K Harper
Biographic Data
| ID | 16623 |
|---|---|
| NAME | K Harper |
| GIVEN NAMES | K |
| FAMILY NAME | Harper |
| SIGNATURE | HARPER K |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Oklahoma |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9313-0725 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 34 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 123 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 34 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1969 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
The role of malaria, urbanism, and soil in the European Marriage Pattern of the eighteenth-century Dutch Republic
This study focuses on how the European Marriage Pattern (EMP) in the eighteenth-century Dutch Republic (here 1678–1794) was influenced by malaria's geography, taking into account urbanism, soil type, and peatland drainage. The endemic presence of Plasmodium vivax malaria, transmitted by Anopheles atroparvus mosquitoes, was closely tied to brackish wetlands created by peat extraction and polderization, particularly in low-lying coastal areas. We i…
Pathogen Paleogenetics and Late Antique Disease
The Computational Power of a Human Society
Social evolutionary theory seeks to explain increases in the scale and complexity of human societies, from origins to present. Over the course of the twentieth century, social evolutionary theory largely fell out of favor as a way of investigating human history, just when advances in complex systems science and computer science saw the emergence of powerful new conceptions of complex systems, and in particular new methods of measuring complexity.…
Historical archives from the Roman Monarchic and Republican periods show human perceptions of environment and climate change in Italy, 753–29 BCE
Historical archives for the Roman Monarchic and Republican periods (753–29 BCE) offer a highly resolved series of observations of environmental and climatic phenomena in Central Italy. This paper presents a new collection of these historical archives, gathering 319 observations across the period. We introduce the historical character of these archives and point out aspects affecting their analysis and interpretation for reconstruction of past env…
Was the Hephthalite Empire in Central Asia the Cradle of the Justinianic Plague
The origins and early diffusion of the Justinianic Plague likely involved the Hephthalite and Alkhan Huns as an essential conduit for the bacterium's dispersal from Central Asia. Written and dna evidence together support this route of transmission. The plague is an enzootic bacterial disease, and dna suggests that the animal reservoirs hosting the lineage that gave rise to the pandemic lived near the Tianshan mountains. Written sources from the R…
Les crises climatiques ont façonné l'histoire
The First Plague Pandemic in Italy
Despite great interest in the history of plague, the written sources for the First Plague Pandemic (sixth to eighth centuries) in Italy have not received focused attention. The current study lays out the written evidence in its totality and subjects it to source-critical analysis. This investigation yields a catalogue of minimally nine and maximally fourteen attested outbreaks of plague across the First Pandemic. The study identifies the source o…
Plagues upon the Earth
"The fate of Rome"
Establishing the provenance of the Nazareth Inscription
Germs, genomes, and global history in the time of Covid-19
The COVID-19 pandemic presents opportunities and challenges for historians working on the global history of health and disease. This article argues that the history of disease will benefit from interdisciplinary work that brings together historians, microbiologists, and archaeologists. Genomes are historical archives, in two complementary ways. Palaeogenomics provide direct access to genomes of the past, while phylogenetics furnish historical ins…
Roman Slavery and the Idea of “Slave Society”
A summary is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.
Integrating the natural sciences and Roman history
The Fate of Rome
Matthew J. Perry. Gender, Manumission, and the Roman Freedwoman
Moses I. Finley believed that Greece and Rome represented two of only five “genuine slave societies” in human history (Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology [1980]). Ample scholarship on world slavery in the last generation has shown this accounting to be a bit myopic, but the idea of a “slave society” has remained a useful, if crude, category. It denotes those social formations in which slavery becomes central rather than marginal, permeating the …
Christianity and Freedom
In Volume 1 of Christianity and Freedom, leading historians uncover the unappreciated role of Christianity in the development of basic human rights and freedoms from antiquity through today. These include radical notions of dignity and equality, religious freedom, liberty of conscience, limited government, consent of the governed, economic liberty, autonomous civil society, and church-state separation, as well as more recent advances in democracy…
Invisible Environmental History
This study argues that the biological environment is properly a part of environmental history. The microorganisms— bacteria, viruses, protozoa—that cause infectious disease were the principal cause of mortality in ancient societies, but the particular array of pathogens was both locally specific and unstable over time. Pathogenic microbes are ecologically sensitive, so the background of local climate, and the influence of climate variability and …
Contours of Environmental Change and Human Response in Late Antiquity
Another eyewitness to the plague described by Cyprian, with notes on the “Persecution of Decius”
