Rethinking the Mediterranean.

Intro -- Contents -- List of Maps -- List of Illustrations -- List of Tables -- List of Abbreviations -- Notes on Contributors -- 1. The Mediterranean and Ancient History -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Towards a history of the Mediterranean, 3500 BC-AD 1000 -- 3. Unity? -- 4. 'Ruralizing' ancient history -- 5. Categories, dynamic processes, causation, and avoiding conclusions -- 6. Mediterraneanism and ancient history: in favour of a wider ethnography -- THE BIG CANVAS -- 2. Practical Mediterraneanism: Excuses for Everything, from Epistemology to Eating -- 1. On the ontological persistence of a shrinking sea -- 2. Comparing the comparisons: power, authority, and classification -- 3. Stereotypical permutations of a civilizational ideal -- 4. Strategies of self-stereotyping -- 5. Mediterraneanism and the politics of humiliation -- 3. Mediterraneans -- 1. The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean Sea -- 2. The Classic Mediterranean and its sub-Mediterraneans -- 3. Neighbouring Mediterraneans: the Saharan Mediterranean Desert -- 4. The Mediterranean of the North -- 5. The Mediterranean Atlantic -- 6. A trans-oceanic Mediterranean: the Caribbean -- 7. The Japanese Mediterranean -- 8. The Indian Ocean as a Braudelian problem -- 9. Comparative Mediterraneans -- 4. Ecology and Beyond: The Mediterranean Paradigm -- 1. One or several? Zones and unity in the ancient Mediterranean -- 2. Forms of connectivity -- 3. Mediterranean connectivity: inside and outside -- ANGLES OF VISION -- 5. The Eastern Mediterranean in Early Antiquity -- 1. Introduction -- 2. The states of the eastern Mediterranean world -- 3. Political evolution in the second half of the second millennium BC -- 4. Social structure -- 5. War and diplomacy -- 6. Cultural and mercantile interactions -- 7. An eastern Mediterranean system.

6. Ritual Dynamics in the Eastern Mediterranean: Case Studies in Ancient Greece and Asia Minor -- 1. Mediterranean rituals -- 2. From meanings to functions -- 3. Rituals and cultural transfer -- 4. The elusiveness of rituals -- 5. Artificial revivals -- 6. Misleading analogies: the Daidala of Plataia and its modern exegetes -- 7. Rituals and the physical environment -- 8. The role of religious idiosyncrasies -- 9. The manifold character of ritual transfer -- 10. Contextualizing Mediterranean rituals -- 7. The East-West Orientation of Mediterranean Studies and the Meaning of North and South in Antiquity -- 8. Travel Sickness: Medicine and Mobility in the Mediterranean from Antiquity to the Renaissance -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Mobility and fixity -- 3. Travel as therapy -- 4. Regimen for travellers -- 5. Free-standing regimens -- 9. The Ancient Mediterranean: The View from the Customs House -- 1. On the usefulness of the history of taxation -- 2. Taxation and mobility -- 3. Three phases of Mediterranean evidence -- 4. Managing interdependence: the nature of the network -- 5. Progressive regression? -- 6. Athens and Rome: Mediterranean and other hegemonies -- 7. The edges of the system: conclusion -- THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE -- 10. Travel and Experience in the Mediterranean of Louis XV -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Constructing the scientific traveller-observer -- 3. The Mediterranean Sea and Enlightenment science -- 4. The voyage philosophique in the Aegean Sea -- 5. Conclusion: Chabert and Choiseul-Gouffier -- 11. The Mirage of Greek Continuity: On the Uses and Abuses of Analogy in Some Travel Narratives from the Seventeenth to the Eighteenth Century -- 1. The first wave -- 2. Spon and Wheler and their successors -- 3. The Romantic sensibility -- 4. Conclusion -- 12. Mediterranean Reception in the Americas -- 1. The Amazon.

2. Bernardo Ramos: myth and epigraphy -- 3. Epilogue -- 13. Alphabet Soup in the Mediterranean Basin: The Emergence of the Mediterranean Serial -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Chronological patterning -- 3. Where, who, and in whose language? -- 4. A good cover -- 5. Mission and agenda -- 6. Covering the Mediterranean -- LAST WORDS -- 14. Egypt and the Concept of the Mediterranean -- 15. Four Years of Corruption: A Response to Critics -- 1. Quid eis cum pelago? The response by discipline -- 2. Les auteurs ne se noient jamais dans leur Méditerraneé: theory and scope -- 3. Doughnuts in cyberspace: finding the metaphor -- 4. Falsifiability -- 5. Monstrous squid or calamari? -- 6. Doing without towns -- 7. Managing monotheisms -- 8. Render unto Caesar: in quest of narrative -- Select Bibliography -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y.

In this collection of essays, an international group of renowned scholars attempt to establish the theoretical basis for studying the ancient and medieval history of the Mediterranean Sea and the lands around it. In so doing they range far afield to other Mediterraneans, real and imaginary, as distant as Brazil and Japan. Their work is an essential tool for understanding the Mediterranean, pre-modern and modern alike.

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Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2024. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.