Session: #664

Theme & Session Format

Theme:
Mediterranean seascapes
Session format:
Session, made up of a combination of papers, max. 15 minutes each

Title & Content

Title:
Mediterranean Islands out of the Stream: Comparing Islands Across Time
Content:
Island archaeology has grown exponentially as islands are increasingly at the heart of studies of sociocultural transformations and cross-cultural interaction. During the last decades, a growing interest in early seafaring and the first occupation of islands has drawn attention to the particular roles played by islands within the Mediterranean Sea as a whole. As a result, island studies have mostly focused on early prehistory. In this session, we wish to extend the chronological scope well into the historical periods and explore the role of islands in the waxing and waning of Mediterranean connectivity.
The idea of islands as isolated places has been challenged by the postcolonial critique emphasizing connectivity and indigenous involvement within the wider framework of an archaeology of the seas. There nevertheless remains a lingering sense of islands as isolated, remote and exotic places where time passes more slowly than elsewhere.
The aims of this session are accordingly twofold. First, it explores how islands actively contributed to the forging of Mediterranean seascapes, and how particular geographical areas within islands played a fundamental role in connecting them to the mainland. The second aim is to analyze moments of change, with a special interest in periods in which islands deviated from mainstream mainland histories. With this session, we hope to contribute to the general theme of Mediterranean seascapes by providing an explicit island perspective, which could be as much maritime as focused inland. We welcome contributions from all periods and all islands across the Mediterranean.
Keywords:
islands, Mediterranean, change, diachrony
Session associated with MERC:
no
Session associated with CIfA:
no
Session associated with SAfA:
no

Organisers

Main organiser:
Research Professor Miguel Ángel Cau Ontiveros (Spain) 1,2
Co-organisers:
Professor Peter Van Dommelen (United States) 3
Dr. Catalina Mas Florit (Spain) 3
Affiliations:
1. Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats (ICREA)
2. Equip de Recerca Arqueològica i Arqueomètrica de la Universitat de Barcelona (ERAAUB)
3. Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World, Brown University