Climate variability and Germanic settlement dynamics in the Middle Danube region during the Roman Period (1st–4th Century CE)

Climatic variability inevitably impacted past societies and acted as a driver of change. The combined analyses of the archaeological record and written documentary sources, together with high-resolution climate reconstructions, remain rare. In this work, we compare evidence of change at the Germanic settlements (residential areas) of Iron Age Germanic societies in the Middle Danube region (the region of Moravia in the Czech Republic, Lower Austria and the Záhorie region in Slovakia) and reconstruct the effect of agroclimatic conditions during the first four centuries CE. Based on data from 773 residential areas with temporal identification, we demonstrate a coherent relationship between spatiotemporal changes in Germanic settlement structures and agroclimatic conditions. A nearly exponential increase in settlement structure during the 1st and half of the 2nd century CE coincided with improved agroclimatic conditions, whereas the subsequent settlement structure decline during the Late Roman Period temporally overlapped with agroclimatic deteriorations. Documented peak in cessations of residential areas in the late 2nd century CE appears unrelated to regional agroclimatic conditions and was instead caused by the Marcomannic Wars. We argue that separating periods of agroclimatic importance and insignificance is the first step towards identifying possible causal environmental drivers of settlement dynamics and societal change in the Middle Danube region.