, die letztlich auch ökonomisch-strategische Anknüpfungspunkte für die Expansion des Moskauer Staates ab dem Spätmittelalter boten. Damit eröffnet sich eine Geschichte nicht der Isolation, sondern der weitreichenden Vernetzung, die immer wieder die Aufmerksamkeit von Reisenden aus Europa hervorrief.

Published in Medieval Worlds 17 (2022), pp. 3-58 (peer reviewed): https://medievalworlds.net/?arp=0x003ddac6

The blinding of the Byzantine emperor Constantine VI in Constantinople in August 797 and his overthrow by his mother Eirene, who then ruled as the first female »emperor« of the Eastern Roman Empire until 802, was used as legitimation for the coronation of the Frankish king Charlemagne as emperor of the Romans on 25 December 800, by contemporaries in Western Europe. Some observers in the West may have even interpreted the downfall of the Eastern Roman emperor and his replacement by a woman as sign of an impending collapse of the Roman Empire and the entire world order, as already expected (based on chiliastic calculations). We equally find indications of apocalyptic expectations in Constantinople, where Constantineʹs blinding was linked with a spectacular celestial manifestation of divine disapproval – a darkening of the sun for 17 days. In this paper, this obfuscation of the sun is compared with the description of other atmospheric and climatic phenomena in the 8th and 9th centuries, as well as before and after this period. In addition, natural scientific data is used to disprove earlier hypotheses on the physical background to this event and to present a more probable scenario (i.e., the impacts of one or more volcanic eruptions) for the darkening of 797 and other phenomena, which provided a peculiar »atmospheric« framework for the interpretation of the events between the downfall of Constantine VI and the coronation of Charlemagne by contemporaries.

Pre-Print, published in: Walter Pohl – Veronika Wieser (eds.), Emerging Powers in Eurasian Comparison, 200–1100. Shadows of Empire. Leiden – Boston 2022, pp. 263–288 (peer reviewed, https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004519916_010).

The Caucasus region can be seen as an area 'in the shadows of empires' par excellence. From the first century BCE, the lands of the South Caucasus were located at the peripheries of two, at times even three competing empires, and also found themselves at the centre of confrontations between them: between the Romans and Persians (first century BCE to seventh century CE), the Byzantines and Arabs (seventh to tenth century), Ottomans and Persians (sixteenth to eighteenth century) and finally also the Russians (since the eighteenth century).

Pre-Print, published in: Nachhaltigkeitsrecht 3 (September 2022), pp 270-278 (peer reviewed; https://doi.org/10.33196/nr202203027001)

Die von Staats wegen verfügte Einschränkung der Nutzung von Wäldern hat eine lange Geschichte vor der Einführung des Begriffs "Nachhaltigkeit" in diesem Kontext. Der Beitrag spürt diesen Ansätzen bis in die römische und chinesische Antike nach und verknüpft sie mit generellen Überlegungen zur Staatsbildung und-legimitierung durch organisatorische und infrastrukturelle Antworten auf klimatische Extreme und andere krisenhafte Herausforderungen. In der Langzeitperspektive werden die Möglichkeiten und Grenzen solcher vermeintlich nachhaltiger "Katastrophenkulturen", insbesondere durch die Anhäufung neuer, meist ungeplanter Risiken, beleuchtet.

From: Harald Meller und Falko Daim (Hrsg.): GRENZÜBERSCHREITUNGEN – Reiternomaden in Mitteleuropa, ihre östlichen Wurzeln und Verbindungen. CROSSING BOUNDARIES – Mounted nomads in Central Europe, their eastern roots and connections. 14. Mitteldeutscher Archäologentag vom 7. bis 9. Oktober 2021 in Halle (Saale). Tagungen des Landesmuseum für Vorgeschichte Halle Bd. 25. Halle (Saale) 2022, pp. 15-23

https://www.denkmal-buch-geschichte.de/Grenzueberschreitungen-Reiternomaden-in-Mitteleuropa

Paper in: Emiliano Fiori/Michele Trizio (eds.),  Proceedings of the 24th International Congress of Byzantine Studies. Plenary Sessions. Venice 2022, pp. 393-422 (open access: https://edizionicafoscari.unive.it/it/edizioni4/libri/978-88-6969-590-2/)

The paper synthesises and develops further several attempts to model aspects of the complexity of the infrastructure and administrative organisation of the Roman Empire between the 4th and 8th century CE based on evidence from historiography, historical geography, sigillography and archaeology. It provides a short introduction into concepts and analytical tools of network theory. Furthermore, the paper combines this approach with a visualisation of the spatial range of Roman power and maps based on mobility and perceptions of contemporaries. Thereby, the already successful integration of the 'relational turn' to Byzantine studies shall be demonstrated.

Contribution to: Making Peace in the Ancient World. Proceedings of the 7th Melammu Workshop, Padova, 5–7 November 2018, edited by Giovanni B. Lanfranchi, Simonetta Ponchia and Robert Rollinger. Münster 2022, 331-349.

In his 2011 book “The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire,” the political
scientist Edward Luttwak claimed that Byzantium “relied less on military strength and more on persuasion” and “even when the Byzantines fought (…) they were less inclined to destroy their enemies than to contain them, for they were aware that today’s enemies could be tomorrow’s allies.” As the present paper demonstrates, these assumptions cannot be generalised for all periods of Byzantine history; on the contrary, Byzantine emperors were prepared to aim for the destruction of their enemies and the total conquest of other polities if geopolitical conditions allowed them to do so. More often, however, Byzantium (or, more accurately, the Roman Empire as whose unbroken continuation the only by early modern scholarship so called ‘Byzantines’ considered themselves) had to come to terms with powerful or even overpowering neighbours, frequently more than one at the same
time. Diplomacy, peace making and peacekeeping were therefore essential instruments for the empire’s very survival. Accordingly, imperial pretensions and ideological framings were flexible and could be adapted to the needs and constraints of the empire’s geopolitical situation, as especially the groundbreaking studies of Yannis Stouraitis have demonstrated in recent years.

Introductory chapter to: Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, Entangling Byzantium and its neighbours near and far: global, relational, and environmental erspectives
on the medieval world (eingereicht als kumulative Habilitationsschrift an der
Historisch-Kulturwissenschaftlichen Fakultät der Universität Wien). Vienna 2021, pp. 1-34.

Preiser-Kapeller, J. (2020). The Ties that Do Not Bind. Group formation, polarization and conflict within networks of political elites in the medieval Roman Empire. Journal of Historical Network Research, 4, 298-324. https://doi.org/10.25517/jhnr.v4i0.81

This chapter aims at the exploration of concepts and methods of network and complexity theory as well as New Institutional Economics (NIE) for the analysis of the emergence of conflicts within ruling elites in pre-modern polities. From the point of view of NIE, Douglass C. North, John Joseph Wallis and Barry R. Weingast have pointed out the general structural weakness of pre-modern formations of power. This assumption will be tested against a comparative analysis of the structural and qualitative properties of elite networks, also in their temporal and spatial dynamics. The modelling of the relational web among elite members will also open a micro-perspective on the evolution and resilience of networks between actors within smaller groups and clusters in situations of conflict. Furthermore, it allows for a quantification of the size of conflicts within elite networks and the analysis of their temporal dynamics.

Published in: Women and Monasticism in the Medieval Eastern Mediterranean: Decoding a Cultural Map, edited by Eleonora Kountoura Galake and Ekaterini Mitsiou. National Hellenic Research Foundation, Athens 2019, pp. 349-364.

