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Evidence from the Archives of Societies: Documentary Evidence—Overview

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Abstract

Human archives contain three kinds of information: instrumental measurements, narrative data providing direct weather information, and observations of “proxies” providing indirect climate data. This documentary-based proxy evidence includes both plant and ice-phenological observations as well as historical hydrology, or observations of hydrological conditions and extremes before the creation of national hydrological networks. We can further classify these archives by their authors and circumstances of production. This chapter distinguishes between documents produced by members of official bodies (institutional sources) and those produced by individual amateur observers (personal sources), although some source types may belong to both categories. To assess and interpret these sources, researchers need to know who produced them, why, and how they recorded meteorological conditions and their human consequences.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Pfister, 1984; Brázdil et al., 2005, 2010a, 2010b; Ge, 2008.

  2. 2.

    Brázdil and Kundzewicz, 2006.

  3. 3.

    Bell and Ogilvie, 1978.

  4. 4.

    Schwemer, 2001; Seidlmayer, 2001. See also Chaps. 17 and 19.

  5. 5.

    Wetter and Pfister, 2011.

  6. 6.

    Pribyl et al., 2012.

  7. 7.

    Wetter and Pfister, 2011; Možný et al., 2012.

  8. 8.

    Kiss et al., 2011.

  9. 9.

    Leijonhufvud et al., 2010; Tarand and Nordli, 2001.

  10. 10.

    Brázdil and Kotyza, 2000.

  11. 11.

    Rohr, 2013.

  12. 12.

    Grove, 1995.

  13. 13.

    Wheeler and Pfister, 2009; Wheeler et al., 2006, 2010.

  14. 14.

    Ge, 2008.

  15. 15.

    Barriendos, 2005.

  16. 16.

    Adamson, 2015.

  17. 17.

    Quoted in Janković, 2001, 154.

  18. 18.

    Pfister et al., 1999; Adamson, 2015.

  19. 19.

    Litzenburger and Le Roy Ladurie, 2015.

  20. 20.

    Wetter et al., 2014.

  21. 21.

    Janković, 2001, 34.

  22. 22.

    Prieto et al., 2001.

  23. 23.

    E.g., Franssen and Scherrer, 2008.

  24. 24.

    Brázdil et al., 2010a, 2010b.

  25. 25.

    Nesje et al., 2008; Zumbühl et al., 2008; Holzhauser, 2010.

  26. 26.

    Behringer, 2010, 139–40.

  27. 27.

    Janković, 2001, 34.

  28. 28.

    Janković, 2001, 122.

  29. 29.

    Wegmann, 2005.

  30. 30.

    Nordli, 2001.

  31. 31.

    Pfister, 2011.

  32. 32.

    Richards, 1999.

  33. 33.

    Rohr, 2015.

  34. 34.

    E.g., Grotefend, 1997; Cheney and Jones, 2000.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of History, Oeschger Centre for Climate Change, Bern, Switzerland

    Christian Pfister

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  1. Christian Pfister
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA

    Sam White

  2. Institute of History, Oeschger Centre for Climate Change, Bern, Switzerland

    Christian Pfister

  3. Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany

    Franz Mauelshagen

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Pfister, C. (2018). Evidence from the Archives of Societies: Documentary Evidence—Overview. In: White, S., Pfister, C., Mauelshagen, F. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Climate History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-43020-5_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-43020-5_4

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