Ilenia Petrarulo
Doctoral researcher at the IHIST.
Ilenia works on the project ‘Climate and environmental events in Antiquity and Early Middle Ages: a contribution to the archaeology of climate change‘ under the supervision of Andrea Binsfeld
The study of climate change in the past increasingly involves the scientific community, in particular humanities, that are more and more interested in the study of the past “ecodynamics”, the relationship among climate, environment and culture.
In this frame, we can also talk about climate change archaeology, and my project aims to contribute to research in this area. I want us to understand the human response to environmental phenomena triggered by climate change events between late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages in central Europe.
The project is based on the interdisciplinarity between humanities and natural sciences because, data from numerous disciplines from archaeology to geology, from paleoclimatology to cartography, LiDAR data, dendrochronology and palynology etc., and will be collected in a database, visualised and analysed.
The last goal is to create computational models to simulate the complexity of human systems and resilience in dealing with ecological change processes. The results of these simulations can be applied to the contemporary situation to develop models and proposals for future strategies on the issue of climate change.