Catastrophes in Context

Disaster and Response in the Roman and Early Byzantine World

Rubina Raja, Andrew Wilson (eds)

Pages: approx. 322 p.
Size:216 x 280 mm
Illustrations:18 b/w, 46 col., 26 tables b/w., 19 maps b/w

Language(s):English
Publication Year:2026

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ISBN: 978-2-503-62364-1
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This edited volume revisits ancient catastrophes through diverse interdisciplinary insights, revealing contexts, integrated evidence, and transformative perspectives on societal resilience.

Subject(s)

BIO

Andrew Wilson is Professor of the Archaeology of the Roman Empire at Oxford University. He has published extensively on the economy of the Roman Empire, ancient technology, and ancient water supply.

Rubina Raja is Professor of Classical Archaeology and Art at Aarhus University, Denmark, and Director of Centre for Urban Network Evolutions. She has published extensively on the Mediterranean and bordering regions with a strong focus on visual culture, self-representation and urban societies from the Hellenistic period to early Medieval times.

Summary

Catastrophes in Context: Disaster and Response in the Roman and Early Byzantine World explores how people in the ancient world lived through, reacted to, and recovered after major crises. From earthquakes and eruptions to shortages, plagues, and sudden environmental shifts, the book shows disasters not as stand-alone events but as moments that changed communities in lasting ways. Drawing on a wide mix of evidence such as archaeological remains, texts, landscapes, and scientific data, it brings together engaging case studies that highlight real human experiences of fear, loss, recovery, and resilience. The contributors offer new ways to understand how ancient societies coped with catastrophic events, what resources they relied on, and how they adapted to new realities. Comprehensive, engaging, and wide-ranging, this volume presents the ancient world through the lens of challenge and response, showing how crises shaped everyday life and long-term history.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

List of Contributors

Preface

1. Introduction: Catastrophe and Response in the Ancient World
Rubina Raja and Andrew Wilson
2. War and Urbanism: The Boudican Revolt and the Reconstruction of Londinium
Lacey Wallace
3. Revaluating the Impact of the Earthquake(s) of AD 62/63 in Roman Pompeii
Michael A. Anderson
4. The Catastrophic AD 79 Eruption of Vesuvius: Survivors and Post-Eruption Intervention at the Local and Imperial Level in Four Communities
Steven L. Tuck
5. The Economic Impact of the Antonine Plague
Andrew Wilson
6. Catastrophes and Resilience: The Archaeology of Crises at Palmyra, 150–272
Olympia Bobou and Rubina Raja
7. Cyrenaica and the Plague of Cyprian
Andrew Wilson
8. Catastrophes and the Dynamic Landscape of Thonis-Heracleion
Damian Robinson and Franck Goddio
9. Catastrophic (?) Floods in the Roman North: Chronologies, Causes, and Contexts
Tyler Franconi
10. Resilience in Late Fifth-Century Aphrodisias: An Archaeological Perspective from the Tetrapylon Street
Ine Jacobs
11. The Environmental Context for the Outbreak of the Justinianic Plague in the Mediterranean
Brandon McDonald, Andrew Wilson, and Arietta Papaconstantinou
12. Contextualizing Late Antique Natural Disasters: The Elements and Effects of the Late Antique Little Ice Age and the Justinianic Plague
Brandon McDonald