Dr. Devi Taelman

Devi Taelman is postdoctoral researcher at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel since 2021. His main fields of interest are the economic history of the Roman world, archaeometry, human-environment interactions in Roman Antiquity, Roman settlement archaeology, landscape archaeology, and the application of geoarchaeological approaches to ancient Mediterranean landscapes.

Research summary

This idea that the Roman Empire fell victim to the Late Antique Little Ice Age is widely accepted among the general public and among scholars outside history or archaeology. In recent year, many archaeologists and historians have rejected this view as environmental determinism. With his research, Devi Taelman aims to provide a more nuanced view on this debate for Roman Italy by integrating a solid base of empirical archaeological, paleo-ecological and palaeoclimatological evidence.

Keywords

Roman archaeology; Geoarchaeology; Landscape archaeology; Roman economy; Human-environment interaction