Session: #382

Content:

Throughout history, the Mediterranean Sea was intertwined with human societies and their relations. Communication was globally enhanced as soon as coastal and island communities developed networks with each other, and emporia or hubs. The sea was crucial for leaps in the relational universe, with cultures getting in contact over wide distances, with different political and social structures. A first International Age emerged, peaking in the Late Bronze Age, during which people intensely moved and ideas, technology and objects spread. Through time, the Mediterranean Sea acted either as barrier or as facilitator of exchanges, contact, conflict and power, with warriors often changing into traders and vice versa.
The traditional excitement scholars experience over enhanced communication processes asks, however, for a proper analysis, as communication was never an even and pervasive given. Local communities made decisions as to which foreign objects adopt, adapt or reject, and how to react to connectivity. Bordering regions, but also proximate sites, sometimes show drastically different records of long distance contact. This agency and decision should be dependent on a variety of criteria: If processes of innovation and connectedness reflect the normal situation within a shared seascape, how can we explain the opposite?
The aim of this session is to measure acceptance of and resistance to outside influences within Mediterranean coastal settlements and their immediate hinterlands, with an open time range, but with a particular focus on the processes not reflecting simple commercial routes, but taking place at an intercultural level, in situations of developed connectedness.

Session: #382

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