Michael McCormick Webcast : Read the Summary

Initiative for the scientific study of the past at Harvard University

McCormick's three-year program exploits a wide range of recent advances in the natural and engineering sciences and the strengths of Harvard University to produce new data and insights into the sweeping but poorly documented historical changes of the fall of the Roman empire and the origins of medieval Europe. Intellects, methods, and labs active in science, history and archaeology who otherwise would never meet coalesce around major historical problems of the first millennium in short workshops (e.g. Life Sciences and Economic History; Climate Change), and longer research programs. Programs already underway include: isotopic studies of human bones to clarify diet, migration and economic change in the Mediterranean; ancient DNA laboratory studies in the pandemics that marked the beginning and end of the Middle Ages; ice core evidence of volcanic events and written evidence for their climate impact, 750-950 A.D.; the chemical composition of Charlemagne's coinage (LA ICP-MS); computational philology: AI and AL applications to the generation and statistical exploitation of free-access online databases of medieval Latin texts. So far the initiative has brought together archaeologists; historians; anthropologists; oceanic, atmospheric, analytical chemists; physicists; astrophysicists; computer scientists; genomics researchers; biostatisticians and molecular biologists from Belgium, Canada, France, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands,UK and the US.