Michael J. Decker. “Approaches to the environmental history of Late Antiquity, part 1: The rise of Islam.” History Compass, volume 15, issue 10: Environment and Society in the Ancient World: New Perspectives (October 2017).

Since the 19th century, scholars have examined the end of the Classical world and the beginning of the medieval world, or “Late Antiquity” in the centuries from 300–900 C.E. through the lens of environmental history. Environmental determinism, based on the use of history by colonial historians, employed elements from geography, climate, and landscape studies to explain the fall of the Roman Empire, the rise of Islam in Arabia, and the destruction of the formerly fertile lands of the Roman Empire by marauding Bedouin. Recent studies stress the importance of intensive regional study while reversing the view of general environmental catastrophe and economic decline once thought to accompany the Arab conquests of the late antique Levant.

Michael J. Decker. “Approaches to the environmental history of Late Antiquity, part II: Climate Change and the End of the Roman Empire.” History Compass, volume 15, issue 10: Environment and Society in the Ancient World: New Perspectives (October 2017).

A growing body of scholarly literature on climate change from various disciplines has allowed historians to construct past possible climates and environments, as well as query climatological data in light of historical sources. This article presents important phenomena and environmental studies in light of the history of Late Antiquity and the ‘Dark Ages’ (fourth through ninth centuries C.E.) in the Roman and post-Roman Mediterranean.