The Classical World

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Mitchell
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Western Mediterranean ◽  
Indigenous Populations ◽  
Julius Caesar ◽  
Magna Graecia ◽  
Classical World ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
City State

Donkeys are the quintessential Mediterranean animal. This chapter explores the first two millennia and more of that association. It starts with the Bronze Age societies of the Aegean, but principally emphasizes the donkey’s contribution to the Classical world of the Greeks and Romans, a topic richly informed by literary, as well as archaeological, evidence. Summarizing that contribution, Mark Griffith noted that ‘Without them there would have been no food for the table or fuel for the fire; nor would the workshops, markets, and retail stores have been able to conduct their business’, while the Roman writer and politician Cicero simply observed that it would be unduly tedious to enumerate their services. Around 4,000 years ago urban, state-organized societies centred on large, multiroom ‘palaces’ were already active on the island of Crete. By the mid-second millennium bc similar societies had emerged on the Greek mainland in the form of the Mycenaean kingdoms. Bronze Age societies further west, however, were organized at a less complex level and did not use writing. The same holds true of Greece itself once Mycenaean civilization collapsed: only after 800 BC did the material culture and city-state political systems characteristic of the Classical period emerge. Without discussing the latter’s archaeology or history in detail, it is worth remembering that the Classical Greek world was far more extensive than the modern country, a result of early settlement of the west coast of Turkey, followed by large-scale migration into southern Italy and Sicily (‘Magna Graecia’ or ‘Greater Greece’) and smaller scale colonization elsewhere along the shores of the Mediterranean and Black Sea. Greeks—and the Phoenician merchants who preceded them—were attracted into the western Mediterranean by opportunities for trade as much as settlement. Of the region’s indigenous populations Italy’s Etruscans were among the first to engage with them, undergoing a rapid process of urbanization and increasing political and economic complexity from about 800 BC. On the Etruscans’ southern periphery emerged Rome. Through luck, strategy, and a geographically central location, by the third century BC it dominated the Italian Peninsula. Moreover, following wars with Carthage, an originally Phoenician city in Tunisia, and with the Macedonian kings who succeeded Alexander the Great, its sway extended across the whole of the Mediterranean by the time Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC.

Archaeology and Material Culture of Phoenicia and the Phoenicians

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gunnar Lehmann
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Western Mediterranean ◽  
Specific Pattern ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Economic Activities ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
The Mediterranean

The Phoenicians are the population of ancient Lebanon during the 1st millennium bce. However, Phoenician settlement was also located on the coast of modern Syria and Israel. The Phoenicians were not immigrants and developed out of the local Bronze Age populations of the 2nd millennium bce. Some scholars do not distinguish the Late Bronze Age (1550–1150 bce) city-states of Lebanon from those of the Phoenicians in the Iron Age of the 1st millennium bce. Rather than defining “Phoenicia” with ethnic features, the approach chosen here emphasizes aspects of the political economy. With the sociopolitical changes at the end of the Late Bronze Age, new communities emerged with a specific pattern of social and political organization and economic activities that increasingly included “private” entrepreneurial initiatives. With these developments, a new form of Levantine city-state emerged from previous Bronze Age formations. Another specific feature of the Phoenician phenomenon is the development of an alphabetic writing that had significant influence on ancient scripts of the 1st millennium bce, such as Hebrew, Aramaic, or ancient Greek writing. This bibliography focuses on the archaeology of the Phoenician homeland in the Levant during the Iron Age and the Persian period (c. 1150–330 bce). Scholars have repeatedly investigated the problem of defining the Phoenicians—if this is at all possible. The appellation “Phoenicians” originates in ancient Greek views and does not represent the self-definition of “Phoenicians” themselves, who preferred to identify themselves with their urban communities, such as “man of Tyre” or “woman of Arwad.” The unprecedented rise of the Phoenician economy after the 9th century bce had a significant impact on social and cultural changes in the Levant and the Mediterranean. Phoenician material culture appeared in all the neighboring economies of Phoenicia and led eventually to a colonization in the western Mediterranean. However one wants to define the Phoenicians, they were among the principal agents of an early globalization of the Mediterranean and the ancient Near East.