Also distributed by: https://history-bookstore.eie.en

Mitsiou, Ekaterini and Preiser-Kapeller, Johannes, “Church and Religion”, in: Brill’s New Pauly Supplements II - Volume 10 : History and Culture of Byzantium, English edition by John N. Dillon; Translated by Duncan A. Smart (2019). Original German-language edition: Byzanz: Historisch-kulturwissenschaftliches Handbuch. Herausgegeben von Falko Daim. Serie: Der Neue Pauly – Supplemente, 2. Staffel, herausgegeben von Manfred Landfester, Jörg Rüpke und Helmuth Schneider, Band 11. Stuttgart, Germany. Copyright © J.B. Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung und Carl Ernst Poeschel Verlag GmbH (2016). Consulted online on 29 November 2019 https://referenceworks.brillonline.com/browse/brill-s-new-pauly-supplements-ii-10

Preiser-Kapeller, Johannes, “Byzantium 1025–1204”, in: Brill’s New Pauly Supplements II - Volume 10 : History and Culture of Byzantium, English edition by John N. Dillon; Translated by Duncan A. Smart (2019). Original German-language edition: Byzanz: Historisch-kulturwissenschaftliches Handbuch. Herausgegeben von Falko Daim. Serie: Der Neue Pauly – Supplemente, 2. Staffel, herausgegeben von Manfred Landfester, Jörg Rüpke und Helmuth Schneider, Band 11. Stuttgart, Germany. Copyright © J.B. Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung und Carl Ernst Poeschel Verlag GmbH (2016). Consulted online on 29 November 2019 http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/2468-3418_bnps10_COM_194936

Preiser-Kapeller, Johannes, “Byzantium 395–602”, in: Brill’s New Pauly Supplements II - Volume 10 : History and Culture of Byzantium, English edition by John N. Dillon; Translated by Duncan A. Smart (2019). Original German-language edition: Byzanz: Historisch-kulturwissenschaftliches Handbuch. Herausgegeben von Falko Daim. Serie: Der Neue Pauly – Supplemente, 2. Staffel, herausgegeben von Manfred Landfester, Jörg Rüpke und Helmuth Schneider, Band 11. Stuttgart, Germany. Copyright © J.B. Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung und Carl Ernst Poeschel Verlag GmbH (2016). Consulted online on 29 November 2019 http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/2468-3418_bnps10_COM_192272

Published in: Fabio Guidetti and Katharina Meinecke (eds.) A Globalised Visual Culture? Towards a Geography of Late Antique Art. Oxbow Books 2020, pp. 357-379.


Both in the (post-)Roman world and in late antique Afro-Eurasia, long distance connectivity did not only allow for the exchange of objects, people, tastes and ideas, thereby contributing to the modification of material cultures or religious believes, also beyond the elite layer of societies. It was equally the precondition for the diffusion of and cohesion among religious communities and institutions respectively "diasporas" across the Mediterranean, the Indian Ocean or Eurasia. This lateral dimension at the same time provided for connecting factors as well as knowledge on routes, vehicles and organisation of exchange for an eventual intensification of exchange and possible further (or-renewed) integration of local and regional small-worlds.

This paper proposes to proceed from a rather metaphorical application of network terminology on polities and imperial formations of the past to an actual use of tools and concepts of network science. For this purpose, a well-established network model of the route system in the Roman Empire (ORBIS) and a newly created network model of the infrastructural web of Imperial China are visualised and analysed with regard to their structural properties. Findings indicate that these systems could be understood as large-scale complex networks with pronounced differences in centrality and connectivity among places and a hierarchical sequence of clusters across spatial scales from the over-regional to the local level. Such properties in turn would influence the cohesion and robustness of imperial networks, as is demonstrated with two tests on the model´s vulnerability to node failure and to the collapse of long-distance connectivity. Tentatively, results can be connected with actual historical dynamics and thus hint at underlying network mechanisms of large-scale integration and disintegration of political formations.

Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, Migration, in: Erik Hermans (New York University), A Companion to the Global Early Middle Ages, 600-900 CE. ARC Humanities Press, Leeds 2020, pp. 477-509.

Migration can been defined as " permanent or long-term dislocation of the place of residence, both by individuals and by groups of any size ". The earlier research focus on medieval phenomena of mass migration has been complemented with an attention on the mobility of smaller groups and its possible impacts for cultural change. Several forms of and motivations for the " dislocation of the place of residence " across various scales, both in terms of group size and of duration, will be described on the following pages. These will range from the single Chinese Buddhist pilgrim, whose almost twenty years of sojourn in India qualify for migration under the above-cited definition, to thousands of Slav prisoners of war deported from the Balkans to Anatolia. The spatial focus will be on Afro-Eurasia in general, especially beyond Western Europe, and on migrations between more distanced regions (in contrast to frequent movements between nearby places).

Published in the Proceedings of the 9. Mitteldeutscher Archäologentag “Migration and Integration”, Halle 2017 (peer reviewed)

The incorporation of the south Caucasian kingdoms of Armenia, Iberia (Eastern Georgia) and Caucasian Albania in the Arab Caliphate in the 7th century CE commenced a gradually accelerating process of immigration of Muslim elites (of Arab, Persian, Kurdish and, lastly, also Turkish-Central Asian origin) together with their retinues into this region, which started leading to the creation of new centres of Islamic power alongside the principalities of the local aristocracy in the late 8th century and in the 9th century CE. The latter sustained traditions of aristocratic mobility, most notably in the Byzantine Empire, where Armenian warriors and settlers played an important role defending and securing its eastern borders. These intertwined migratory movements are analysed on the basis of historiographic and archaeological sources. The heterogeneity and complexity of these pre-modern migration processes as emerging from a survey of the evidence also sounds a note of caution against simplistic and homogenising migration models.

Published in: Jörg Drauschke – Ewald Kislinger – Karin Kühtreiber – Thomas Kühltreiber – Gabriele Scharrer-Liška – Tivadar Vida (eds.), Lebenswelten zwischen Archäologie und Geschichte. Festschrift für Falko Daim zu seinem 65. Geburtstag (Monographien des RGZM, Band 150). Mainz 2018, pp. 311-324.


Based on palaeoenvironmental, historical and archaeological data, the paper proposes possible climatic impacts on the history of the Avar Khaganate, which comprised the Carpathian Basin between the late 6 th and the early 9 th century AD. While the establishment of the Avars in East Central Europe took place within a period characterised by cold and dry climatic conditions (recently identified as " Late Antique Little Ice Age "), more stable climatic parameters may have favoured the stabilisation of Avar rule after a crisis in the aftermath of 626 AD. Data indicates growth of settlement and agricultural activity up to the mid-8 th century. These developments did not necessarily strengthen central power, but may have contributed to a greater autonomy of various groups on the basis of increased resources. The Khaganate quickly disintegrated faced by the Carolingian advance of the 790s; the last decades of documented Avar presence were again accompanied by environmental vicissitudes.

Systematic chapter to be published in: Falko Daim (ed.), Byzanz. Historisch-Kulturwissenschaftliches Handbuch (Neuer Pauly, Supplementband 11), Verlag J. B. Metzler, to be published 2016, ca. 600 pages. See: http://web.rgzm.de/no_cache/forschung/schwerpunkte-und-projekte/a/article/byzanz-geschichte-und-kultur-neuer-pauly-supplementband-10.html

J. Preiser-Kapeller, „Die ich rief, die Geister…“ Das Byzantinische Reich im späten 11. Jahrhundert und der Erste Kreuzzug, in:
Philipp A. Sutner, Stephan Köhler, Andreas Obenaus (Hg.), Gott will es. Der Erste Kreuzzug - Akteure und Aspekte, Vienna 2016, 192 p.; 19.90 €; ISBN: 978385476-496-0
http://www.mandelbaum.at/books/792/7670

Paper published in Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik 65 (2015) p. 195-242.

Abstract: This paper discusses a recently proposed scenario of a climate-induced “Collapse of the Eastern Mediterranean” in the 11th century AD. It demonstrates that such a scenario cannot be maintained when confronted with proxy data from various regions. On the other hand, data on the interplay between environment and economy in the Komnenian period (1081–1185) and evidence for a change of climatic conditions in the period of the Angeloi (1185–1204) is presented, arguing that climatic parameters should be taken into consideration when comparing socio-economic dynamics in the Eastern Mediterranean with those in Western Europe. The necessity of further research on the regional as well as over-regional level for many aspects of the interaction between human society and environment in the medieval Eastern Mediterranean is highlighted.

