CfP: Interdisciplinary Workshop on Drought and Adaptation in the Mediterranean during the Little Ice Age (1300 -1850 AD)
WATERMARKS - Interdisciplinary Workshop on Drought and Adaptationin the Mediterranean during the Little Ice Age (1300–1850 AD)
ICTA-UAB, Institute of Environmental Science and Technology, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
Thursday 24 – Friday 25 October 2019
Understanding
how societies of the past struggled to adapt to climate variability is
critically needed to advance research about climate change adaptation
today (Adamson et al. 2018).During the historical period known as the
Little Ice Age not only average temperatures decreased but extreme
weather events became more frequent (White 2014; White 2011; Olivaet al.
2018). This period constitutes an excellent opportunity for the joint
work of researchers from the human and natural sciences interested in
adaptation. In the Mediterranean, periods ofdrought marked how
communities experienced the Little Ice Age. Recent research has shown
how local communities combined different strategies to cope with
drought, including infrastructural, institutional and symbolic responses
which changed throughout time (Grau-Satorras et al. 2016; Grau-Satorras
et al. 2018).At the crossroads between historical climatology and
environmental history, the aim of this workshop is to further our
understanding of the complex human impacts of climate variability in the
Mediterranean during the Little Ice Age, with special attention to
adaptation to the study of drought. Building on the studies of drought
reconstruction in Spain following rogation ceremonies (Barriendos 1997;
Domínguez-Castro et al. 2012) and attending to the current stateof the
art on the study of past droughts with documentary data (Brázdil et al.
2018), the ambition of this workshop is to foster interdisciplinary
communication. Transdisciplinary contributions that combine the work of
historians, natural scientists and archaeologists (Izdebski et al. 2016)
or researchers from other disciplines will be especially welcomed. The
workshop will include three keynotes: Andrea Kiss (Vienna University of
Technology), Mariano Barriendos (University of Barcelona) and Mar Grau
Satorras (Universitat Oberta deCatalunya). John McNeill (Georgetown
University) will act as discussant. Aiming at the publication of some of
the contributions received, we call for both methodologically sound and
nuanced transdisciplinary historical works from a wide range
ofdisciplines that engage with the following topics in the Mediterranean
region:
1.Methodological approaches
towards establishing instruments for classification that bring
together historical records that can be used as proxy
for climate reconstruction,with particular attention to drought,
rainfall and temperature;
2.Long-term transdisciplinary studies that integrate multi-proxy analyses of historical climate change;
3.In-depth
studies of specific severe hydro-climatic episodes during the LIA in
the Mediterranean, particularly drought and floods, with attention to
the responsesdeveloped by local societies to cope with the
consequences of such events and preventfuture episodes;
4.Human dimensions of historical climate change during the Little Ice Age;
5.Community and institutional adaptation to drought, strategies to cope with disturbancesand climate variability;
6.Watering the city: engineering, building and maintaining urban water supply infrastructure in the face of ice and drought;
7.Irrigation schemes: infrastructural projects for agricultural irrigation in theMediterranean;
8.War and water: in-depth analyses of military campaigns conditioned by drought.
The organisation of this workshop has received financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Science,
Innovation and Universities, through the “María de Maeztu” program for Units of Excellence (MDM-2015-0552).
Important dates
April 2019: Call for papers published
31 May 2019: Deadline for contributions abstracts (abstracts 300 words plus a short biography100 words)
14 June 2019: Communication of acceptance of contributions
1 October 2019: Deadline for submitting full papers
Thursday 24 and Friday 25 October 2019: Workshop at ICTA-UAB
Contact Info: Interested
participants should send their abstracts (300 words) and a short
biography (100words) with contact details to the workshop organiser Dr.
Santiago Gorostiza (Santiago.Gorostiza@uab.cat) by
1 June, 2019. Authors will be notified of acceptance by 15 June 2019.
We ask participants to circulate a complete draft of their paper one
month before workshop.