This is the final in a series of five lectures on Material Environments, hosted jointly by the American Academy in Rome and the British School at Rome over the academic year 2025–26. Through five evening lectures, speakers will present new research on environments of ancient and post-Classical Rome and Italy. Changing technologies of research provide new answers to questions about the experience and effect of landscape and climate. These lectures showcase the ways in which environmental considerations recast our study of the past.

Over the past century our knowledge of the history of the Roman Empire has grown remarkably through the discovery, debate, and integration of new questions, new methods, and new evidence. While archaeology, epigraphy, papyrology, and numismatics are well-established and powerful contributors of new knowledge, the revolutionary advances marking today’s environmental, digital, and genetic investigations offer the potential—and now have begun to deliver the actuality—of much new and robust information on ancient people, their experiences, and their environments. This talk will review some of the emerging insights into this great historical subject produced by the new Science of the Human Past.

Michael McCormick is Francis Goelet Professor of Medieval History and Chair of Science of the Human Past at Harvard University. Professor McCormick will give the Patricia H. Labalme Friends of the Library Lecture.