Past Vulnerability

Felix Riede (Editor)

Description

Volcanic eruptions can affect everything--nature, wildlife, people. From the earliest times, human resilience has been tested by this most severe environmental hazard resulting in a variety of collective responses--from despair and helplessness to endurance, increased worship of the gods, and even mass migrations. Past Vulnerability breaks new ground by examining the histories of extreme environmental events, from the resent eruptions of Mount Merapi in Central Java to the prehistoric Toba supervolcanic eruption 74,000 years ago on the island of Sumatra. Experts from a broad and unconventional range of disciplines--from anthropology to literature studies and from archaeology to theology--discuss the impacts of volcanic eruptions in human history and prehistory. The book sets the scene for a 'palaeosocial volcanology' that complements and extends current approaches to volcanic hazards in the natural and social sciences by presenting historically informed and evidence-based analyses on how traditional societies dealt with these dangers--or failed to do so.

Sujets

• Science de la Terre
• History
• Histoire
• Social History

Informations

• Publié par: Aarhus University Press
• Date de parution: 31 décembre 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9788771840247
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 44 Mo

Extrait

Past Vulnerability
Volcanic eruptions and human vulnerability
in traditional societies past and presentPast Vulnerability
Volcanic eruptions and human vulnerability
in traditional societies past and present
Edited by Felix Riede
Aarhus University Press | aPast Vulnerability
© The authors and Aarhus University Press 2015
General editor: Felix Riede
Layout and typesetting by Anette Ryevad, www.ryevadgrafsk.dk
Cover design by Jørgen Sparre, www.sparregrafsk.dk
Prepress: Narayana Press, www.narayana.dk
Cover illustration: Krakatau, May 1883. © Bibliothèque nationale de France – Société de Géographie, Paris
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Pubished with the fnancial support of
The Danish Council of Independant ResearchContents
Preface 7
INTRODUCTION
Volcanic eruptions and human vulnerability in traditional societies
past and present: Towards a palaeosocial volcanology 9
By Felix Riede
Chapter 1
Between the Queen of the South Sea and the Spirit of Mount Merapi 
– political and cosmological dimensions of the Central Java earthquake in 2006 23
Jens Seeberg and Retna Siwi Padmawati
Chapter 2
Mount Etna, Sicily: Vulnerability and resilience during the pre-industrial era 39
Heather Sangster, Angus M. Duncan and David K. Chester
Chapter 3
The unknown AD 1275 stratospheric eruption:
Climatic impacts in Europe and tentative volcanic source 63
Franck Lavigne and Sébastien Guillet
Chapter 4
What happens when ‘Hider’ and ‘Screamer’ go sailing with ‘Noisy’?
Geomythological traces in Old Icelandic mythology 75
A. Mathias Valentin Nordvig
Chapter 5
Volcanoes as cultural artefacts in Iceland: Risk perception,
metaphors and categorisation in a society with no ‘before’ 89
Lisbeth H. Torfing
Chapter 6
Excavating the Fimbulwinter? Archaeology, geomythology
and the climate event(s)
of AD 536 109
Neil Price and Bo GräslundChapter 7
Islam on volcanoes: Rediscovering volcanic eruptions in the Qur’an 133
Thomas Hoffmann
Chapter 8
Coping with disasters in Antiquity and the Bible: Practical and mental strategies 151
Jan Dietrich
Chapter 9
The Santorini volcano: Volcanic hazards through time 169
Walter L. Friedrich
Chapter 10
‘The Boneless One’ and his home: The sea and its inhabitants in religious
beliefs on Crete and Thera around 1613 BC 179
Annette Højen Sørensen
Chapter 11
Can we date the Frog Princess? Volcanoes and peoples of the Pacific Northwest 191
Kevan Edinborough
Chapter 12
The days of the dry snow: Vulnerabilities and transformations
related to the Mazama ash fall on the Northern Plains 205
Gerald A. Oetelaar
Chapter 13
‘Dominant’ and ‘radical’ perspectives on material culture change
in the wake of the catastrophic Laacher See volcanic eruption
(c. 13,000 cal BP) in Northern Europe 229
Felix Riede
Chapter 14
Human vulnerability in a Middle Palaeolithic context: Response of
hunter-gatherers in India to the Toba supervolcanic eruption 74,000 years ago 257
Sacha Jones
List of contributors 279Preface
This book has been long in the making. It is the result of a conference on past vulnerability and
volcanic hazards I had the pleasure of hosting at Aarhus University in 2013. It was, I feel, a true
success in terms of interdisciplinarity: Folks from many different branches of the sciences –
human, social and natural – met and exchanged views on that topic. We had a great and fruitful time.
Following the conference, we embarked on the long road towards publication beset by periods
abroad, many other research and teaching commitments, and all too much administration. Along
the way, we have been helped by the patient people at Aarhus University Press, Leif Erik Vaag and
Sanne Lind Hansen, as well as an anonymous reviewer who provided eminently useful feedback.
There are a fair few books and special journal issues on past volcanism and human affairs on the
market. Human history is, of course, not all about volcanic eruptions; this volume stresses that in
order to understand human-volcano relationships as a special category of human-environment
relations we need to systematically and in an interdisciplinary fashion draw on many felds of
knowledge. History (including deep history) is a resource that can be used also for building
resilience. This book, I hope, will contribute not only to better understanding particular episodes of
the past, but also contribute to making environmental history work in an applied sense.
In transit, Summer 2015,

