This book uses network ideas to explore how the sea connected communities across the ancient Mediterranean. We look at the complexity of cultural interaction, and the diverse modes of maritime mobility through which people and objects moved. It will be of interest to Mediterranean specialists, ancient historians, and maritime archaeologists.

In this book, Thomas F. Tartaron presents a new and original reassessment of the maritime world of the Mycenaean Greeks of the Late Bronze Age. By all accounts a seafaring people, they enjoyed maritime connections with peoples as distant as Egypt and Sicily. These long-distance relations have been celebrated and much studied; by contrast, the vibrant worlds of local maritime interaction and exploitation of the sea have been virtually ignored. Dr Tartaron argues that local maritime networks, in the form of 'coastscapes' and 'small worlds', are far more representative of the true fabric of Mycenaean life. He offers a complete template of conceptual and methodological tools for recovering small worlds and the communities that inhabited them. Combining archaeological, geoarchaeological and anthropological approaches with ancient texts and network theory, he demonstrates the application of this scheme in several case studies. This book presents new perspectives and challenges for all archaeologists with interests in maritime connectivity.

Drawing together maritime landscape studies and network analysis, this book offers an archaeological exploration of seaborne economy and connectivity across the Roman eastern Mediterranean, where the material record of shipwrecks and ports reveals multiple evolving regional and interregional systems of interaction.

This volume brings together scholars of Mediterranean archaeology, ancient history, and complexity science to advance theoretical approaches and analytical tools for studying maritime connectivity. For the coast-hugging populations of the ancient Mediterranean, mobility and exchange depended on a distinct environment and technological parameters that created diverse challenges and opportunities, making the modeling of maritime interaction a paramount concern for understanding cultural interaction more generally. Network-inspired metaphors have long been employed in discussions of this interaction, but increasing theoretical sophistication and advances in formal network analysis now offer opportunities to refine and test the dominant paradigm of connectivity. Extending from prehistory into the Byzantine period, the case studies here reveal the potential of such network approaches. Collectively they explore the social, economic, religious, and political structures that guided Mediterranean interaction across maritime space.

This is the first detailed and comprehensive study of the shipsheds which were a defining symbol of naval power in the ancient Mediterranean.

With contributions from scholars from around the world, this volume builds upon the American Academy in Rome's first volume on Rome's maritime life, "The Seaborne Commerce of Ancient Rome: Studies in Archaeology and History".

Recently, complex interpretations of socio-cultural change in the ancientMediterranean world have emerged that challenge earlier models. Influenced bytoday’s hyper-connected age, scholars no longer perceive the Mediterranean as astatic place where “Greco-Roman” culture was dominant, but rather see it as adynamic and connected sea where fragmentation and uncertainty, along with mobilityand networking, were the norm. Hence, a current theoretical approach to studyingancient culture has been that of globalization. Certain eras of Mediterranean history (e.g., the Roman empire) known for their increased connectivity have thus beenanalyzed from a globalized perspective that examines rhizomal networking, culturaldiversity, and multiple processes of social change. Archaeology has proven a usefuldiscipline for investigating ancient “globalization” because of its recent focus on howidentity is expressed through material culture negotiated between both local andglobal influences when levels of connectivity are altered. One form of identity that has been inadequately explored in relation to globalizationtheory is insularity. Insularity, or the socially recognized differences expressed bypeople living on islands, is a form of self-identification created within a particularspace and time. Insularity, as a unique social identity affected by “global” forces,should be viewed as an important research paradigm for archaeologies concerned with re-examining cultural change. The purpose of this volume is to explore how comparative archaeologies of insularitycan contribute to discourse on ancient Mediterranean “globalization.” The volume’s theme stems from a colloquium session that was chaired by the volume’s co-editors atthe Annual Meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America in January 2017. Given the current state of the field for globalization studies in Mediterranean archaeology,this volume aims to bring together for the first time archaeologists working ondifferent islands and a range of material culture types to examine diachronically how Mediterranean insularities changed during eras when connectivity increased, such asthe Late Bronze Age, the era of Greek and Phoenician colonization, the Classicalperiod, and during the High and Late Roman imperial eras. Each chapter aims tosituate a specific island or island group within the context of the globalizing forces and networks that conditioned a particular period, and utilizes archaeological material toreveal how islanders shaped their insular identities, or notions of insularity, at thenexus of local and global influences.

Maritime transport is one of the most ancient supports to human interactions across history and it still supports more than 90% of world trade volumes today. The changing connectivity of maritime networks is of crucial importance to port, transport, and economic development and planning. The way ports, terminals, but also cities, regions and countries, are connected with each other through maritime flows is not well-known and difficult to represent and measure, even for the transport actors themselves. There is a strong, urgent need for reviewing the relevant theories, concepts, methods, and sources that can be mobilized for the analysis of maritime networks. With contributions from reputable scholars from all over the world, this book investigates the analysis of maritime flows and networks from diverse disciplinary angles going across archaeology, history, geography, regional science, economics, mathematics, physics, and computer sciences. Based on a vast array of methods, such as Geographical Information Systems (GIS), spatial analysis, complex networks, modelling, and simulation, it addresses several crucial issues related with port hierarchy; route density; modal interdependency; network robustness and vulnerability; traffic concentration and seasonality; technological change and urban/regional economic development. This book examines new evidence about how socio-economic trends are reflected (but also influenced) by maritime flows and networks, and about the way this knowledge can support and enhance decision-making in relation to the development of ports, supply chains, and transport networks in general. This book is an ideal companion to anyone interested in the network analysis of transport systems and economic systems in general, as well as the effective ways to analyse large datasets to answer complex issues in transportation and socio-economic development.

This volume brings together for the first time a collection of twelve articles written both jointly and individually by Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell as they have participated in the debates generated by their major work, The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History (2000). One theme in those debates has been how a comprehensive Mediterranean history can be written: how an approach to Mediterranean history by way of its ecologies and the communications between them can be joined up with more mainstream forms of enquiry – cultural, social, economic, and political, with their specific chronologies and turning points. The second theme raises the question of how Mediterranean history can be fitted into a larger, indeed global history. It concerns the definition of the Mediterranean in space, the way to characterise its frontiers, and the relations between the region so defined and the other large spaces, many of them oceans, to which historians have increasingly turned for novel disciplinary-cum-geographical units of study. A volume collecting the two authors’ studies on both these themes, as well as their reply to critics of The Corrupting Sea, should prove invaluable to students and scholars from a number of disciplines: ancient, medieval and early modern history, archaeology, and social anthropology. (CS1083).