Here is the video of a lecture I gave in October of 2016 titled “Nature Did It: Romans, Ecology, and the Global History of Infectious Disease.” The lecture was sponsored by the Initiative for the Science of the Human Past at Harvard University. In AD 165, the Roman Empire and its neighbors were struck by…

Papyri from Egypt provide extraordinary information about life in the ancient world. In a new study, I assemble a large database of Wheat Prices, Land Prices, Wages, and Rents from Roman Egypt over six and a half centuries, ca. AD 1-650. The article appears as “People, Plagues, and Prices in the Roman World: The Evidence…

  In the 2015 issue of the Journal of Roman Archaeology, I published a study of the much neglected Plague of Cyprian, a pandemic caused by an unknown disease that raged in the Roman Empire in the AD 250s and 260s. (The Atlantic had some great coverage of my article here, and I just published…

It was very exciting to read this excellent summary of my recent work in The Atlantic. Caroline Wazer does a great job of reporting on my study of one of the three main pandemic events that struck the Roman Empire, a neglected mortality event known as the Plague of Cyprian (ca. AD 249-270). The article…

  Twenty of the most iconic images of western civilization are making their American debut and decided it should be in Norman, OK! Some of the highlights of the Hall of Emperors (including Trajan, Marcus, Helena, and others!) are on display at OU. OU is extraordinarily lucky to be collaborating with ENEL Green Power, the…

For Spring Break Michelle and I were able to sneak away to England for a quick trip, hitting Little Gidding (above), Burnt Norton (below), and East Coker (bottom), where I got to meet the remains of TS Eliot.