In JRA 28 (2015), I published a study of the sources for the pandemic mortality event that struck the Roman Empire during the years A.D. c. 249-270. Although relatively neglected in recent historiography, this pandemic is surprisingly well attested both by contemporary witnesses and by later sources reflecting the earlier tradition. The study identified at least 6 contemporary testimonies and 6 other independent lines of transmission about the di…
A Reply to John L. Brooke’s “Malthus and the North Atlantic Oscillation”
In this continuation of his exchange with Brooke about Brooke’s big-picture model of climate change and human response, Harper argues for careful articulation of what kind of Malthusianism Brooke claims, or does not claim, for or against his model. Harper also challenges Brooke’s description of the paleoclimate known as the Roman Climate Optimum as a period dominated by a persistently positive mode of the North Atlantic Oscillation
The Environmental Fall of the Roman Empire
Global environmental history is currently being enriched by troves of new data, and new models of environmental variability and human impact. Earth scientists are rapidly expanding historians’ knowledge of the paleoclimate through the recovery and analysis of climate proxies such as ice cores, tree rings, stalagmites, and marine and lake sediments. Further, archaeologists and anthropologists are using novel techniques and methods to study the his…
People, Plagues, and Prices in the Roman World
The papyri of Roman Egypt provide some of the most important quantifiable data from a first-millennium economy. This paper builds a new dataset of wheat prices, land prices, rents, and wages over the entire period of Roman control in Egypt. Movements in both nominal and real prices over these centuries suggest periods of intensive and extensive economic growth as well as contraction. Across a timeframe that covers several severe mortality shocks,…
Pandemics and passages to late antiquity
Pandemic events are surpassingly rare in human history. Yet the period we call late antiquity could be considered the age of pandemic disease. It began and ended with the Antonine plague that erupted in the mid-160s A.D. and the Justinianic plague of the mid-6th c. Modern interest in these pandemics has waxed and waned. It was long taken for granted that these events played a major rôle in the fate of the Roman empire. In the mid-20th c., however…
Civilization, Climate, and Malthus
John Brooke's Climate Change and the Course of Global History is a significant contribution to deep history and an impressive elucidation of the intersection between environmental studies and historical sociology. Brooke's primary argument is that climate change is a "joker," a wild card incompatible with theories of deep history that are based on Malthusian theory. However, because of his limited presentation of Malthusianism and his ambiguous t…
The Sentimental Family
PUBLISHED L'enfant et la vie familiale sous l'Ancien Re ́gime, a study that helped launch social history on the study of private life. 1 Arie `s located a major transformation in the "sentimental climate" of the family in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; the new climate brought greater sensitivity toward childhood as a special stage of life, the expulsion of non-nuclear residents such as servants and lodgers from the domicile, greater so…
Climate Change during and after the Roman Empire
Growing scientific evidence from modern climate science is loaded with implications for the environmental history of the Roman Empire and its successor societies. The written and archaeological evidence, although richer than commonly realized, is unevenly distributed over time and space. A first synthesis of what the written records and multiple natural archives (multi-proxy data) indicate about climate change and variability across western Euras…
The Greek Census Inscriptions of Late Antiquity
This article reconsiders a set of Late Roman inscriptions which record the tax liabilities of dozens of landowners in terms of post-Diocletianic fiscality. The stones, from eleven cities in the Aegean and western Asia Minor, are evaluated as evidence for the social and economic history of the Late Empire, challenging Jones' fundamental study in which the inscriptions are read as a sign of structural crisis. With their non-Egyptian provenance, the…
People, Plagues, and Prices in the Roman World
The papyri of Roman Egypt provide some of the most important quantifiable data from a first-millennium economy. This paper builds a new dataset of wheat prices, land prices, rents, and wages over the entire period of Roman control in Egypt. Movements in both nominal and real prices over these centuries suggest periods of intensive and extensive economic growth as well as contraction. Across a timeframe that covers several severe mortality shocks,…
Pandemics and passages to late antiquity
Pandemic events are surpassingly rare in human history. Yet the period we call late antiquity could be considered the age of pandemic disease. It began and ended with the Antonine plague that erupted in the mid-160s A.D. and the Justinianic plague of the mid-6th c. Modern interest in these pandemics has waxed and waned. It was long taken for granted that these events played a major rôle in the fate of the Roman empire. In the mid-20th c., however…
Another eyewitness to the plague described by Cyprian, with notes on the “Persecution of Decius”
In JRA 28 (2015), I published a study of the sources for the pandemic mortality event that struck the Roman Empire during the years A.D. c. 249-270. Although relatively neglected in recent historiography, this pandemic is surprisingly well attested both by contemporary witnesses and by later sources reflecting the earlier tradition. The study identified at least 6 contemporary testimonies and 6 other independent lines of transmission about the di…
The Environmental Fall of the Roman Empire
