Environmental change and globalization dynamics in Roman Anatolia: Stabilizing an accelerating system

Abstract

The role of the Great Acceleration in transitioning the Earth into a new system state invites questions about the acceleration mechanism itself. Here, we use socioeconomic and environmental datasets from Roman Western Anatolia (first c. BCE to seventh c. CE) to investigate the possible mechanisms of globalization-driven acceleration. After the Roman conquest, Anatolia experienced a rapid transition to profoundly anthropogenic landscapes, reaching hitherto unknown levels of agricultural production that remained stable for several centuries. At the socioeconomic level, as revealed by our application of social network analysis to the numismatic data, the growth dynamics continued, leading to ever greater integration. When international conflict in the seventh c. CE disrupted the connectivity, the anthropogenic landscapes rewilded. This dual-system behavior, critical transition followed by equilibrium in the socioecological realm and continued growth in the socioeconomic realm, suggests that the observed postacceleration stabilization necessitated differential balancing of negative and positive feedbacks in each domain.