Session: #51

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From the Levant to Iberia and north-western Africa, the medieval Mediterranean world was defined by multiple waves of conquest and regime change, accompanied by migration and variable encounters with resident populations, resulting in marked episodes of cultural transformation. These included the Arab conquests of the Levant and north Africa, the Arab-Berber conquests of Iberia and Sicily, the protracted Christian conquests of those regions, the crusader states of the Levant, their replacement by the Mamluk sultanate and later Ottoman expansion into south-eastern Europe. These resulted in a lasting frontier between the Christian and Islamic worlds, as well as a series of shifting borderlands between opposing polities where social identities became attached to religious, as well as political differences. The resulting palimpsest of cultural encounters defines the recent heritage of Mediterranean countries, elements of which have been politicised within the context of ongoing debates on European identity and migration.

The archaeological study of cultural change across the medieval Mediterranean world has intensified in recent decades, whilst environmental archaeology is increasingly used to understand these transformations at varying scales. This session, organised by the “Landscapes of (Re)Conquest” project, aims to capture the state-of-the-art from across the Mediterranean and to showcase its own results from south-western Europe. Papers are invited on new research of cultural change in the medieval Mediterranean, with the aim of publishing a special issue drawn from the contributions.

Session: #51

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