Mediterranean Connections focuses on the origin and development of maritime transport containers from the Early Bronze through early Iron Age periods (ca. 3200–700 BC). Analysis of this category of objects broadens our understanding of ancient Mediterranean interregional connections, including the role that shipwrecks, seafaring, and coastal communities played in interaction and exchange. These containers have often been the subject of specific and detailed pottery studies, but have seldom been examined in the context of connectivity and trade in the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean. This broad study: considers the likely origins of these types of vessels; traces their development and spread throughout the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean as archetypal organic bulk cargo containers; discusses the wider impact on Mediterranean connections, transport and trade over a period of 2,500 years covering the Bronze and early Iron Ages. Classical and Near Eastern archaeologists and historians, as well as maritime archaeologists, will find this extensively researched volume an important addition to their library.

Material Connections eschews outdated theory, tainted by colonialist attitudes, and develops a new cultural and historical understanding of how factors such as mobility, materiality, conflict and co-presence impacted on the formation of identity in the ancient Mediterranean. Fighting against ‘hyper-specialisation’ within the subject area, it explores the multiple ways that material culture was used to establish, maintain and alter identities, especially during periods of transition, culture encounter and change. A new perspective is adopted, one that perceives the use of material culture by prehistoric and historic Mediterranean peoples in formulating and changing their identities. It considers how objects and social identities are entangled in various cultural encounters and interconnections. The movement of people as well as objects has always stood at the heart of attempts to understand the courses and process of human history. The Mediterranean offers a wealth of such information and Material Connections, expanding on this base, offers a dynamic, new subject of enquiry – the social identify of prehistoric and historic Mediterranean people – and considers how migration, colonial encounters, and connectivity or insularity influence social identities. The volume includes a series of innovative, closely related case studies that examine the contacts amongst various Mediterranean islands – Sardinia, Corsica, Sicily, Crete, Cyprus, the Balearics – and the nearby shores of Italy, Greece, North Africa, Spain and the Levant to explore the social and cultural impact of migratory, colonial and exchange encounters. Material Connections forges a new path in understanding the material culture of the Mediterranean and will be essential for those wishing to develop their understanding of material culture and identity in the Mediterranean.

Mediterranean Connections focuses on the origin and development of maritime transport containers from the Early Bronze through early Iron Age periods (ca. 3200–700 BC). Analysis of this category of objects broadens our understanding of ancient Mediterranean interregional connections, including the role that shipwrecks, seafaring, and coastal communities played in interaction and exchange. These containers have often been the subject of specific and detailed pottery studies, but have seldom been examined in the context of connectivity and trade in the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean. This broad study: considers the likely origins of these types of vessels; traces their development and spread throughout the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean as archetypal organic bulk cargo containers; discusses the wider impact on Mediterranean connections, transport and trade over a period of 2,500 years covering the Bronze and early Iron Ages. Classical and Near Eastern archaeologists and historians, as well as maritime archaeologists, will find this extensively researched volume an important addition to their library.

Mediterranean Connections focuses on the origin and development of maritime transport containers from the Early Bronze through early Iron Age periods (ca. 3200-700 BC). Analysis of this category of objects broadens our understanding of ancient Mediterranean interregional connections, including the role that shipwrecks, seafaring, and coastal communities played in interaction and exchange. These containers have often been the subject of specific and detailed pottery studies, but have seldom been examined in the context of connectivity and trade in the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean. This broad study: considers the likely origins of these types of vessels; traces their development and spread throughout the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean as archetypal organic bulk cargo containers; discusses the wider impact on Mediterranean connections, transport and trade over a period of 2,500 years covering the Bronze and early Iron Ages. Classical and Near Eastern archaeologists and historians, as well as maritime archaeologists, will find this extensively researched volume an important addition to their library.

Material Connections eschews outdated theory, tainted by colonialist attitudes, and develops a new cultural and historical understanding of how factors such as mobility, materiality, conflict and co-presence impacted on the formation of identity in the ancient Mediterranean. Fighting against ‘hyper-specialisation’ within the subject area, it explores the multiple ways that material culture was used to establish, maintain and alter identities, especially during periods of transition, culture encounter and change. A new perspective is adopted, one that perceives the use of material culture by prehistoric and historic Mediterranean peoples in formulating and changing their identities. It considers how objects and social identities are entangled in various cultural encounters and interconnections. The movement of people as well as objects has always stood at the heart of attempts to understand the courses and process of human history. The Mediterranean offers a wealth of such information and Material Connections, expanding on this base, offers a dynamic, new subject of enquiry – the social identify of prehistoric and historic Mediterranean people – and considers how migration, colonial encounters, and connectivity or insularity influence social identities. The volume includes a series of innovative, closely related case studies that examine the contacts amongst various Mediterranean islands – Sardinia, Corsica, Sicily, Crete, Cyprus, the Balearics – and the nearby shores of Italy, Greece, North Africa, Spain and the Levant to explore the social and cultural impact of migratory, colonial and exchange encounters. Material Connections forges a new path in understanding the material culture of the Mediterranean and will be essential for those wishing to develop their understanding of material culture and identity in the Mediterranean.

The present publication constitutes the Proceedings of Session 7 of the 'Creation of landscapes VI' workshop, hosted by the CAU Kiel in 2019. The session was entitled 'Mediterranean Connections - how the sea links people and transforms identities'. With our focus on the linkage of people, this volume can be understood as a contribution to recent network research. But network research, especially when employed in the humanities, is often looked at with scepticism, not to say mistrust: Isn't this just a game with numbers? Does it really relate to the type of data we are used to in our research, to poems, sherds or seal impressions? Can it say anything at all about... life? In fact, the various articles of this volume are not restricted to the strict technical approach of classical network research. Our session on Mediterranean networks started from the idea that for the inhabitants of this relatively integrated region, the sea evidently influenced their lives and their thinking in a significant way. In fact, it was the sea that provided the medium for such integration on various levels. The substantial body of data produced by long-standing research in diverse disciplines makes it possible to chart the emergence of ancient perceptions of distance and movement, connectivity and identities. This approach allows us to observe ancient awareness of the role of the sea in these processes. It also allows us to connect across academic boundaries and build a network of disciplines for a much more cohesive picture of past life.

Until today, anthropological studies of locality have taken primary interest in local subjects leading local lives in local communities. Through a shift of conceptual emphasis from locality to location, the present volume departs from previous preoccupations with identity and belonging. Instead, Locating the Mediterranean brings together ethnographic examinations of processes that make locations and render them meaningful. In doing so, it stimulates debates on the interplay between location and region-making in history as well as anthropology. The volume’s deeply empirical contributions illustrate how historical, material, legal, religious, economic, political, and social connections and separations shape the experience of being located in the geographical space commonly known as the Mediterranean region. Drawing from research in Melilla, Lampedusa, Istanbul, Nefpaktos/Lepanto, Tunisia, Beirut, Marseille, and elsewhere, the volume articulates location through the overlapping and incorporation of multiple social and historical processes. Individual contributions are linked by the pursuit to rethink the conceptual frames deployed to study the Mediterranean region. Together, the volume’s chapters challenge strict geopolitical renderings of Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa and suggest how the ‘Mediterranean’ can function as a meaningful anthropological and historical category if the notion of ‘location’ is reinvigorated and conceptualised anew.