Lecture at the Central European University Vienna, 21 February 2024: https://events.ceu.edu/2024-02-21/new-romans-greeks-or-byzantines-perceptions-medieval-roman-empire-east-within-and-afar

The identity and self-identification of the inhabitants of the medieval Roman Empire of the East, but also its labelling in past and modern historiography, have become quite contested topics in recent years. These discussions mix not least with traditional national and religious discourses and more recent “postcolonial” debates.

Based on my own attempt to write a monograph on the history of “Byzantium” and considering other recent publications, the talk connects these issues with a wider view on the horizons of Roman/“Byzantine” imperial ideology. In particular, it focuses on perspectives on the Roman Empire of the East from “outside” of the dominant discourse of Greek-speaking elites in Constantinople, especially from its eastern neighbours near and afar.

These include voices from Armenian historiography, often written from the position of “victims” of Romans' politics. Furthermore, the talk explores the integration of “Rum” among the empires of Afro-Eurasia in Persian and Arab texts and its reception in Central Asia and China. It becomes evident that the answer to the question “Romans, Greeks or Byzantines?” was far from clear for the empire´s contemporaries. Hence, it could be discussed in a more relaxed way also in present scholarship.

Presentation for the Lecture Series "#Klimageschichten im #Klimawandel", organised by Andreas Frings at the University Mainz, 12 December 2023: https://cliozweipunktnull.uni-mainz.de/2023/11/09/klimageschichten-im-klimawandel-vortragsreihe-mit-kurzclips/

Presentation for the Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Colloqium "Armenian Scholars in Byzantium and Byzantine Scholarship in Armenian" (3 November 2023), organised by Emilio Bonfiglio: https://www.doaks.org/events/byzantine-studies/colloquium-files/2023-byzantine-colloquium-program.pdf

Armenians were among the most important ethno-religious groups both present within and migrating from beyond the borders of the Byzantine Empire before and after the establishment of the Arab Caliphate in the 7th century CE. Their significance especially within the Byzantine elite and the modes and limits of their integration into Byzantine society have been discussed frequently also in very recent scholarship with different interpretations.
This paper takes a look at the Byzantine perceptions of the various modes and motivations of mobility of individuals and groups identified as “Armenian” as well as of the networks via which Armenians found their way into the empire. As becomes evident, such descriptions in historiography, but also hagiography or even in legal texts cannot just be read as factual reports, but also reflect certain stereotypes and narrative traditions on the “unsteadiness” of the “Armenians” since antiquity. In the following short draft paper, due to reasons of space and time, I will focus primarily on (secular) legal texts while considering other types of sources in the expanded version of the text for publication.

Vortrag für das  Alfried Krupp Wissenschaftskolleg im Rahmen der Reihe „Schwere Zeiten. Krisen und ihre Bewältigung im Mittelalter” des Mittelalterzentrums Greifswald, 23. Oktober 2023: https://www.wiko-greifswald.de/programm/allgemeines/veranstaltungskalender/veranstaltung/n/klimasturz-kometen-und-kroetenwanderung-naturkatastrophen-krisenzeiten-und-ihre-deutung-im-afro-eurasischen-mittelalter-ca-700-1100-new6502fa98b33de769822583/

Wer ist schuld am schlechten Wetter? Diese aus der heutigen Sicht des anthropogenen Klimawandels gar nicht unsinnige Frage wurde bereits in der chinesischen Tradition seit dem Altertum zum Ausgangspunkt von Überlegungen im Zusammenhang zwischen dem Wohlverhalten von Regierenden oder Regierten und dem Witterungsgeschehen. Die Forschung hat sie unter dem Begriff der „Moralischen Meteorologie“ zusammengefasst. Ähnliche Deutungen nicht nur des Wetters, sondern auch anderer Himmels- und Naturphänomene hatten in vielen mittelalterlichen Gesellschaften während Krisenzeiten Konjunktur. Der Vortrag unterzieht Beispiele aus der Zeit zwischen 700 und 1100 einem transkulturellen Vergleich und verknüpft sie mit naturwissenschaftlichen Befunden zum physischen Hintergrund dieser Erscheinungen.

Presentation for a talk at the Conference “The Phase of Catastrophe: The Crisis of the 14th Century in Afro-Eurasian Context”, Hokkaido University, Slavic-Eurasian Research Center (SRC), organised by Yoichi Isahaya, Norihiro Naganawa, Ruslan Shakhmatov & Tomomi Murakami, 13-14 July 2023: https://src-h.slav.hokudai.ac.jp/sympo/2023summer/

Presentation for a talk at the workshop "Network Science meets Digital History and Prosopography" organised by Marcella Tambuscio and Prof. Georg Vogeler as satellite event to the NetSci2023-conference in Vienna, 11 July 2023: https://sites.google.com/view/nsdhp2023/

Presentation for the seminar of La Maestría en Historia Aplicada of Universidad Nacional Costa Rica, 1 June 2023, Hora: 9:30 h (hora Costa Rica)
Por Zoom (Inscripción obligatoria): https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYlcumgpjovE9Ma4-1u9frlOa_ipUg2Z95L
En directo por YouTube: https://youtube.com/live/r2YD6hAkhkA?feature=share

Presentation for the Conference "Great Chinggisid Crisis: History, Context,
Aftermath", University of Bonn, Department of Sinology, 11 to 13 May 2023: https://www.uni-bonn.de/de/forschung-lehre/forschung-und-lehre-medien/forschungsprofil-medien/tras/tra-5/krise_flyer_2023_final.pdf

Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture for the Bonn Center for Dependency & Slavery Studies, 6 March 2023: https://www.dependency.uni-bonn.de/en/outreach/events/joseph-c-miller-memorial-lecture-by-johannes-preiser-kapeller
Video of Talk: https://youtu.be/ehp4omWguNU

Lecture for the interdisciplinary research colloquium "Medievalia - Verleumdung, Diffamie, Fälschung, Fake News im Mittelalter" (University of Graz und University of the Saarland), 23 November 2023: https://germanistik.uni-graz.at/de/neuigkeiten/detail/article/medievalia-interdisziplinaeres-mediaevistisches-forschungskolloquium/

Presentation for the Plenary Session 8: Social, Cultural and Material Networks at the 24th International Congress of Byzantine Studies (Venice – Padua, 22-27 August 2022); the written (different) version of the paper can be downloaded via https://edizionicafoscari.unive.it/it/edizioni4/libri/978-88-6969-590-2/symploke-and-complexio/

Response to the talk of Dr Rebecca Darley (University of Leeds) on "The Byzantine Empire and the Shape of Afro-Eurasia Today (and Tomorrow)", given as joint lecture for The Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies (SPBS) and the Austrian Association for Byzantine Studies (ÖBG) on 24 May 2022

Keynote lecture for the conference "Vom Buch aufs Feld – vom Feld ins Buch. Verflechtungen von Theorie und Praxis in Ernährung und Landwirtschaft (ca. 1300–1600)", organised by Dr. Stephan F. Ebert / Prof. Dr. Gerrit Jasper Schenk (TU Darmstadt) at the UNESCO Welterbe Kloster Lorsch, 31.03.2022 - 02.04.2022: https://www.hsozkult.de/event/id/event-116048

