Project description
Climate change impact in medieval Italy
Central Italy between the 6th and 11th centuries represents one of the most important political and social laboratories in Europe. The EU-funded InAndAround project will map the climate change impact on human behaviour in the two micro-regions of Lucca and Rieti. The project will investigate the interaction between climate alterability and human agency, focusing on environmental management, political change, and human and workforce mobility. It will produce new long-duration and high-resolution climate records from recently cored lake sediments combined with data derived from written sources and extant climate reconstructions. By focusing on understanding the human responses to climate and environmental change, the project responds directly to the Horizon 2020 Work Programme.
Objective
The period from the sixth- to eleventh- century in Italy is one of the most profound political and social laboratories in European history. Centered on this region and period, the primary goal of the In&Around project is to chart the effects of climate change on human behaviour. By focusing on early and high medieval Italy, the project aims at exploring the interaction between climate variability and human agency with a lens towards management of the environment and in the light of shifting political regimes, while capturing details on past issues of contemporary significance like human mobility and workforce relocation. Within the area of Italy, two micro-regions with distinct medieval histories are targeted for specific investigation: Lucca and Rieti. The project will generate new long-duration and high-resolution climate records from recently cored lake sediments combined with data derived from written sources and already extant climate reconstructions. By way of its innovation-through-interdisciplinary approach, the project will offer important opportunities for expanding the applicant’s expertise through integrating different kind of datasets, while contributing enormously to an expanding field of study in i) determining how data drawn from historical archives, natural proxies and modelling may inform respectively one another; ii) filling in a gap in research both chronologically (the first millennium of the Common Era) and geographically (the Italian peninsula) and iii) producing two new research tools useful for future studies, i.e. a repertory of 'reclaimed lands' and climatic extremes and a statistical model for climate reconstructions. Through its foci on the human responses to climate and environmental change, the project responds directly to the Horizon 2020 Work Programme to understand “the causes of climate change and to pave the way for pathways and solutions to address them”.
Fields of science
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- humanitieshistory and archaeologyhistorymedieval history
- natural sciencesmathematicsapplied mathematicsstatistics and probability
- social scienceseconomics and businessbusiness and managementemployment
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesatmospheric sciencesclimatologyclimatic changes
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)Coordinator
30123 Venezia
Italy