Volcanoes and the Climate Forcing of Carolingian Europe, A.D. 750-950

Abstract

Revolutionary advances of the natural sciences will transform our understanding of the human past. This case study supports that thesis by connecting new data arising from the last decade's scientific work in palaeoclimatology with the history of the Carolingian empire. For medievalists, it may open the door to a potent new set of insights into the total past of European civilization. For climate scientists, this study clarifies an opportunity to observe the impact on human society of scientifically established proxy measures of climatic anomalies and shows that the human evidence for the first millennium of our era is much richer than scientists generally assume. Food production was the foundation of the medieval economy, the generation and distribution of wealth. In the early-medieval world of limited storage and interregional transport, severe climatic anomalies, among other factors, could disrupt food production and supply. Particularly if they caused famines, such disruptions have long attracted historians concerned with demography (mortal ity), politics (rebellions), and, most recently, culture or mentality.1 Direct cor relation between severe climatic anomalies and historical events is often obvious, even if the details prove to be complex. For instance, in the reign of Pippin III, the severe winter of 763-64 provoked famine, and that surely explains the sus pension of the major effort by the king to conquer Aquitaine the following sum mer.2 This paper explores palaeoclimate data recovered from the Greenland Ice