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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.
For millennia people have travelled to religious sites for worship, initiatory and leisure purposes. Today there are hundreds, if not thousands, of religious pilgrimage routes and trails around the world that are used by pilgrims as well as tourists. Indeed, many religious pilgrimage routes and trails are today used as themes by tourism marketers in an effort to promote regional economic development. An important resource for those interested in religious tourism and pilgrimage, this book is also an invaluable collection for academics and policy-makers within heritage tourism and regional development.
An exploration of life in the early medieval West, using pigs as a lens to investigate agriculture, ecology, economy, and philosophy From North Africa to the British Isles, pigs were a crucial part of agriculture and culture in the early medieval period. Jamie Kreiner examines how this ubiquitous species was integrated into early medieval ecologies and transformed the way that people thought about the world around them. In this world, even the smallest things could have far‑reaching consequences. Kreiner tracks the interlocking relationships between pigs and humans by drawing on textual and visual evidence, bioarchaeology and settlement archaeology, and mammal biology. She shows how early medieval communities bent their own lives in order to accommodate these tricky animals—and how in the process they reconfigured their agrarian regimes, their fiscal policies, and their very identities. In the end, even the pig’s own identity was transformed: by the close of the early Middle Ages, it had become a riveting metaphor for Christianity itself.
Beyond general approaches to the study of Byzantine harbour archaeology, contributions in this volume offer a representative picture of harbour activities across the historical and geographical boundaries of the Byzantine Empire, providing the basis for future comparative research on a local, regional, and supra-regional level.
In the last twenty years scholarship on late antique and early medieval Ravenna has resulted in a certain number of publications mainly focused on the fields of architecture, mosaics and archaeology. On the contrary, much less attention has been paid on labour – both manual and intellectual – as well as the structure of production and objects derived from manufacturing activities, despite the fact that Ravenna is the place which preserves the highest number of historical evidence among all centres of the late Roman Mediterranean. Its cultural heritage is vast and composite, ranging from papyri to inscriptions, from ivories to marbles, as well as luxury objects, pottery, and coins. Starting from concrete typologies of hand-manufactured goods existing in the Ravennate milieu, the book aims at exploring the multifaceted traditions of late antique and early Byzantine handicraft from the fourth to the eighth century AD. Its perspective is to pay attention more on patronage, social taste, acculturation, workers and the economic industry of production which supported the demand, circulation and distribution of artefacts, than on the artistic evaluation of the objects themselves.
Change and Resilience offers a view of the main Mediterranean islands from West to East in Late Antiquity because Mediterranean islands can contribute in fundamental ways to our understanding not only of earlier colonizations but also later periods. The volume explores specifically the time frame from the fall of the Roman empire to the Medieval period. A first group of papers covers islands and island groups in the Central and Western Mediterranean, including the Balearic Islands, Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily, and the Adriatic islands. Together, these five papers highlight several common themes across the region: local or indigenous sites were often reoccupied in Late Antiquity, the rural coun...
In thirteen contributions, Byzantium in Dialogue with the Mediterranean. History and Heritage shows that throughout the centuries of its existence, Byzantium continuously communicated with other cultures and societies on the European continent, as well as North Africa and in the East. In this volume, ‘History’ represents not only the chronological, geographical and narrative background of the historical reality of Byzantium, but it also stands for an all-inclusive scholarly approach to the Byzantine world that transcends the boundaries of traditionally separate disciplines such as history, art history or archaeology. The second notion, ‘Heritage’, refers to both material remains and immaterial traditions, and traces that have survived or have been appropriated. Contributors are Hans Bloemsma, Elena Boeck, Averil Cameron, Elsa Fernandes Cardoso, Cristian Caselli, Evangelos Chrysos, Konstantinos Chryssogelos, Penelope Mougoyianni, Daphne Penna, Marko Petrak, Matthew Savage, Daniëlle Slootjes, Karen Stock, Alex Rodriguez Suarez and Mariëtte Verhoeven.
Located in the heel of the Italian boot, the Salento region was home to a diverse population between the ninth and fifteenth centuries. Inhabitants spoke Latin, Greek, and various vernaculars, and their houses of worship served sizable congregations of Jews as well as Roman-rite and Orthodox Christians. Yet the Salentines of this period laid claim to a definable local identity that transcended linguistic and religious boundaries. The evidence of their collective culture is embedded in the traces they left behind: wall paintings and inscriptions, graffiti, carved tombstone decorations, belt fittings from graves, and other artifacts reveal a wide range of religious, civic, and domestic pra...
This book is the first general work to be published on technology in Late Antiquity. It seeks to survey aspects of the technology of the period and to respond to questions about technological continuity, stagnation and decline. The book opens with a comprehensive bibliographic essay that provides an overview of relevant literature. The main section then explores technologies in agriculture, production (metal, ceramics and glass), engineering and building. Papers draw on both archaeological and textual sources, and on analogies with medieval and early modern technologies. Reference is made not only to the periods which preceded it, but to the transition to the Early Middle Ages and to the technological heritage of Late Antiquity to the Islamic world. Several papers focus on Italy, whilst others consider North Africa, Asia Minor, and the Near-East.
This volume comprises a multidisciplinary study of Pisa’s socio-economic, cultural, and political history, art history, and archaeology at the time of the city’s greatest fame and prosperity during the transformative period of the Middle Ages.