Mycenaean civilization

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Rutter
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Stages Of Development ◽  
Historical Reality ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
The Mediterranean

Mycenaean civilization takes its name from the hilltop citadel of Mycenae in the Argolid, celebrated in Homer’s epics as “rich in gold” and the capital of Agamemnon. In 1876, Heinrich Schliemann, fresh from his excavations at Troy, which in his view had established the historical reality of the Greeks’ legendary siege and sack of that city, unearthed five astonishingly rich tombs at Mycenae and claimed them to contain the burials of Agamemnon and his followers, thus inaugurating the study of Greece’s Late Bronze Age (LBA) past. One and a half centuries of subsequent fieldwork have exposed the remains of hundreds of settlements and thousands of tombs characterized by the distinctive material culture termed Mycenaean that flourished for over six centuries (c. 1700–1050 bce). This lengthy duration of the mainland Greek LBA (better known as the Late Helladic [LH] or Mycenaean era) is conventionally subdivided into three major stages of development: pre-palatial or early Mycenaean (LH I–IIB; c. 1700–1425/1400 bce); palatial (LH IIIA1–LH IIIB2; c. 1425/1400–1200/1190 bce); and post-palatial (LH IIIC; c. 1200/1190–1050 bce). The regions within which Mycenaean material culture was dominant changed significantly as a function of time, as did the culture’s external contacts within the Mediterranean world and continental Europe.

scholarly journals Precipitation climatology over Mediterranean Basin from ten years of TRMM measurements

2008 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 87-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. V. Mehta ◽  
S. Yang
Keyword(s):  
Mediterranean Sea ◽  
Rainy Season ◽  
Mediterranean Region ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission ◽  
Western Mediterranean ◽  
Sea Temperature ◽  
Maximum Rainfall ◽  
The Mediterranean

Abstract. Climatological features of mesoscale rain activities over the Mediterranean region between 5° W–40° E and 28° N–48° N are examined using the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) 3B42 and 2A25 rain products. The 3B42 rainrates at 3-hourly, 0.25°×0.25° spatial resolution for the last 10 years (January 1998 to July 2007) are used to form and analyze the 5-day mean and monthly mean climatology of rainfall. Results show considerable regional and seasonal differences of rainfall over the Mediterranean Region. The maximum rainfall (3–5 mm day−1) occurs over the mountain regions of Europe, while the minimum rainfall is observed over North Africa (~0.5 mm day−1). The main rainy season over the Mediterranean Sea extends from October to March, with maximum rainfall occurring during November–December. Over the Mediterranean Sea, an average rainrate of ~1–2 mm day−1 is observed, but during the rainy season there is 20% larger rainfall over the western Mediterranean Sea than that over the eastern Mediterranean Sea. During the rainy season, mesoscale rain systems generally propagate from west to east and from north to south over the Mediterranean region, likely to be associated with Mediterranean cyclonic disturbances resulting from interactions among large-scale circulation, orography, and land-sea temperature contrast.

The burden of being Mycenaean

1999 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francis A. De Mita
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Objective Assessment ◽  
East Mediterranean ◽  
Classical World ◽  
Theoretical Evolution ◽  
City States ◽  
Traditional Approaches ◽  
Analytical Frameworks ◽  
Highly Evolved

Van Wijngaarden offers an important and instructive attempt to re-situate the study of Bronze Age ‘imports’ away from the dominance of prestige commodity studies, using the particularly thorny example of Mycenaean ceramics. Traditional approaches, as van Wijngaarden points out, have tended to assign a uniformity of value and unchallenged prestige status to all Mycenaean imports. The reason for this reflexive recourse to prestige in the presence of Mycenaean pottery has more perhaps to do with the evolution of the discipline of archaeology in the East Mediterranean and a desire to find a precursor to the highly evolved city states of the Classical world than to any objective assessment of the objects themselves. Analytical frameworks which contextualize imports and exotica into the greater scheme of a robust and diverse material culture are critical steps in the development of the theoretical evolution of the study of the Late Bonze Age. However, van Wijngaarden's efforts also illustrate the methodological challenges encountered when isolating a single subcategory of artefact for examination. The blame lies not so much with van Wijngaarden's analysis as with the problem of what can be said to constitute value in a prehistoric context and how value, once defined, can be kept separate from other interrelated concepts.