While the enduring impact of the Imperium Romanum on agricultural traditions in Western and Central Europe also after antiquity is common knowledge (and even popularized in the semi-legendary introduction of winegrowing to the Danube provinces by Emperor Probus in the 3rd century CE), the “New Rome” of the East (the medieval Byzantine Empire) is rarely associated with such innovations. Only the alleged smuggling of silkworms (depending on the growing of mulberry trees) from China to Byzantium during the reign of Emperor Justinian I (527-565 CE) still finds its way even into schoolbooks.
Based on recent studies re-evaluating the written sources, and in combination with new archaeological and palaeobotanical evidence, the lecture embeds the agriculture in the Byzantine Empire within the wider dynamics of socio-political and environmental change as well as agrarian innovation in the medieval Eastern Mediterranean – including the introduction of new crops especially from South Asia (such as sugar cane, rice or cotton), which already began in Egypt and the Levant under late Roman rule, but intensified with was has been called an “Arab agricultural revolution” from the 8th century CE onwards. The adaptation to and share of Byzantium in these developments are discussed also with regard to changing food patterns.
These developments equally provided the basis for new forms of plantation economy introduced to the “Romania” by Italian sea powers (Venetians, Genoese) after the conquest of Constantinople in the Fourth Crusade of 1204. The Byzantine Empire was restored with the re-conquest of Constantinople in 1261, but was dramatically reduced in power and found itself now integrated at the periphery of new networks of exchange and circulation of commodities and technologies which entangled the Mediterranean with wider Afro-Eurasia.
The “proto-colonialism” of Venice or Genoa equally anticipated practices of land use and exploitation later adopted in the European colonies in the Atlantic; from America, in turn, new crops found their way to the Eastern Mediterranean (now under Ottoman rule) in the 16th century, marking also there a new epoch in the history of agriculture and nutrition.

Presentation for the Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies of the Central European University in Vienna, 27 January 2022, 5:30 pm: https://events.ceu.edu/2022-01-27/signs-end-times-turn-first-millennium-ad-oort-minimum-and-natural-disasters-byzantine

Abstract: The turn of the first Millennium AD among some Christian communities related to apocalyptic expectation. These fears and hopes clustered not only in the decades before and after the year 1000 AD, but also at later dates throughout the 11th century, such as around 1030 AD (one thousand years after the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ) or around 1064/1065 AD (based on calculations on a recurrence of the same Easter date as in the year of the resurrection). Such speculations motivated authors in the Medieval West, in the Byzantine Empire (such as Leon Diakonos) or in Armenia (such as Matthew of Edessa). Furthermore, in the same period, but based on different chronologies, expectations of a turn of times arose among Islamic communities (such as in some circles of the al-Ismāʿīlīya) as well in parts of the Buddhist world (connected with ideas of a “Degenerate Age of Dharma”, in Japanese mappō).

To illustrate and support their visions of history and current affairs, these authors interpreted celestial signs (such as the sighting of Halley's Comet in 1066), extreme meteorological phenomena (droughts, floods) and other disasters (such as earthquakes) as portents of the imminent apocalypse. In fact, modern historical climatology identified an increase of the frequency of extreme events across Afro-Eurasia from Western Europe to China, which can be partly related to the “Oort Minimum” of solar activity between 1010 and 1080 CE. These natural phenomena, however, were not the cause for apocalyptic expectations, but selectively integrated by the authors of the time in their texts. Based on individual narrative strategies, more or fewer calamities were reported for specific periods or rulers in more or less detail. As the paper demonstrates, a comparison between different texts and historiographies as well as between the “archives of society” and the “archives of nature” allows us to “triangulate” the actual extent and impact of some of these extreme events. At the same time, it becomes clear that historical sources cannot be used just as another type of environmental data without considering the intentions of their composition, as is still often the case in studies done by natural scientists on their own.

Presentation for the concluding conference of the Wittgenstein-Project "Moving Byzantium" (PI: Prof. Claudia Rapp) in Vienna at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, 18-21 November 2021: https://rapp.univie.ac.at/fileadmin/user_upload/p_rapp/Programmfolder-IMAFO-Byzanzf-MovingByzantium_V02-11-2021.pdf

Presentation for the the international online conference "Mobility and Materiality in Byzantine-Islamic Relations (7th-12th Centuries)" at the Byzantine Studies Research Centre, Boğaziçi University Istanbul (12-13 November 2021):
http://byzantinestudies.boun.edu.tr/index.php?page=events&id=63

Presentation for the conference "Crossing boundaries. Mounted nomads
in Central Europe, their eastern roots and connections" in Halle (Germany), 7-9 October 2021: https://landesarchaeologen.de/fileadmin/mediamanager/001-Aktuelles/Tagungen_und_Veranstaltungen_Dokumente/SnA_07-092021_Programm_MDA.pdf

Since antiquity, in the historiographies both of Western Eurasia as well as of East Asia, steppe nomads have been identified as the very opposite of (sedentary) civilization; “barbarian” warlords such as Attila the Hun or Genghis Khan were depicted as ultimate scourge for the empires of the Romans or the Chinese. These notions not only resonate with modern imagination, also in popular culture. They equally found their remarkable counterparts in national historical studies since the 18th centuries, where periods of “dominion of the steppe” were qualified as times of destruction, oppression, and cultural as well as economic stagnation or even regression – be it the “Tatar yoke” in Russia or Iran, or the reigns of the Mongols or Manchus in China.
Interestingly, such scenarios have also been integrated in the most heated current debate in the field of global history – that is on the so-called “Great Divergence” between Northwestern Europe and the “rest” of the world regarding the emergence of industrialised capitalism and modern-day affluent societies. This debate originally (and still very much) circles around the questions “why (Western) Europe grew rich – and Asia (especially China) did not” – and on when the decisive divergent developments took place, with answers ranging from the early 1800s back to the fall of (Western) Rome. Within this long timespan, various episodes of empire building and dominion from the steppe have been discussed by historians, but also economists and sociologists as potential factors in the “divergence” of a specific region within Eurasia from a hitherto “promising” path of development.
Recent historical and archaeological studies, however, emphasise the innovative potential of steppe empires in terms of forms of political and spatial control or the exchange and circulation of objects, skills, and ideas, speaking of a “Mongol globalisation”, for instance. These processes, though, included unintended consequences such as the diffusion of the plague bacterium across Afro-Eurasia in the 13th and 14th centuries CE.
In the paper, I discuss these opposing and still strongly debated visions of the “steppe nomadic factor” in the long-term development of the “Old World”, contrasting generalising (and often dramatically simplifying) scenarios with recent findings on the socio-economic, demographic, and environmental impacts of expansion and empire-building from the steppes at the regional level. This will also help to avoid a qualification of the empires of the steppe, or the “non-Western world” in general, as an “aberration” from a “Western European” path to progress.

Presentation for the 5th International Byzantine Seminar Lecture Series: "Networks and Connectivity in and beyond Byzantium", Institute for the History of Ancient Civilizations (IHAC) at the Northeast Normal University, Changchun, China (20 September 2021): http://ihac.nenu.edu.cn/info/1149/1361.htm

Slides for the IMC Leeds 2021 keynote lecture "Crusaders of Climate Change? - The Debate on Global Warming between the Medieval and the Present Age" (Session 1199)

The study of the climate of the past has become an essential instrument of climatology for contextualising the scale, pace, and potential impact of modern-day climate change within the longer history of planetary and social dynamics. This, however, equally entraps historical climatology in current debates on 'global warming', with climate change deniers pointing to a 'Medieval Warm Period' as evidence that modern-day temperature trends are only 'normal' fluctuations. Furthermore, the still common use of the term 'Medieval Climate Optimum' in popular as well as scholarly publications suggests a simplistic linear or even deterministic interplay between environmental parameters and historical developments, with medieval global warming enabling the Vikings to settle Greenland or the Crusaders to conquer Jerusalem.

This paper employs a critical dialogue between historical and archaeological evidence and scientific (proxy) data in order to illustrate the temporal oscillations and spatial variances of the now so-called 'Medieval Climate Anomaly' (MCA). Comparing case studies across Afro-Eurasia in order to 'provincialise Europe' within the MCA, it highlights the diversity of political, socio-economic, and intellectual responses to constant environmental challenges, which this alleged 'optimal' period between the 10th and the 13th centuries comprised. Finally, it poses the question if graphic periodisations such as 'Roman Climate Optimum', 'Medieval Warm Period', or 'Little Ice Age' are at all helpful for a more nuanced analysis of climate-human entanglements, which balances the relevance of long-term trends and short-term variances. Through such a debate, the study of medieval history could become more helpful for present considerations on climate change and more resistant against deliberate misinterpretation.

