A recent surge of interest in network approaches to the study of the ancient world has enabled scholars of the Roman Empire to move beyond traditional narratives of domination, resistance, integration and fragmentation. This relational turn has not only offers tools to identify, map, visualize and, in some cases, even quantify interaction based on a variety of ancient source material, but also provides a terminology to deal with the everyday ties of power, trade, and ideology that operated within, below, and beyond the superstructure of imperial rule. Thirteen contributions employ a range of quantitative, qualitative and descriptive network approaches in order to provide new perspectives on trade, communication, administration, technology, religion and municipal life in the Roman Near East and adjacent regions.

This book, first published in 1991, is a full study of early Hellenistic coinage. It provides a history of the coinage of Alexander the Great and his successors in the Near and Middle East, and of the cities of Greece and Asia Minor. It is fully illustrated and provides a detailed and authoritative guide to the coinage of the period.

The Handbook of Ancient Afro-Eurasian Economies offers in three volumes the first comprehensive discussion of economic development in the empires of the Afro-Eurasian world region to elucidate the conditions under which large quantities of goods and people moved across continents and between empires. Volume 3: Frontier-Zone Processes and Transimperial Exchange analyzes frontier zones as particular landscapes of encounter, economic development, and transimperial network formation. The chapters offer problematizing approaches to frontier zone processes as part of and in between empires, with the goal of better understanding how and why goods and resources moved across the Afro-Eurasian region. Key frontiers in mountains and steppes, along coasts, rivers, and deserts are investigated in depth, demonstrating how local landscapes, politics, and pathways explain network practices and participation in long-distance trade. The chapters seek to retrieve local knowledge ignored in popular Silk Road models and to show the potential of frontier-zone research for understanding the Afro-Eurasian region as a connected space.

In Sophene, Gordyene, and Adiabene, M. Marciak offers the first-ever comprehensive study of the history and culture of these three little-known countries of Northern Mesopotamia (3rd century BCE – 7th century CE). The book gives an overview of the historical geography, material culture, and political history of each of these countries. Furthermore, the summary offers a regional perspective by describing the history of this area as a subject of the political and cultural competition of great powers. This book answers both a recent growth of interest in ancient Mesopotamia as the frontier area, as well as the urgent need for documentation of the cultural heritage of a region that has recently become subject to the destructive influence of sectarian violence.