Roman Society Research Center

Deep Roots of the Anthropocene

Ecological diversity and Environmental Change in Premodern History

Ghent, Sint-Baafshuis, 4 December 2026

Organisers: Roman Society Research Centre (VUB - Ghent University) ; Henri Pirenne Institute for Medieval Studies (Ghent University); Research Group Human-Environment Dynamics (Ghent University); Environmental and Rural History of Urbanised Societies-research cluster (University of Antwerp); Research Group Middle Ages (KU Leuven)

Morning: Joint programme with the conference 'Bridging Boundaries. Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Environmental History of the Low Countries'

09.00 - Walk in with coffee

09.30 - Plenary Session 1: Landscape history

  • Kristof Haneca, Sjoerd van Daalen, Marta Domínguez-Delmás,, and Yardeni Vorst, How the Roman Empire Reshaped the Woodlands of Gallia Belgica and Germania Inferior: A Millennium of Dendrochronological Data
  • Roy van Beek, Cindy Quik, Harm Jan Pierik, Elizabeth L. Chamberlain, and Eva Kaptijn, Artificial Dwelling Mounds in Dutch Wetlands: Regional Archives of Human-Landscape Interactions (500 BCE-present)

10.30 - Break

11.00 - Plenary session 2: Animals

  • Anton Ervynck, Bea De Cupere, Quentin Goffette, and Wim Wouters, The (Bio)Diversity of Archaeological Animal Remains: Evaluating a Source of Information for Environmental History
  • Margreet Brandsma, Sander Govaerts, and Samuel Turvey, The Cultural and Ecological Environment of Real and Imagined Pelicans in Medieval Europe

12.00 - Lunch break

Afternoon: Interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approaches, outside the Low Countries

13.00

  • Dimitri Van Limbergen, Arboriculture in the Roman Anthropocene: reconstructing environmental histories from archaeological data
  • Mauro Rizetto, Human-animal-environment interactions in the Venetian Lagoon from Roman times to the Middle Ages: the zooarchaeological evidence

14.00 Break

14:15

  • Frits Heinrich, Stabile isotopes research on botanical remains from Greco-Roman Egypt
  • Annette Hansen, Biodiversity on premodern farmlands in the Levant and North-Africa