INTERACTION MAN-ENVIRONMENT CHANGES TRIGGEREDBY CLIMATE FLUCTUATION IN THE ROMAN PERIOD: CASE STUDY FROM SOUTHERN POLAND

INTERACTION MAN-ENVIRONMENT CHANGES TRIGGERED BY CLIMATE FLUCTUATION IN THE ROMAN PERIOD: CASE STUDY FROM SOUTHERN POLAND

Halina Dobrzańska1
Tomasz Kalicki2

1 Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland

2 Jan Kochanowski University in Kielce, Faculty of Sciences and Natural Sciences, Institute of Geography and Environmental Sciences, Department of Geomorphology and Geoarchaeology, Poland

DOI:

UDC: [551.583:39]:94(438)”652”

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Published: August 2026

ORICD:
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7831-227X 
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8421-5660 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Keywords: geoarchaeology, Roman period, southern Poland, climate-man interaction

Abstract

This article, using selected examples from various regions of southern Poland, including the Kraków region and the Nida Valley in Lesser Poland, attempts to determine the impact and nature of climate change and the accompanying events between the 3rd century BC and the 5th century AD on human life. Climatic fluctuations in Europe and local conditions played an important role in the settlement processes and the activities of the Przeworsk culture (PC) community. Very clear, multidirectional impact of climatic changes is documented by examples of detailed studies. The PC ecumene was not uniform, which caused regional differentiation of human impact, recorded in settlement forms and sediments. It consisted of “centres” of non-agricultural production, i.e. metallurgical in the Świętokrzyskie region and pottery centres in the Vistula valley, east of Kraków, relatively densely populated and significantly affecting the natural environment. Between these centres, occupying a relatively small area, there were regions used for agriculture, constituting a mosaic of arable land, pastures and forest areas, which resulted in low intensity of erosion-accumulation processes. Regardless of the large migration movements of the PC population to the south, the heterogeneity of the ecumene could also have caused local relocations to both production centres (equivalent to contemporary “village→city” migrations). This may be illustrated by the decrease in the population density of some agricultural areas after the Roman Warm Period (after 150 AD), for example, in the Nida valley and its left-bank, karst part of the catchment.

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