Introducing the RiskRes Project. The Study of Historic Responses to Earthquakes in Preindustrial Europe (AD 1200-1755)

In this paper we provide an overview of the research project ‘RiskRes – Risk and resilience: exploring historic responses to earthquakes in Europe: 1200-1755’. This project investigates medieval and post-medieval disasters in pre-industrial Europe, focusing in particular on the broader study of responses adopted by historic societies in the aftermath of major seismic catastrophes. The paper is divided into four main parts. The first section presents research on natural disasters developed at the Department of Archaeology of Durham University prior to the RiskRes project. The second part lists the RiskRes main objectives and research questions. The third part details the phases of the project, leading from data collection, to identifying chronological and geographical bias, to the selection of suitable case studies and, finally, to a last phase devoted to comparative analysis. The paper ends with some closing remarks that identify topics that could lead to new research avenues in the future.