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In this paper we summarize and supplement results to date from an ongoing case study that highlights both the physical complexities of Nile flood responses under hydroclimatic forcing wrought by explosive volcanic eruptions and the equally complex social responses to these failures. The physical response to volcanic forcing often resulted in a suppression of the agriculturally critical Nile summer flood in what is commonly, but somewhat subjectively, described as a “Nile failure.” We can now begin to more quantitatively examine the drivers and scale of Nile variability, and examine what this variability means for Egyptian history.

The landscape motif of the Irish rath, or ringfort, is closely associated with early medieval settlement in Ireland (400–1100 AD). Ringforts were circular or near-circular enclosures, typically constructed by digging a surrounding ditch, the material from which would be used to construct an adjacent earthen bank. The majority of ringfort sites feature a single ditch and bank (known as a univallate site), but double or triple banked sites are also known, and are described as bivallate and trivallate, respectively. Variations in ringfort morphology and in the physical geographical characteristics of their site location provides a valuable field record that is indicative of the diversity of socioeconomic roles played by these sites and of status of individuals and clans responsible for their construction and occupation. Ringfort locations generally represented the habitation centre of the farmstead, comprising one or more dwellings. Petal-shaped fields would surround the site. This chapter discusses a geographical information science (GIScience) and geostatistical study of ringfort locations in the Irish Midlands, utilizing data sourced from the Irish Government’s Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government archaeological site spatial database. This study also draws on archaeological and historical database records and fieldwork analysis in order to consider the relations between physical environmental context and ringfort settlement patterns.

Climate history and historical climatology are closely evolving fields that aim (1) to reconstruct past climatic conditions and (2) examine the societal impacts of climatic changes. Such research can be characterized as a multi-disciplinary STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Humanities and Mathematics) frontier that thrives under multidisciplinary collaboration. This chapter presents two case studies pertaining to each aim, linking palaeoenvironmental data from ice-cores and tree-rings with climatic and societal information preserved by the long Irish tradition of annalistic record keeping between the fifth or sixth to seventeenth centuries. The product of this recording survives today in texts known collectively as the “Irish Annals”, which provide detailed time series of extreme weather experienced in Ireland. The first case study revisits work that employs the Irish medieval record of severe cold weather together with Greenland ice core sulphate records to reveal a persistent winter-season climatic impact from explosive volcanism at Ireland’s climatically sensitive northeast Atlantic location. This result complements evidence of spring-summer (i.e., growing season) volcanic climatic impacts identified from tree-rings, and furthers our understanding of the potential impacts of the next big eruption or of geoengineering implemented via the stratospheric injection of sulphur dioxide. The second case study compares Irish annalistic evidence of violence to evidence of drought gleaned from Irish oak tree-ring growth widths. This exercise reveals suggestive linkages between extreme weather and violence, operating most obviously (but likely not solely) via the pressures of scarcity induced resource competition. This comparison also shows that medieval Irish society was not a passive victim of extreme weather, with a range of coping strategies available to restore order. Such knowledge is critical at a time when an increased risk of conflict arising from anthropogenic climatic change is regarded by many scholars and policymakers as a key security issue. Suggestions that human-induced climate change may act to catalyze contemporary or future violence and conflict remain controversial, however, with data shortages and the complexity of societal “pathways” that may connect climate to conflict presenting major research barriers. STEAM approaches that combine different methodologies and evidentiary bases to facilitate the examination of multiple historical climate parameters and a broad range of conflict typologies are thus essential to identifying the range of possible correlations between climate, violence, and conflict, and to resolving the complex pathways underlying observed correlations. Both case studies presented here illustrate how multidisciplinary STEAM approaches, well represented by climate history and historical climatology, can meaningfully inform contemporary debates by revealing how humanity has been influenced by past environments.