Content:
Archaeologists who focus on the Islamic pasts in Europe, Asia, Africa, and beyond are keenly aware of the need to examine and understand those pasts in the context of the wider (globalized) worlds and of interconnected activities, communities, and material cultures. For archaeological researchers of Islam, the paradigm of a simple dichotomy between a single core and periphery, between Muslims and non-Muslims, between urban and rural landscapes, has been shifting toward new perspectives which acknowledge the existence of multiple centers, networks, activities, and actors with multiple voices, identities, and modes of life—all of which composed the fabric of the Islamic culture as a whole over time. This session invites contributions which explore the processes involved in integration or re-integration and connectivity (as well as disjunctures), between and within Islamic culture/s across Afro-Eurasia. We welcome a wide range of approaches: from global, comparative, transregional, to local case studies, and studies within Islamic communities, including intersectional identities based on the politics of class, gender, subsistence, diasporas or minority status. We are also interested in material studies and landscapes which contributed to re/integration, connectivity, de/territorialization, conflict, and transition in Islamic cultures over time. For instance, how boundaries were negotiated, constructed, reconstructed, and eliminated; how materials were assembled, reassembled, exchanged, and reused; and how landscapes were created, re-appropriated, reclaimed, and re-integrated, contributing to the intrinsic interconnectedness of the Islamic world.
Keywords:
Archaeology of Islam, Cultural Interractions and Networks, Centers/Peripheries Reintegration, Islam and Intersectional Identities, Afro-Eurasia, Islamic Material Cultures and Landscapes