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South America is a unique place where a number of past climate archives are ava- able from tropical to high latitude regions. It thus offers a unique opportunity to explore past climate variability along a latitudinal transect from the Equator to Polar regions and to study climate teleconnections. Most climate records from tropical and subtropical South America for the past 20,000 years have been interpreted as local responses to shift in the mean position and intensity of the InterTropical Conv- gence Zone due to tropical and extratropical forcings or to changes in the South American Summer Monsoon. Further South, the role of the Southern Hemisphere westerly winds on global climate has been...
When scholars discuss the medieval past, the temptation is to become immersed there, to deepen our appreciation of the nuances of the medieval sources through debate about their meaning. But the past informs the present in a myriad of ways and medievalists can, and should, use their research to address the concerns and interests of contemporary society. This volume presents a number of carefully commissioned essays that demonstrate the fertility and originality of recent work in Medieval Studies. Above all, they have been selected for relevance. Most contributors are in the earlier stages of their careers and their approaches clearly reflect how interdisciplinary methodologies applied to Med...
This book explores histories of droughts and floods in the Indian Ocean World, and their connections to broader global climatic anomalies. It deploys an interdisciplinary approach rooted in the emerging field of climate history to investigate the multifaceted effects of global climatic anomalies on regions affected by the Indian Ocean Monsoon System – regularly conceived of as the macro-region’s ‘deep structure.’ Case studies explore how droughts and floods related to anomalous climatic conditions have historically affected states, societies, and ecologies across the Indian Ocean World, including in relation to food security, epidemic diseases, political (in)stability, economic change, infrastructural development, colonialism, capitalism, and scientific knowledge. Tracing longue durée patterns from the twelfth to the early twentieth centuries, this book makes a significant contribution to our understanding of global climatic events and their effects on the Indian Ocean World. It highlights essential historical case studies for contextualizing the potential effects of global warming on the macro-region in the present and future.
This volume brings together environmental and human perspectives, engages with both historians and scientists, and, being mindful that environments and disease recognize no boundaries, includes studies that touch on Europe, the wider Mediterranean world, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Disease and the Environment in the Medieval and Early Modern Worlds explores the intertwined relationships between humans, the natural and manmade environments, and disease. Urgency gives us a sense that we need a longer view of human responses and interactions with the airs, waters, and places in which we live, and a greater understanding of the activities and attitudes that have led us to the present. Throug...
Comprehensive and up-to-date information on Earth’s most dominant year-to-year climate variation The El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) in the Pacific Ocean has major worldwide social and economic consequences through its global scale effects on atmospheric and oceanic circulation, marine and terrestrial ecosystems, and other natural systems. Ongoing climate change is projected to significantly alter ENSO's dynamics and impacts. El Niño Southern Oscillation in a Changing Climate presents the latest theories, models, and observations, and explores the challenges of forecasting ENSO as the climate continues to change. Volume highlights include: Historical background on ENSO and its societ...
Explores the resilience of the Dutch Republic in the face of preindustrial climate change during the Little Ice Age.
Nowhere on Earth is there an ecological transformation so swift and so extreme as between the snow-line of the high Andes and the tropical rainforest of Amazonia. The different disciplines that research the human past in South America have long tended to treat these two great subzones of the continent as self-contained enough to be taken independently of each other. Objections have repeatedly been raised, however, to warn against imagining too sharp a divide between the people and societies of the Andes and Amazonia, when there are also clear indications of significant connections and transitions between them. Rethinking the Andes–Amazonia Divide brings together archaeologists, linguists, ...
Historically, climate fluctuations, such as the Little Ice Age, show that interglacial climate chage in not entirely stable, but responds to even subtle changes in radiative forcing. Through research, it has been made clear that even an abrupt change of climate within years is not just a theoretical possibility but has in fact happened in the prehistoric past. It is therefore clear that in principal it could happen again. Human civilaization has exploded under the mild and relatively stable climatic conditions that have prevailed over the last 11,000 years. This book focuses on revisiting the past and to study climate and environment in a suite of experiments where boundary conditions are si...
Disease and Society in Premodern England examines the impact of infectious disease in England from the everyday to pandemics in the period c. 500–c. 1600, with the major focus from the eleventh century onward. Theilmann blends historical research, using a variety of primary sources, with an understanding of disease drawn from current scientific literature to enable a better understanding of how diseases affected society and why they were so difficult to combat in the premodern world. The volume provides a perspective on how society and medicine reacted to "new" diseases, something that remains an issue in the twenty-first century. The "new" diseases of the Late Middle Ages, such as plague,...
Preceramic Mesoamerica delivers cutting-edge research on the Mesoamerican Paleoindian and Archaic periods. The chapters address a series of fundamental questions in American archaeology including the peopling of the Americas, human adaptations to late glacial landscapes, the Neolithic transition, and the origins of sedentism and early village life. This volume presents innovative and previously unpublished research on the Paleoindian and Archaic periods and evaluates current models in light of new findings. Examples include breakthroughs in dating Mesoamerica’s earliest sites and their implications for models of hemispheric colonization; the transition to postglacial patterns of settlement...