Presentation for séminaire « Géographie historique et géoarchéologie », CNRS Paris, 30 April 2021, organised by Anca Dan: http://www.archeo.ens.fr/Entaglements.html?lang=fr

eyond the purple plots. Towards a dynamic perspective on imperial formations of the past

Popular perceptions of empires are still shaped by their cartographic representation as vast assemblies of territory in loud colours. More recent studies of geography, however, have argued for more “cobwebby” spatial manifestations of imperial rule as “series of nodes (population centres and resources) joined through corridors (roads, canals, rivers)”.[1] Historians have introduced the concept of “imperial ecology”, defined as the “particular flows of resources and population directed by the imperial centre” on which its success and survival depended[2] ; and environmental scientists have proposed various tools to survey and analyse these flows of the “social metabolism” of a society or urban community.[3] Furthermore, empires have been characterised as “regimes of entanglements”, in which certain structural and habitual circumstances – principles, rules, standards and mutual expectations – allow for the establishment of enduring long term linkages through the mobility of people, goods and ideas.[4]
This paper combines these approaches with tools of social network analysis and digital cartography in order to explore more patchy spatial manifestations and dynamic “fluidities” of imperial formations. It presents case studies based on a single text as well as some using large-scale historical and archaeological data sets, comparing imperial connectivity and mobility for the Roman, Byzantine and Chinese Empires in the late antique and medieval period.[5] Thereby, it aims at “Moving Byzantium” as well as other polities of the past.[6]

[1] Smith, Monica L. (2005) : Networks, territories, and the cartography of ancient States, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 95(4), 2005, pp. 832–849 ; Smith, Monica L. (2007) : Territories, corridors, and networks : A biological model for the premodern State, Complexity 12(4), 2007, pp. 28–35.

[2] White, Sam : The Climate of rebellion in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire, Cambridge 2011.

[3] González de Molina, M. and Toledo, V.M. : The social metabolism : A socio-ecological theory of historical change, Heidelberg and New York 2014 ; Schott, Dieter : Urban development and environment, in : Agnoletti, Mauro and Neri Serneri, Simone (eds.) : The basic environmental history, Heidelberg 2014, pp. 171‑198

[4] Schuppert, Gunnar Folke : Verflochtene Staatlichkeit. Globalisierung als Governance-Geschichte, Frankfurt am Main 2014, p. 29.

[5] See for example : Preiser-Kapeller, Johannes : Networks and the Resilience and Fall of Empires : a Macro-Comparison between the Imperium Romanum and Imperial China, Siedlungsforschung : Archäologie – Geschichte – Geographie 36 (2020), pp. 59-98 ; Preiser-Kapeller, Johannes : Small Worlds of Long Late Antiquity. Global entanglements, trade diasporas and network theory, in : Guidetti, Fabio and Katharina Meinecke (eds.), A Globalised Visual Culture ? Towards a Geography of Late Antique Art, Oxford 2020, pp. 357-379.

[6] For the “Moving Byzantium”-project see https://rapp.univie.ac.at/.

Video des Vortrags:
Teil 1: https://youtu.be/QeX8nMr9Q7s
Teil 2: https://youtu.be/YTy_Sq7PMiU

Im 13. Jahrhundert erlebte die „alte Welt“ in Asien, Afrika und Europa eine Intensivierung der überregionalen Verbindungen des Handels und der Mobilität durch die Schaffung eines gewaltigen neuen politischen Raumes infolge der mongolischen Eroberungen. Ab der Mitte des 13. Jahrhunderts setzte aber auch ein Klimawandel von der „Mittelalterlichen Klima-Anomalie“ zur „Kleinen Eiszeit“ ein, der insbesondere ab dem frühen 14. Jahrhundert von einer Häufung von Witterungsextremen, Missernten und Hungersnot begleitetet wurde. Dramatischer Höhepunkt dieser Entwicklung war der Ausbruch der Pest-Pandemie ab den 1340er Jahren, der Verbreitung durch die stärkere Verflechtung der Weltregionen noch begünstigt wurden. Diese Ereignisse und ihre kurz- und langfristigen gesellschaftlichen Auswirkungen werden im Vortrag auf der Grundlage neuer Daten und aktueller Forschungsdebatten diskutiert.

Der Vortrag ist auf zwei Videos aufgeteilt und wurde auf Initiative von Dr. Egmont Schmidt ursprünglich im Rahmen einer Fortbildungsveranstaltung für Geschichtslehrer an der Pädagogischen Hochschule Oberösterreich in Linz am 5. Februar 2020 gehalten.

Präsentation für Das Frontend als „Flaschenhals“? Mediävistische Ressourcen im World Wide Web und ihre Nutzungspotentiale für eine Digitale Prosopographie - Tagung vom 19. bis 21. Februar 2020, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena
https://mephisto.uni-jena.de/veranstaltungen/repositorientagung/
https://www.academia.edu/41740894/Das_Frontend_als_Flaschenhals_Medi%C3%A4vistische_Ressourcen_im_World_Wide_Web_und_ihre_Nutzungspotentiale_f%C3%BCr_eine_Digitale_Prosopographie_Tagung_Jena_19.-21.2.2020_

https://mephisto.uni-jena.de/veranstaltungen/repositorientagung/abendvortrag-2020-02-20/

Datum: 20. Februar 2020, 20.00 Uhr

Ort: Universitätshauptgebäude der Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, HS 250

Tritt die Geschichtsforschung in das Zeitalter von „big data“ ein, in dem „die Vergangenheit genauso zugänglich wird wie die Gegenwart“? Oder erfüllt sich gar, 100 Jahre nach seiner Geburt, die Verheißung des Science-Fiction-Autors Isaac Asimov (1920-1992), dass eine neue Wissenschaft von der Geschichte plausible Prognosen über die Zukunft ermöglicht? Solche und ähnliche Ankündigungen bevölkern Websites, Pressemeldungen und Projektanträge.
Tatsächlich wächst die Zahl der digital erfassten Daten über Personen, Ereignisse, Orte, Texte und Artefakte ständig, auch im immer globaleren Feld der Mittelalterforschung für ganz Afro-Eurasien. Auf dieser Grundlage können Verflechtungen innerhalb von Gesellschaften und zwischen Weltregionen in ihrer Komplexität und Veränderung neu erfasst, kartiert und analysiert werden. Jedoch stellt die Fragmentierung des gesammelten Wissens zwischen verschiedenen „Datensilos“ und Disziplinen mit ihren je eigenen Regeln nach wie vor ein nicht unerhebliches Hindernis dar. Ebenso sind sich die verschiedenen Zünfte der Historikerinnen und Historiker noch nicht klar, wieviel an Quantifizierung, Visualisierung und Mathematisierung „ihres“ Materials sie verdauen können oder wollen. Sie müssen aber gleichzeitig zur Kenntnis nehmen, dass aus den Naturwissenschaften kommende Initiativen wie „Sociophysics“ oder „Cliodynamics“ das Feld der Geschichtsforschung mit beanspruchen oder sogar neu definieren wollen.
Auf der Grundlage einzelner Fallstudien und eigener Erfahrungen der Mitarbeit an solchen Initiativen beleuchtet der Vortrag diese Ansätze, ihre Potentiale und Probleme. Dabei soll deutlich werden, dass die (mediävistische) Geschichtsforschung über die „bloße“ Digitalisierung hinaus neue Instrumente, wie etwa die Netzwerkanalyse, in ihren Werkzeugkasten aufnehmen muss. Doch bieten gerade die traditionellen „Tugenden“ der Historikerin/des Historikers auch im „digital turn“ die Mittel, um der unkritischen Verschmelzung höchst unterschiedlicher Daten und ihrer grob vereinfachenden Deutung entgegenzutreten.

