Theme:
1. Networks, networking, communication: archaeology of interactions
Session format:
Regular session
Title:
Multiscalar Approaches to Interaction the Mediterranean: Shedding Light on Local and Regional Mobility
Content:
According to Horden and Purcell, “the paradox of the Mediterranean is that the all-too-apparent fragmentation can potentially unite the sea and its coastlands in a way far exceeding anything predictable of a continent.” In the Late Bronze Age (LBA), the centrality of the sea to communication, trade and mobility connected distant lands and cultures from the Levant to Crete, Egypt, mainland Greece and as far as southern Italy and Sardinia. These LBA trade networks were likely foundational to later maritime expansion exemplified through Phoenician trade networks, and Greek colonization. However, such an emphasis on long distance interaction has disregarded the movement of people and goods at a range of other scales. The connections between local and regional communities likely formed the backbone of larger social and economic networks visible in patterns of the archaeological record.
The aim of this session is to consider connectivity at a range of other scales, for example: locally, between people and objects; regionally, between various communities; and trans-regionally, between larger regional centres. Such local and regional interactions were likely fundamental in the spread and incorporation of technology, ceramics and/or cultural traditions that in turn shaped how we study, approach and understand cultural transmission, interaction and connectivity from the surviving archaeological evidence.
We welcome papers that deal with interaction in and around the Mediterranean and especially encourage papers that take a multi-scalar and/or diachronic approach from a variety of methodological and theoretical perspectives. Approaches may consider, for example, novel methodological applications to explorations of interaction, connectivity, trade, and exchange; micro and meso interactions in archaeology; collection, integration and analysis of large archaeological datasets; application of network science methods to archaeological questions; interdisciplinary approaches to the question of mobility, trade, and exchange from the prehistoric to historic periods; the application of statistical modelling in culture-contact scenarios and in discourses surrounding the creation and maintenance of identities; diachronic and/or theoretical explorations of urbanization, localization, and globalization(s).
Keywords:
networks, interaction, multiscalarity, colonization, modelling, globalization
Session associated with MERC:
no
Session associated with CIfA:
no
Session associated with SAfA:
no
Session associated with CAA:
no
Session associated with DGUF:
no
Session associated with other:
Main organiser:
Paula Gheorghiade (Canada) 1
Co-organisers:
Emma Buckingham (United States) 2
Affiliations:
1. University of Toronto
2. University of Missouri
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