Global environmental history is currently being enriched by troves of new data, and new models of environmental variability and human impact. Earth scientists are rapidly expanding historians’ knowledge of the paleoclimate through the recovery and analysis of climate proxies such as ice cores, tree rings, stalagmites, and marine and lake sediments. Further, archaeologists and anthropologists are using novel techniques and methods to study the his…
The First Plague Pandemic in Italy
Despite great interest in the history of plague, the written sources for the First Plague Pandemic (sixth to eighth centuries) in Italy have not received focused attention. The current study lays out the written evidence in its totality and subjects it to source-critical analysis. This investigation yields a catalogue of minimally nine and maximally fourteen attested outbreaks of plague across the First Pandemic. The study identifies the source o…
The Sentimental Family
PUBLISHED L'enfant et la vie familiale sous l'Ancien Re ́gime, a study that helped launch social history on the study of private life. 1 Arie `s located a major transformation in the "sentimental climate" of the family in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; the new climate brought greater sensitivity toward childhood as a special stage of life, the expulsion of non-nuclear residents such as servants and lodgers from the domicile, greater so…
The Sc Claudianum in the Codex Theodosianus
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Historical archives from the Roman Monarchic and Republican periods show human perceptions of environment and climate change in Italy, 753–29 BCE
Historical archives for the Roman Monarchic and Republican periods (753–29 BCE) offer a highly resolved series of observations of environmental and climatic phenomena in Central Italy. This paper presents a new collection of these historical archives, gathering 319 observations across the period. We introduce the historical character of these archives and point out aspects affecting their analysis and interpretation for reconstruction of past env…
Was the Hephthalite Empire in Central Asia the Cradle of the Justinianic Plague
The origins and early diffusion of the Justinianic Plague likely involved the Hephthalite and Alkhan Huns as an essential conduit for the bacterium's dispersal from Central Asia. Written and dna evidence together support this route of transmission. The plague is an enzootic bacterial disease, and dna suggests that the animal reservoirs hosting the lineage that gave rise to the pandemic lived near the Tianshan mountains. Written sources from the R…
Establishing the provenance of the Nazareth Inscription
Integrating the natural sciences and Roman history
Culture, Nature, and History
This article analyzes the configuration of biology, anthropology, and history over the last generation by taking the sub-field of the 'history of sexuality' as a case study. The history of sexuality developed at a particularly important site of engagement with neighboring disciplines. I argue that the concepts of nature and culture that came to prevail among historians of sexuality were deeply influenced by the debate between a particular strand …
Distance learning, virtual classrooms, and teaching pedagogy in the Internet environment
Infernal Triad
The author examines the recurring patterns in the first two books of The Faerie Queene, in Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes, showing the struggles of the heroes against the Flesh, the World and the Devil-the infernal triad inherited from the Middle Ages.In his study he stresses Milton's significant debt to Spenser
Distance learning, virtual classrooms, and teaching pedagogy in the Internet environment
The Greek Census Inscriptions of Late Antiquity
This article reconsiders a set of Late Roman inscriptions which record the tax liabilities of dozens of landowners in terms of post-Diocletianic fiscality. The stones, from eleven cities in the Aegean and western Asia Minor, are evaluated as evidence for the social and economic history of the Late Empire, challenging Jones' fundamental study in which the inscriptions are read as a sign of structural crisis. With their non-Egyptian provenance, the…
Youval Rotman, Byzantine Slavery and the Mediterranean World, Jane Marie Todd, trans. Cambridge, Mass. and London
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
The Sc Claudianum in the Codex Theodosianus
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Slavery in the Late Roman World, AD 275–425
Capitalizing on the rich historical record of late antiquity, and employing sophisticated methodologies from social and economic history, this book reinterprets the end of Roman slavery. Kyle Harper challenges traditional interpretations of a transition from antiquity to the Middle Ages, arguing instead that a deep divide runs through 'late antiquity', separating the Roman slave system from its early medieval successors. In the process, he covers…
Climate Change during and after the Roman Empire
Growing scientific evidence from modern climate science is loaded with implications for the environmental history of the Roman Empire and its successor societies. The written and archaeological evidence, although richer than commonly realized, is unevenly distributed over time and space. A first synthesis of what the written records and multiple natural archives (multi-proxy data) indicate about climate change and variability across western Euras…
From Shame to Sin
The transformation of the Roman world from polytheistic to Christian is one of the most sweeping ideological changes of premodern history. At the center was sex. Kyle Harper examines how Christianity changed the ethics of sexual behavior from shame to sin, and shows how the roots of modern sexuality are grounded in an ancient religious revolution.