Presentation for Lecture at the University of Erlangen, Kolloquium Globalisierung und Glokalisierung , 28 January 2020: https://www.phil.fau.de/events/imperiale-grossstaedte-und-ihre-umwelt-ein-globaler-vergleich-zwischen-bosporus-und-huang-ho-waehrend-der-mittelalterlichen-klima-anomalie-ca-800-1200-n-chr-gastvortrag/

Presentation for the Workshop "The Eastern Mediterranean in the World History", Osaka City University, 19 November, 15:30-18:30: http://www.medievalstudies.jp/information/news20191017/

Workshop: The Eastern Mediterranean in the World History
Tuesday, 19 November 2019, 15:30-18:30
Room122, Graduate School of Letters and Human Sciences Building, Sugimoto Campus, Osaka City University
Speaker: Johannes Preiser-Kapeller (Austrian Academy of Sciences; Johannes.Preiser-Kapeller@oeaw.ac.at)
Chairs: Masafumi Kitamura (Osaka City University) & Hisatsugu Kusabu (Osaka City University)
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Outline of the presentation
• Introduction: Habsburg Vienna, palaces, urban metabolism and imperial ecology
• Imperial mega-cities and palaces across early Medieval Afro-Eurasia in Comparison:
• Byzantine Constantinople, 4th-13th century
• Abbasid Baghdad, 8th-11th century
• Fatimid Cairo, 10th-12th century
• Sui-Tang Chang´an, 6th-10th century
• Capitals of Japan, 7th-11th century
• Conclusion: fragility and resilience

Presentation for the Global History Seminar, Osaka University, 22 November, 16:00-18:30: https://www.globalhistoryonline.org/

Since Jared Diamond´s 2005 bestseller “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed“, despite severe scholarly criticism, some of his scenarios on ancient civilisations such as Viking Age Greenland, the Easter Island or the Maya have become “iconic” examples of societal breakdown due to changing environmental conditions, lack of adaptiveness and depletion of resources. Especially the later aspect has even before been emphasised when determining the causes of the ancient empire of the Mediterranean; J. Donald Hughes in his 1975 monograph “Ecology in Ancient Civilizations” stated: “an environmentalist movement did not exist in Rome” and reasoned: “The Romans´ failure to adapt their society and economy to the natural environment in harmonious ways is one of the causes of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, if not in fact the basic and underlying one.” The recently rising interest in climate change has fostered the generation of similar scenarios, such as Ronnie Ellenblum´s “The Collapse of the Eastern Mediterranean. Climate Change and the Decline of the East, 950–1072” (in 2012) or Kyle Harper´s “Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire” (2017).
In this presentation, we critically evaluate these scenarios and contrast them with a comparison of case studies from various empires across Afro-Eurasia from the 4th up to the 11th century CE (so within a “Long Late Antiquity” as recently proposed by Garth Fowden, 2015, or Thomas Bauer, 2018). For this purpose, we adapt concepts from environmental history such as “imperial ecology” and “urban metabolism” as well as network and complexity theory and combine them with data from historical, archaeological and natural scientific research. In particular, we re-evaluate the actual shares of environmental factors in times of calamities in order to re-interpret “natural events” as social processes and to explore strategies of resilience and adaptation of these imperial formations and their urban centres, thus contributing to a more nuanced picture of the entanglement between empire and ecology in a global perspective.

Seiyoshikennkyuukai-Symposium: Medieval Empires and their Networks, 17 November 2019
Tachikawa Memorial Hall, Ikebukuro Campus, Rikkyo University
Johannes Preiser-Kapeller (Austrian Academy of Sciences; Johannes.Preiser-Kapeller@oeaw.ac.at)

Outline of the presentation and main questions and arguments:
• 1) Ideal and realities of imperial rule in 10th-11th century “Christendom”: emperors and the “dominant coalition”: Can the parallel crisis of the Roman (“Byzantine”) Empire of the East and the (“Holy”) Roman Empire of the West in mid-late 11th century CE be interpreted as a “decline” from the “apex” of these empires at the turn of the 1st Millennium CE or as the “poisoned heritage” of “autocratic” rulers (namely, Basil II [976-1025 CE] in Byzantium and Henry III [1039-1056 CE] in the German Kingdom? Both imperial offices were based on the election by and consultation “with those persons and groups of people without whom it was impossible to rule”, i. e. members of the secular and ecclesiastical elites; these groups and networks have been identified as “dominant coalition” of pre-modern states in works of institutional economics (North/Wallis/Weingast 2009). Both in Byzantium and in the Holy Roman Emperor, authors of the time diagnose a “deviation” from these patterns of rule by consultation by Henry III respectively Basil II. Furthermore, the fragility, but also flexibility of these power arrangements in both empires became especially visible during times of minority of heirs to the throne or of female claimants (in the Byzantine case). The beginnings of the climax of crisis in Germany and in Byzantium can be linked to such periods (Henry IV in the West, 1056-1066; Michael VII, 1067-1071, in the East).
• 2) The crisis of the 11th century in the (Holy) Roman Empire and Byzantium: The “usual” fragility of power arrangements or new socio-economic dynamics? Based on these findings regarding the potential instability of political framework in both empires, one could ask if the crises of the 11th century were only periods of intensification of the system inherent risks of imperial rule or if they can be connected with underlying new socio-economic dynamics.
For the Holy Roman Empire and entire Western Europe, the 10th-12th centuries have been identified as period of economic and demographic growth, favoured by the environmental conditions of the so-called “Medieval Climate Optimum”. The growth in the number of settlements and areas under cultivation, however, was also entangled with an intensification of secular and ecclesiastical lordship, often in competition with each other or with older rights on the use of the landscape. Furthermore, new “elites of function” (in the form of the servientes/ministeriales) and growing urban communities equally challenged the power and influence of the old-established nobilities. The conflict between King Henry IV and the nobility and peasants of Saxony due to the expansion of royal rights in the economically and strategically important Harz region thus can be understood as time of “crystallization” of these persistent changes of the socio-political framework. The entanglement of this conflict with the so-called “Investiture Controversy” with Pope Gregory VII (culminating in Canossa 1077) lead to the outbreak of full-scale civil war and the rise of Anti-Kings during the reign of Henry IV until his deposition by his son Henry V in 1106 CE. 
Also for the Byzantine Empire, research in the last decades has identified the 10th-12th centuries as time of demographic and economic growth. Already before, scholarship has observed the growth of the economic and political power of the “aristocratic” great families at the cost of the free peasantry (Ostrogorsky 1954 wrote about a “feudalisation” of Byzantium). In any case, similar to the Western Empire, new social mobilities and new urban educated and commercial elites become more visible during the 11th century, especially in the “mega-city” of Constantinople (for which there existed no counterpart in the West). Most recently, however, Anthony Kaldellis (2017) has put into question the “traditional” scenario of the conflict between landowning “magnates” and the imperial centre; he on the contrast claims, “the emperors were threatened not by landowners but by army officers. Some were no doubt landowners, but there is no evidence that they were dangerous because of their property. (…) Instead, they were dangerous because they could subvert the loyalty of the armies.” (p. 15). Kaldellis thus interprets the crisis of the 11th century as “systemic crisis” of the usual power arrangement of emperor, army and state apparatus. A close reading of the same sources as used by Kaldellis, however, allows us to illustrate the interplay between the traditional allocation of rank and wealth within the army and administration and the growth of landed property and their transmission within increasingly powerful noble clans. At the same time, the fragility of (non-hereditary) elite status in Byzantium may have aggravated during the 11th century both the competition over the access to the imperial office as well as tendencies toward alienation from the centre and autonomous power formation. Both trends then interlocked with the advance of Seljuk and other Turkish groups into Asia Minor before and after the Battle of Manzikert (1071 CE), leading to the loss of large areas within this former core region of the empire.
In this regard, Byzantium also differed from the Holy Roman Empire in the West, whose territorial integrity despite the weakening of royal/imperial power was never threatened by the strengthened position of the leading princes, who regarded themselves “as the pillars of the empire and the guardians of its unity” (Borgolte 2002, p. 45).
• 3) Geopolitical, environmental and socio-economic change across Afro-Eurasia: societies in trouble? These different outcomes of the 11th century crises in the Holy Roman Empire and Byzantium are of course equally connected to the different geopolitical positions of both polities. While the Western Empire faced a serious contender only at its margins with the Normans in Southern Italy and Sicily, who also several times intervened in the conflict between Henry IV and the Papacy, the Byzantine Empire was attacked not only by the Normans, but also by nomadic groups from the Steppes at the Danube (Pechenegs) and in the East (Seljuks and other Turkish formations). Ronnie Ellenblum in his monograph on the “Collapse of the Eastern Mediterranean” (2012) has connected these migration movements with environmental changes in Central Asia, most recently. He also claims, that at the same time climate-induced stress weakened the “sedentary” polities of the Middle East such as Byzantium, the Fatimid Caliphate and the Būyid dynasty, leading to their eventual downfall or almost-collapse. Based on proxy data and other evidence, however (see Preiser-Kapeller 2015), one can demonstrate a high regional diversity across the Eastern Mediterranean, with symptoms of economic growth both in Byzantine provinces and in Fatimid Egypt. The latter, however, was affected by a series of low Nile floods, which contributed to severe socio-political crises, but not necessarily as single or even prime factor. Furthermore, Ellenblum´ s claims have been refuted recently in three independent studies on Eastern Iran and Central Asia (Paul 2016; Tor 2018; Frenkel 2019).
Ellenblum, on the contrast, has expanded his scenario to the Liao-Empire in Manchuria, Northern China and Mongolia (Li/Shelach-Lavi/Ellenblum 2019). While comments of experts on this study have to be awaited, data for the adjacent Northern Song-Empire even more than for Western Europe indicates a period of demographic and economic growth, although punctuated by natural calamities such as catastrophic floods of the Yellow River (Zhang 2016). Equally, for 11th century Japan studies such as Totman (2014) identify indicators for population and economic growth, however equally intertwined with increased competition over access to (shōen) land and to imperial power as in the German Kingdom, for instance.
These “strange parallels” may lead us to identify the 11th century across Afro-Eurasia as a period of “crises of growth” of otherwise and despite environmental calamities increasingly affluent societies, as Thomas N. Bisson (2009) has done for Western Europe. This, however, can be also one starting point for discussion during the symposium.

