The Climatic Resilience of the Sasanian Empire.

IF 1.8 3区 社会学 Q1 ANTHROPOLOGY
Human Ecology Pub Date : 2024-01-01 Epub Date: 2025-01-13 DOI:10.1007/s10745-024-00554-w
Matthew J Jacobson, Alison L Gascoigne, Dominik Fleitmann
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引用次数: 0

Abstract

The Sasanian Empire (224-651 CE) has been given relatively little attention in research on climate-society interactions when compared to the neighboring Byzantine Empire, despite evidence of changing conditions and an agricultural economy that is theoretically vulnerable to droughts due to low annual precipitation. We review the available historical, archaeological, paleo-environmental, and paleo-climatic evidence to assess whether climatic conditions factored into periods of Sasanian growth and decline. We find evidence for drier conditions across Sasanian territories at the turn of the sixth century, a pattern that extends to the Aegean, Anatolia, and Central Asia. These same conditions contributed to a significant decline for the nearby Kingdom of Himyar but occurred alongside a period of expansion and intensification for the Sasanian Empire. We suggest that a combination of careful management of water infrastructure, including qanats, which can conserve water resources during dry periods, and land-use strategies that are both diverse and flexible, may have mitigated the worst impacts of this dry period. However, we note several weaknesses in the available data that still hinder confident interpretations of the potential impacts of climate change in the Sasanian Empire. Notably, there are gaps in the coverage of paleo-hydrological records and a complete lack of terrestrial paleo-temperature records in the region, as well as low resolution and high chronological uncertainties in the archaeological and paleo-environmental evidence.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10745-024-00554-w.

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来源期刊
Human Ecology
Human Ecology Multiple-
CiteScore
3.10
自引率
5.00%
发文量
64
期刊介绍: The theoretical orientation of Human Ecology emphasizes the problem-solving significance of human culture and behavior, from food procurement to systems defining kinship—not to mention political and religious life. The perspective generally embraced here is that human ecology is part and parcel of the larger field of ecology and not simply analogous to it. Contributions to Human Ecology emphasize the complex ways in which humans shape and in turn are shaped by their environment. Original articles, research reports, and brief communications based on empirical research are welcome from fields as diverse as environmental impact studies, resource or habitat maintenance, health and nutrition, risk management, land use history—to name a few. Disciplines commonly represented include anthropology, biological, life and health sciences, geography, and sociology. The journal is peer reviewed. A book review section appears in each issue.
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