Culture, Nature, and History
This article analyzes the configuration of biology, anthropology, and history over the last generation by taking the sub-field of the 'history of sexuality' as a case study. The history of sexuality developed at a particularly important site of engagement with neighboring disciplines. I argue that the concepts of nature and culture that came to prevail among historians of sexuality were deeply influenced by the debate between a particular strand …
The Sentimental Family
PUBLISHED L'enfant et la vie familiale sous l'Ancien Re ́gime, a study that helped launch social history on the study of private life. 1 Arie `s located a major transformation in the "sentimental climate" of the family in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; the new climate brought greater sensitivity toward childhood as a special stage of life, the expulsion of non-nuclear residents such as servants and lodgers from the domicile, greater so…
Pandemics and passages to late antiquity
Pandemic events are surpassingly rare in human history. Yet the period we call late antiquity could be considered the age of pandemic disease. It began and ended with the Antonine plague that erupted in the mid-160s A.D. and the Justinianic plague of the mid-6th c. Modern interest in these pandemics has waxed and waned. It was long taken for granted that these events played a major rôle in the fate of the Roman empire. In the mid-20th c., however…
Civilization, Climate, and Malthus
John Brooke's Climate Change and the Course of Global History is a significant contribution to deep history and an impressive elucidation of the intersection between environmental studies and historical sociology. Brooke's primary argument is that climate change is a "joker," a wild card incompatible with theories of deep history that are based on Malthusian theory. However, because of his limited presentation of Malthusianism and his ambiguous t…
Christianity and Freedom
In Volume 1 of Christianity and Freedom, leading historians uncover the unappreciated role of Christianity in the development of basic human rights and freedoms from antiquity through today. These include radical notions of dignity and equality, religious freedom, liberty of conscience, limited government, consent of the governed, economic liberty, autonomous civil society, and church-state separation, as well as more recent advances in democracy…
Invisible Environmental History
This study argues that the biological environment is properly a part of environmental history. The microorganisms— bacteria, viruses, protozoa—that cause infectious disease were the principal cause of mortality in ancient societies, but the particular array of pathogens was both locally specific and unstable over time. Pathogenic microbes are ecologically sensitive, so the background of local climate, and the influence of climate variability and …
Contours of Environmental Change and Human Response in Late Antiquity
Another eyewitness to the plague described by Cyprian, with notes on the “Persecution of Decius”
In JRA 28 (2015), I published a study of the sources for the pandemic mortality event that struck the Roman Empire during the years A.D. c. 249-270. Although relatively neglected in recent historiography, this pandemic is surprisingly well attested both by contemporary witnesses and by later sources reflecting the earlier tradition. The study identified at least 6 contemporary testimonies and 6 other independent lines of transmission about the di…
A Reply to John L. Brooke’s “Malthus and the North Atlantic Oscillation”
In this continuation of his exchange with Brooke about Brooke’s big-picture model of climate change and human response, Harper argues for careful articulation of what kind of Malthusianism Brooke claims, or does not claim, for or against his model. Harper also challenges Brooke’s description of the paleoclimate known as the Roman Climate Optimum as a period dominated by a persistently positive mode of the North Atlantic Oscillation
The Environmental Fall of the Roman Empire
Global environmental history is currently being enriched by troves of new data, and new models of environmental variability and human impact. Earth scientists are rapidly expanding historians’ knowledge of the paleoclimate through the recovery and analysis of climate proxies such as ice cores, tree rings, stalagmites, and marine and lake sediments. Further, archaeologists and anthropologists are using novel techniques and methods to study the his…
People, Plagues, and Prices in the Roman World
The papyri of Roman Egypt provide some of the most important quantifiable data from a first-millennium economy. This paper builds a new dataset of wheat prices, land prices, rents, and wages over the entire period of Roman control in Egypt. Movements in both nominal and real prices over these centuries suggest periods of intensive and extensive economic growth as well as contraction. Across a timeframe that covers several severe mortality shocks,…
The Fate of Rome
Matthew J. Perry. Gender, Manumission, and the Roman Freedwoman
Moses I. Finley believed that Greece and Rome represented two of only five “genuine slave societies” in human history (Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology [1980]). Ample scholarship on world slavery in the last generation has shown this accounting to be a bit myopic, but the idea of a “slave society” has remained a useful, if crude, category. It denotes those social formations in which slavery becomes central rather than marginal, permeating the …
Roman Slavery and the Idea of “Slave Society”
A summary is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.
Integrating the natural sciences and Roman history
"The fate of Rome"
Establishing the provenance of the Nazareth Inscription
History (21 works) · Ancient history (13 works) · History (11 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Geography (9 works) · Philosophy (9 works) · Archaeology (8 works) · Law (8 works) · Political science (8 works) · Yersinia bacterium, plague, ectoparasites research (8 works)