Description
Book SynopsisCan a long-term perspective on human adaptations to climate change inform Ireland’s response to the crisis we face today? Climate and Society in Ireland is a collection of essays, commissioned by the Royal Irish Academy, that provides a multi-period, interdisciplinary perspective on one of the most important challenges currently facing humanity. Combining syntheses of existing knowledge with new insights and approaches, contributors explore the varied environmental, climatic and social changes that occurred in Ireland from early prehistory to the early 21st century. The essays in the volume engage with a diversity of pertinent themes, including the impact of climate change on the earliest human settlement of Ireland; weather-related food scarcities during medieval times that led to violence and plague outbreaks; changing representations of weather in poetry written in Ireland between 1600 and 1820; and how Ireland is now on the threshold of taking the radical steps necessary to shed its ‘climate laggard’ status and embark on the road to a post-carbon society. With contributions by Máire Ní Annracháin, Katharina Becker, David M. Brown, Lucy Collins, Lisa Coyle McClung, Bruce M.S. Campbell, Rosie Everett, Benjamin Gearey, Raymond Gillespie, Seren Griffiths, James Kelly, Francis Ludlow, Meriel McClatchie, Conor Murphy, Simon Noone, Aaron Potito, Gill Plunkett, Phil Stastney, Graeme T. Swindles, John Sweeney, Graeme Warren.
Trade Review"The authors and editors of these essays have produced an excellent compilation volume. The variety of the themes is only surpassed by the amount of research and data comparison that has been achieved in many of the chapters. I highly recommend the book and I really enjoyed dipping in and out of the variety of material it contains". -- Peter Coxon * Holocene Book Review *
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Constructing the history of climate and society in Ireland (pp. i-x) James Kelly and Tomás Ó Carragáin Climate change and hunter gatherers in Ireland: problems, potentials and pressing research questions (pp. 1-22) Graeme Warren Tracing environmental, climatic and social change in Neolithic Ireland (pp. 23-50) Meriel McClatchie and Aaron Potito A question of scale? A review of interpretations of Irish peatland archaeology in relation to Holocene environmental and climate change (pp. 51-81) Phil Stastney Siccitas magna ultra modum: examining the occurrence and societal impact of droughts in Prehistoric Ireland (pp. 83-104) Gill Plunkett, David M. Brown and Graeme T. Swindles On the brink of Armageddon? Climate change, the archaeological record and human activity across the Bronze Age–Iron Age transition in Ireland (pp. 105-128) Benjamin Gearey, Katharina Becker, Rosie Everett and Seren Griffiths Cultural change and the climate record in final prehistoric and early medieval Ireland (pp. 129-158) Lisa Coyle McClung and Gill Plunkett Climate, disease and society in late-medieval Ireland (pp. 159-252) Bruce M.S. Campbell and Francis Ludlow Climate, weather and social change in seventeenth-century Ireland (pp. 253-271) Raymond Gillespie Climate, weather and society in Ireland in the long eighteenth century: the experience of the later phases of the Little Ice Age (pp. 273-324) James Kelly ‘Nature herself seems in the vapours now’: poetry and climate change in Ireland 1600–1820 (pp. 325-347) Lucy Collins https://doi.org/10.3318/priac.2020.120.10 Seeing the natural world: Comhbhá an Dúlra (pp. 349-364) Máire Ní Annracháin Reconstruction of hydrological drought in Irish catchments (1850–2015) (pp. 365-390) Simon Noone and Conor Murphy Climate and society in modern Ireland: past and future vulnerabilities (pp. 391-409) John Sweeney