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Friday 15 November 2019, 18:30-20:30
1104, Main Building (Building 1), Ikebukuro Campus, Rikkyo University
Johannes Preiser-Kapeller (Austrian Academy of Sciences; Johannes.Preiser-Kapeller@oeaw.ac.at)
Discussant Takuro Tsuda (Hokkaido University of Education)

Outline of the presentation and main questions and arguments:
• Volcanoes and plagues: the “Late Antique Little Ice Age”, 536-660 CE, and environmental change in “Long Late Antiquity”: 536 CE has been identified as “the worst year to be alive” in the popular media discussion of the recent findings on the so-called “Dust Veil Event” of that year, which heralded the “Late Antique Little Ice Age” (LALIA) in the years 536 to 660 CE. However, also the authors of the paper introducing LALIA themselves attached to their data a list with events of dynastic collapse and political fragmentation, thus equally suggesting a rather negative impact of these climatic conditions on human societies across Afro-Eurasia. One core aspect of this “catastrophic scenario” (already first developed by David Keys in 1999) is the First Plague Pandemic (the so-called “Justinianic Plague”) which hit the Mediterranean and adjacent regions in several waves from 541 CE to 750 CE. The actual demographic impact of these epidemics, however, is still under debate, despite an increasing number of especially paleo-genetic findings.
• Imperial formations and entangled ecologies: The spread of the plague was eased by the long-term entanglement of the areas around the Mediterranean and beyond within the Roman Empire, with a sustainable effect even after the political fragmentation of the Roman West in the 5th century CE. Kyle Harper (2017) wrote about a new “disease ecology” created by the Roman Empire and its mercantile connections also beyond its borders; this in turn can be connected with the concept of “imperial ecology”, defined by Sam White (2011) as the “particular flows of resources and population directed by the imperial centre on which its success and survival depended”. The eventual fragmentation of the Roman Mediterranean and other imperial formation in the 7th century (as indicated above) was recently linked to the climatic extremes of LALIA. The same period, however, was characterised by the emergence of new imperial spheres entangling different eco-zones and mobilising people, objects and species, especially the Arab Caliphate and the Empire of the Tang in China.
• New imperial ecologies: the Arab Empire: the Arab-Islamic Expansion created a new imperial sphere connecting large parts of the Mediterranean with Iran, Central Asia and the regions along the Western Indian Ocean. Especially the end of the plague pandemic in the mid-8th century CE allowed for demographic and economic growth symbolised with the establishment of Baghdad in 762 CE as new capital and focal point of the imperial ecology of the Abbasid Caliphate. Especially Andrew M. Watson (1983) claimed that this new entanglement of various ecological zones and traditions of land use allowed for an “Arab Agricultural Revolution”, characterized by the wide spread of new crops and new agricultural technologies, with India playing a pivotal role a source and intermediator of plants such as cotton or sugar. Recent studies and new (palynological) data, however, have qualified this scenario and highlighted that many of these “new crops” were circulating already centuries before; yet the Arab Caliphate provided the framework for an intensification of the movement of species, technologies and of demands beyond its borders towards the Byzantine and the Frankish Empire and Northern Europe, for instance. Equally, earlier long distance connections across Central Asia and the Indian Ocean were strengthened and allowed for a partial “interlacing” between the two major imperial spheres of the Caliphate and of Tang China.
• New imperial ecologies: Tang China and Japan: While environmental calamities hit Northern China already before 536 CE, the 6th century saw the eventual political unification of Northern and Southern China after almost 300 years of separation under the Sui and Tang dynasties. The building of the new capitals of Chang´an and of Luoyang and especially of the Grand Canal system between Yellow River and Yangtze symbolised the emergence of a new unified imperial ecology, which connected the different eco-zones and agricultural traditions of the North and of the South in a similar way as in the Arab case. Equally, the growth of and demand for already circulating crops such as tea and sugar intensified. Tang China, however, similar as the Roman Empire, also connected different “disease ecologies”; infrastructures such as the Grand Canal eased the spread of epidemics as in the years 636 to 644 CE (maybe a case of “smallpox”), which hit the areas from Chang´an eastwards along the canal system. The increased entanglement between regions also included Japan, where the establishment of new imperial capitals and political orders similarly allowed for the emergence of an imperial ecology with underlying flows of people and objects. This in turn, according to Totman (2005) for instance, would ease the spread of pathogens as in the case of the smallpox epidemic “imported” via maritime links from the mainland after 735 CE.
• Conclusion: the 9th century and the end of the imperial spaces of “Long Late Antiquity”: The early 9th century as transition time between the Late Antique cold period and the so-called “Medieval Climate Anomaly” (ca. 900-1250 CE) was characterised by a new series of climatic calamities which ran parallel with socio-political crises in many polities across Afro-Eurasia from the Frankish Empire via the Caliphate to Tibet and Tang China. For the Uyghur Empire in Mongolia, the recent study of Nicola di Cosmo et al. (2018) even connects its collapse in 839/840 CE with a series of extreme droughts and colds in the steppe. For both the Abbasid Caliphate and Tang China, the 9th century initiated an intensifying series of crises leading to the eventual political fragmentation of these imperial spheres and in the case of the Tang to dynastic downfall. The overall view on LALIA and the period from 500 to 900 CE beyond the Roman and post-Roman sphere, however, highlights a period of wide-ranging and intensifying connectivity, political integration and urban growth in various macro-regions across Afro-Eurasia despite all climatic calamities. David Keys “Catastrophe” (1999) thus can be very much provided with a question mark from a non-Euro-Centric perspective.