p r e f a c e | 7INTRODUCTION
Volcanic eruptions and human vulnerability
in traditional societies past and present:
Towards a palaeosocial volcanology
By Felix Riede
Abstract
Humans have a long relationship with volcanoes, volcanic eruptions and the landscapes they produce.
At times this relationship has been calamitous and human communities, societies, civilisations even have
been subject to volcanic disasters. Formally, disasters can be defined as the result of the interaction of
one or several hazards with human communities, resulting in loss of lives and/or livelihoods. This brief
introduction frames the rationale for this volume. Whilst the individual chapters in this book aptly reflect
the geological and societal specificities of the volcanic eruptions and the affected societies in question as
well as the source material and approaches that can be used to study them, the aim of this book is also
to highlight similarities and thus to facilitate comparison. In particular, this volume aims to distinguish
itself from others that address past calamities by a dual focus: On the one hand it focuses on volcanic
eruptions and their effects, and, on the other, it focuses on what these events can reveal of socio-ecological
vulnerabilities that make the affected societies susceptible to harm in the first place.
remains challenging (see Birkmann 2006; Why another book on past
2007). Vulnerability has social and economic volcanic eruptions?
or ecological dimensions and since landmark
Recent decades and years have seen a steady papers such as O’Keefe and colleagues’ (1976)
fow, even an increase perhaps, in papers and programmatic statement against the
‘naturaledited volumes on past natural disasters in ness’ of natural disasters it has been widely
general and on past volcanic eruptions and accepted that calamities are the result of the
their human impacts in particular (e.g. Cash- usually complex interactions of a given
natuman and Giordano 2008; Cooper and Sheets ral hazard with communities at risk (Wisner
2012; de Boer and Sanders 2002; Estévez 2005; et al. 2004).
Grattan and Torrence 2007; Grattan 2006;
Grayson and Sheets 1979; Oppenheimer 2011; Despite this attempt to redress the bias in our
Torrence and Grattan 2002). In these, a wel- perception of disasters as purely extrinsically
come shift in focus from primarily the docu- forced, the discourse and funding related to
rementation of eruptions and their ecological search into natural hazards, remains strongly
effects to a consideration of socio-ecological in favour of the natural sciences and
engineervulnerabilities is observable. Vulnerability is ing subjects that do tend to take their point
most fundamentally defned as the ‘potential of departure in the natural characteristics of a
for loss’ (Cutter et al. 2003, 242) of both lives given hazard (Alexander 1995; 1997). The
maand livelihoods, although precisely capturing jority of volcanologists, too, have backgrounds
vulnerability qualitatively or quantitatively in the physical sciences and this natural
weightv o l c a n i c e r u p t i o n s a n d h u m a n v u l n e r a b i l i t y | 9
< Contents t h i s p a g e i s p r o t e c t e d b y c o p y r i g h t a n d m a y n o t b e r e d i s t r i b u t e ding is also refected in the amount of space and Hinzen 2008). Disaster sociologists since
reserved for social scientifc or humanistic ele - White have focused, almost exclusively, on
ments in standard textbook treatises on volca- events of the very recent past and on
societnology, in the way social science or humanistic ies falling squarely into White’s category of
aspects are usually presented – rather more as ‘industrial’. They have, despite occasional calls
an afterthought to the physical processes – and for comparative approaches (Alexander 1997;
the at times merely cursory way in which oral Clarke 2004), eschewed generalization. The
historical, written or archaeological sources opposing trends of reductionism,
generalizaare treated. This bias is further refected in the tion and quantifcati