Challenging the Significance of the LALIA and the Justinianic Plague: A Reanalysis of the Archaeological Record
The Late Antique Little Ice Age (LALIA), and the Justinianic Plague, were recently suggested as the possible culprits for settlement contraction and population decline that supposedly occurred in the 6th c. CE. According to some who support this claim, these changes contributed to the weakening of this empire, which eventually led to the loss of vast territories and its defeat by the Persians and Arabs in the first half of the 7th c. CE. The assumptions that climate and plague had devastating impacts in the 6th c. CE are largely based on selected textual evidence, and archaeological evidence outside of the boundaries of the Eastern Roman Empire. As the current article will show, it seems that these assumptions are inherently incorrect as vast amounts of evidence, including archaeological survey data, settlement patterns, shipwreck analyses, pottery distribution in the Mediterranean and other material, indicate that there was no decline in the 6th c. CE. On the contrary, it is possible that there was a peak in population size in the second half of the 6th c. CE, suggesting that the LALIA and the Justinianic plague were limited in their impact.
Why do empires fall? This is one of the questions that fascinate many, both in academia and among the general public. In the search for an answer, emotions are high, and imagination can run wild. Human intervention, mostly in the form of war, is commonly attributed to the decline of empires. Up until 40 years ago, historical research was oriented to this line of thinking. However, in recent decades, new suggestions have emerged that attributed the rise and fall of empires to climate and disease.[1] Many of the suggestions focused on the decline of the Roman Empire, with Kyle Harper’s work being the most infamous of them all.[2] Some believe that the Roman-Persian war of 602–628 CE, including the 14 years of conquest of Judaea/Palaestina (modern-day Israel and the West Bank) and Egypt, and the Islamic conquest after the Battle of Yarmuk of 636 CE, should not be viewed as the sole causes for the decline of the Eastern Roman Empire.[3] The same researchers tried to claim that the Empire was already weakened in the 6th c. CE due to climatic and epidemiological disasters that contributed to the occurrence and consequences of the said wars. These calamities were the Late Antique Little Ice Age (LALIA)[4] and the Justinianic plague,[5] whose initial occurrence transpired in 541 to 544 CE,[6] and which allegedly had multiple occurrences in the 200 years that followed and supposedly caused a decline in the size of the population.
