A spate of archaeological, historical and scientific publications have recently argued that the dust veil from a volcanic eruption (or series of eruptions) caused climatic change, which ‘forced’ significant historical transformations in the middle of the sixth century AD. In this paper, I situate this phenomenon within a more general return to environmental determinism in archaeological explanation, a return which itself needs to be understood in the context both of contemporary fears about the devastation to be unleashed by the climatic change we have made, and of the rise of precise measurement in environmental and archaeological science. I do not doubt the reality of the climatic change reconstructed for AD536/546 but, given the coarseness of the dating of the historical transformations, I do question the causal connections drawn between the former and the latter. I suggest that for many archaeologists, the AD536 event (and similar phenomena) functions much as written texts once did – as both the framework for analysis and as the explanation of historical process.

中文翻译：

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AD536 - 回归自然？

最近，大量考古、历史和科学出版物认为，火山喷发（或一系列火山喷发）的尘埃面纱导致了气候变化，这“迫使”了公元 6 世纪中叶的重大历史转变。在本文中，我将这一现象置于考古解释中对环境决定论的更普遍回归中，这种回归本身需要在当代对我们所做的气候变化所造成的破坏的恐惧和环境和考古科学中精确测量的兴起。我不怀疑为 AD536/546 重建的气候变化的现实，但是，鉴于历史变化的年代测定的粗糙，我确实质疑前者和后者之间的因果关系。我认为，对于许多考古学家来说，AD536 事件（和类似现象）的功能与以前的书面文本非常相似——既是分析的框架，也是对历史过程的解释。