Disaster and Human Dependency in Late Antiquity

As part of the BCDSS' Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture Series, Kristina Sessa from the Ohio State University in USA gave a lecture on Disaster and Human Dependency in Late Antiquity
The late Roman Empire (ca. 250-700 CE) faced numerous environmental disasters-earthquakes, tsunamis, epidemics, and climate shifts causing floods or droughts-alongside large-scale warfare unprecedented in earlier generations. While such events are often cited as causes of the Empire's decline, this presentation takes a different approach. Instead of a grand narrative about what disasters "did" to the Empire, it focuses on how late Romans experienced these events in diverse environmental contexts. Using various evidence, it explores how disasters reshaped human relationships, strengthened or severed social networks, and created new dependencies through captivity, flight, or displacement. Lastly, it examines how these outcomes were influenced by existing resources and the rise of the ransom market in Late Antiquity.
Kristina Sessa (BA, Princeton University and PhD University of California at Berkeley) is a cultural historian of the Late Roman Empire, whose past work has explored topics like Roman episcopal authority, the domestic sphere and daily life. Her recent project on natural and anthropogenic disasters has moved her into the field of environmental history; she is particularly interested in the challenges of studying cultural and social responses to the physical world. She is presently Professor of History at The Ohio State
University in Columbus, Ohio, and the co-editor-in-chief of Studies in Late Antiquity