Interlopers in the Mediterranean, 1571–1650

The Great Sea ◽  
2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Abulafia
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Western Mediterranean ◽  
Northern Europe ◽  
Naval Warfare ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
Santo Stefano ◽  
New Type ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
The Cost

The period between the battle of Lepanto and the middle of the seventeenth century has a certain unity. Barbary pirates did not go away – indeed, they became more piratical, in the sense that the Ottomans allowed them a freer hand, for the Sublime Porte no longer expected to extend its direct authority deep into the western Mediterranean. The western Mediterranean was also exposed to vicious raids by Christian corsairs – to the Knights of Malta could now be added the Knights of Santo Stefano, Tuscan pirates and holy warriors whose order was founded in 1562 by the Medici duke of Tuscany. Like the Venetians, they brought some of the Ottoman banners back in victory from Lepanto; they still hang incongruously in their church in Pisa, daily proclaiming the faith of Islam amid the incense of Catholic ritual. It would be otiose to repeat the endless saga of attacks and reprisals as Christian Knights of Malta or Santo Stefano scored points against Barbary corsairs; the most unfortunate victims were always those who were carried away into slavery from the decks of captured merchant ships, or from the shores of Italy, Spain and Africa (the French were relatively immune to Muslim raiders as a result of their ties to the Ottoman court). Galleys out of Sicily continued to patrol the seas in the hope of defending the Spanish king’s Italian possessions from sea-raiders, but large-scale galley warfare had come to an end, not just because new ship-types were seen as more efficient but because the cost of building and maintaining galleys was prohibitive. Even so, the Ottomans reconstructed their war fleet in the immediate aftermath of Lepanto. There were alarums in the West: it was confidently assumed that the Ottomans would launch a second great assault on a Christian target. Yet the Sublime Porte had lost its taste for naval warfare, and was content to leave the Spaniards alone, while pursuing its traditional rivalry with the Shi’ite emperors of Persia. This was extremely convenient, since Spanish preoccupations also now turned away from the Mediterranean; Philip II’s great ambition was to defeat the new type of Infidel who was crawling all over northern Europe: the Protestants.

exploration

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duane W. Roller
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Central Africa ◽  
Western Mediterranean ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
The Black Sea ◽  
Military Operations ◽  
The North ◽  
Eastern Hemisphere ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
The Bronze Age

Exploration in antiquity was largely the result of commercial or military endeavours, rather than any pure quest for knowledge or scholarship. Nevertheless, from the first efforts of Greeks to move beyond the Greek heartland into the Black Sea and western Mediterranean, which began as early as the end of the Bronze Age, Greeks and Romans steadily explored around and beyond their world. By the late Roman period, almost all of the Eastern Hemisphere was known, with the exception of interior southern Africa and the far northeastern portions of Asia, and it was suggested that there might be other continents across the ocean. Despite an emphasis on trade and commercial contacts, there was also an increase in scientific and other scholarly knowledge. The beginnings of Greek exploration are apparent in the Odyssey of Homer and may go back to the latter part of the Bronze Age. By the latter 7th century bce, Greeks were moving outside of the Mediterranean to the Phoenician (later Carthaginian) trading cities such as Gadeira on the Atlantic. With the rise of the Persians, they began to learn about what lay to their east, and Alexander the Great created awareness of a world stretching as far as India. At the same time, Pytheas of Massalia explored the northern Atlantic as far as Iceland. The discipline of geography was invented by Eratosthenes of Cyrene in the latter 3rd century bce, and in the following century the explorer Polybius reached the Equator. Roman military operations in the north of Europe and the British Isles and trade journeys into central Africa meant those regions were brought into the sphere of knowledge of the Mediterranean world. Realization that the inhabited world, however vast, was only a small part of the total surface of the Earth led to theorization about other lands across the ocean, but there is no solid evidence that anyone from the ancient Mediterranean reached them and was able to report on them. By the latter 1st century bce traders became aware of Southeast Asia and China, and there were occasional contacts during the Roman period, but by the 2nd century ce the era of ancient exploration was at an end, and there was little further expansion of geographical knowledge until the Islamic period.

scholarly journals Modeling of the circulation in the Northwestern Mediterranean Sea with the Princeton Ocean Model

Ocean Science ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. A. Ahumada ◽  
A. Cruzado
Keyword(s):  
Mediterranean Sea ◽  
General Circulation ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Circulation Model ◽  
Western Mediterranean ◽  
Ocean Model ◽  
Intermediate Water ◽  
Princeton Ocean Model ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Northwestern Mediterranean