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Monday 11 November 2019, 16:30-18:00
Meeting Room 401, Slavic-Eurasian Research Center, Hokkaido University
http://src-h.slav.hokudai.ac.jp/eng/Document/2019/20191111.pdf

Johannes Preiser-Kapeller (Austrian Academy of Sciences; Johannes.Preiser-Kapeller@oeaw.ac.at)

Outline of the presentation and main questions:
• Introduction: maps, manuals and the world of the “Pax Mongolica” from a 14th century Western Christian perspective: why and how the Byzantine Empire profited from the Mongol Expansion into Western Eurasia
• The Ilkhanate teleconnection: from “New Rome” via Anatolia and Iran to Central Asia: state and church diplomacy towards the Ilkhanate and the role of the Patriarchate of Antioch and the Bishopric of Tabriz in comparison with the “Latin” missionary activity in that region
• The Golden Horde teleconnection: from “New Rome” via the Black Sea to Central Asia – and China? The special role of the Alans as “orthodox” people and of their metropolitan as potential intermediator within the Golden Horde and the even wider spread of the Alans towards Central Asia and Yuan China; and again the role of “Latin” missionary activity within the Archbishopric of Khanbaliq
• Renegades and impostors: mobile Byzantine clergymen in the Mongol-Islamic World after the Black Death: the spread of the plague pandemic and the 14th century crisis in Byzantium; the ecclesiastical sphere of influence of the Patriarchate of Constantinople as “compensation” for the shrinking political influence of the Empire – and how this opened opportunities for mobile, flexible but “nonconformist” clerics such as Symeon of Alania and Paulos “Palaiologos” Tagaris
• Epilogue: Byzantium, Timur Leng and “unused opportunities”? Could the Byzantine Church have done “better” with regard to the expansion of its sphere of influence in the Mongol-Islamic World of the 14th century when compared with the Latin Church? In addition, what role did the interpretation of Timur Leng´s victory over the Ottomans in 1402 play for the later fate of attempts of a union between the two churches?

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The “Great Transition” and the “Little Ice Age”.
A comparative perspective on the 14th century CE beyond Western Europe
Tuesday, 5 November 2019, 18:30-20:00
Meeting Room 1 at Building 12, Ikebukuro Campus, Rikkyo University
Johannes Preiser-Kapeller (Austrian Academy of Sciences; Johannes.Preiser-Kapeller@oeaw.ac.at)

Outline of the presentation and main questions:
• The „Great Transition“ to the Little Ice Age in Western Europe from the mid13th to the 14th century and its global linkages: the scenario of B. M. S. Campbell, The Great Transition. Climate, Disease and Society in the Late-Medieval Worlds, Cambridge 2016. Are their “beneficial” long-term effects of the 14th century crisis and the plague epidemics in Northwestern Europe? Are these the origins of the so-called “Great Divergence” with regard to further development towards the Industrial Revolution between Western Europe, China, Japan and other regions of the world?
• The “Great Transition” in the Eastern Mediterranean and the “Little Divergence”? Which climatic phenomena and societal effects can be observed in the Eastern Mediterranean during the “Great Transition”? How can we account for the different developments of polities such as the Byzantine Empire, the Ottoman Empire and the Mamluk Sultanate? And how do these societies “perform” in comparison with those of Northwestern Europe? Is there a “Little Divergence” between different parts of the Euro-Mediterranean area?
• The “Great Transition” in the wider framework of Afro-Eurasia and another “Little Divergence”? How is the transition from the Medieval Climate Anomaly to the Little Ice Age reflected in (proxy) data from China or Japan? Did environmental stress contribute to the fall of the Mongol Yuan dynasty? Was the “Song-Yuan-Ming Transition” in terms of economic and institutional change at the origin of the “Great Divergence” between Western Europe and China? And how can we evaluate claims on “A First Escape from Poverty in Late Medieval Japan” and a “Little Divergence within Asia” between Japan and other regions?
• Conclusion: What are the potentials, pitfalls and limits of quantification of climatic, demographic and economic data for the 14th century? What can we learn about the interplay of socio-political and environmental dynamics? And how can the latest “Great Transition” from the “Great Divergence” to the “Great Convergence” be connected with the recent anthropogenic climate change?

Presentation for the Workshop at the University of Bergen “City, Hinterland, and Environment: Urban Resilience in the Late Roman and Early Islamic Period” (23-25 September 2019, https://www.uib.no/en/rg/rames/129637/city-hinterland-and-environment-urban-resilience-late-roman-and-early-islamic-period?fbclid=IwAR3LCc5ii1R58QwLMkRzdb88egs9jDiMprHDaqgL4DCVaV2fbw8f1RqDCbs)

Late Roman imperial centres such as Rome and Constantinople have been often discussed as “outliers” with regard to their scale and the complexity of their infrastructure. This paper aims at interpreting these otherwise exceptional places in comparison with other imperial “megacities”, which were equally dependent on elaborate supply networks and institutional frameworks. For the purpose of comparative analysis, we adapt concepts from environmental history such as “imperial ecology” and “urban metabolism”.
In particular, the paper focuses on the three entangled case studies of Constantinople, Baghdad and Cairo from the 4th respectively 8th and 10th century CE up to the 12th century CE (so within a “Long Late Antiquity” as recently proposed by Garth Fowden, 2015, or Thomas Bauer, 2018). All three imperial centres underwent periods of rapid demographic and urban growth, but also of severe crisis, connected with political and socio-economic turbulences as well as (especially in recent scenarios, i.e. Ronnie Ellenblum 2012) environmental change. We re-evaluate the actual shares of these factors in these times of calamities and explore strategies of resilience and adaptation both with regard to the re-orientation of urban metabolisms as well as spatial modifications of urban fabrics.
Furthermore, for the purpose of comparative analysis of large-scale urbanism, we consider other imperial centres beyond the Mediterranean across early medieval Afro-Eurasia, especially in China (such as Chang´an and Luoyang), for which data allows an even more nuanced estimate of the actual burden these places put on the economies and ecologies of their immediate and wider hinterlands. The paper thus contributes also to current debates on urban sustainability of “mega-cities”.

Presentation for the Conference: "The Islamic-Byzantine Border: From the Rise of Islam to the Fall of Constantinople"
Notre Dame University, 28-30 April 2019:
https://history.nd.edu/news-events/events/2019/04/28/conference-the-islamic-byzantine-border-from-the-rise-of-islam-to-the-fall-of-constantinople/

Talk at the Complexity Science Hub Vienna, 1st of March 2019: https://www.csh.ac.at/event/csh-talk-by-johannes-preiser-kapeller/

The human past has become a contested and almost congested testing ground for complex theory building and mathematical modelling. The resulting hunger for quantifiable or even “big” data often clashes with the traditional virtues of historical hermeneutics such as close reading, source criticism and context-analysis. Thus, despite some promising interdisciplinary undertakings, findings from such attempts of “historical complexity research” still tend to be rejected or even ignored within the wider community of historians.
Based on his own work with tools of historical network, quantitative and environmental historical research and contributions to large scale projects such as the “Seshat Global History Databank” (directed by CSH External Faculty member Peter Turchin) and the “Climate Change and History Research Initiative” (at Princeton), Johannes will discuss the potentials and problems of the “concubinage” of complexity research and historical studies. In particular, he will demonstrate his current comparative research on the dynamics and social cohesion of medieval societies during periods of severe crisis, especially the Byzantine Empire and other polities during the 7th-9th, 11th and 14th century CE.

Presentation for the event series " NEU GELESEN. NEU ERZÄHLT. NEU GEMISCHT" at the Kultum in Graz (Austria), organised by Florian Traussnig, on the interpretation of climatic extremes and other calamities in medieval Styria, Eurasia and in the modern world, see also https://www.kultum.at/einrichtung/137/kultumdiskurs/kultumdiskurs/article/47733.html