Abstract. The Princeton Ocean Model – POM (Blumberg and Mellor, 1987) has been implemented in the Northwestern Mediterranean nested (in one-way off-line mode) to a general circulation model of the Mediterranean Sea – OGCM (Pinardi and Masetti, 2000; Demirov and Pinardi, 2002) in order to investigate if this model configuration is capable of reproducing the major features of the circulation as known from observations and to improve what has been made by previous numerical modeling works. According to the model results, the large-scale cyclonic circulation in the northern part of the Northwestern Mediterranean is, at least in the upper layers, less coherent in winter and spring than in summer and autumn. Furthermore, there is evidence that the mesoscale structure (eddies and meanders) is, during all year, a significant dynamic characteristic in this region of the Mediterranean Sea. Finally, concerning the circulation in the lower layers, the model results have confirmed that Levantine Intermediate Water (LIW) and Western Mediterranean Deep Water (WMDW) follow essentially a cyclonic path during all year.

The relationship between agricultural production and amphora manufacture on Roman Crete

2018 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 373-386
Author(s):  
Scott Gallimore
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Agricultural Production ◽  
Capital Investment ◽  
Recent Article ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
Cultural Impact ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
The Relationship

While there have been a number of inquiries into agricultural production and amphora manufacture, discussion of the relationship between the two remains limited. A recent article by A. Bevan that examines the history of ‘containerization’ in the Mediterranean from the early Bronze Age to the 20th c. A.D. illustrates one side. It focuses on different manifestations of containers, emphasizing their cultural impact over the whole history of civilization in the region. While underscoring the importance of these transport vessels as packaging, particularly for liquid commodities, he provides limited consideration of the mechanisms behind the goods moving into these containers. Studies concerned with agricultural production are also on the rise, but scholars often limit the focus to amphorae. For instance, in analyzing capital investment in large-scale farms, A. Marzano commented: rather than attempting a study of agricultural production through the containers for foodstuffs, this investigation focuses on the presses, the machinery for the processing of grapes and olive.

scholarly journals Modelling of the circulation in the Northwestern Mediterranean Sea with the Princeton Ocean Model

2006 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 1255-1292
Author(s):  
M. A. Ahumada ◽  
A. Cruzado
Keyword(s):  
Mediterranean Sea ◽  
General Circulation ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Circulation Model ◽  
Western Mediterranean ◽  
Ocean Model ◽  
Intermediate Water ◽  
Princeton Ocean Model ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Northwestern Mediterranean

Abstract. The Princeton Ocean Model – POM (Blumberg and Mellor, 1987) has been implemented in the Northwestern Mediterranean nested (in one-way off-line mode) to a general circulation model of the Mediterranean Sea – OGCM (Pinardi and Masetti, 2000; Demirov and Pinardi, 2002) in order to investigate if this model configuration is capable of reproducing the major features of the circulation as known from observations and to improve what has been made by previous numerical modeling works. According to the model results, the large-scale cyclonic circulation in the northern part of the Northwestern Mediterranean is, at least in the upper layers, less coherent in winter and spring than in summer and autumn. Furthermore, there is evidence that the mesoscale structure (eddies and meanders) is, during all year, a significant dynamic characteristic in this region of the Mediterranean Sea. Finally, concerning the circulation in the lower layers has been confirmed that the Levantine Intermediate Water and the Western Mediterranean Deep Water follow essentially a cyclonic path during all year.

The Kārum Period on the Plateau

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cécile Michel
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Central Anatolia ◽  
Middle Bronze Age ◽  
Second Millennium Bce

This article presents data on the kārum period of Anatolia. During the first centuries of the second millennium BCE, Assyrian merchants originating from Assur, on the Upper Tigris, organized large-scale commercial exchanges with central Anatolia. They settled in several localities, called kārums. This Akkadian word, which usually designates the quay or port in Mesopotamian cities, refers in Anatolia to the Assyrian merchant district and its administrative building. Thus, the kārum period—which comprises the Old Assyrian period—covers the time during which the Assyrians traded in Anatolia, from the middle of the twentieth to the end of the eighteenth century BCE; it corresponds, more or less, to the Middle Bronze Age. In Anatolia, this period is characterized by an important phase of urbanization, with a flourishing material culture mixing native and foreign styles.

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