Mariun

Upon the Mamluk takeover of Sis in 1375 CE, the former Queen Mariun of the Armenian state of Cilicia was taken into captivity and held first in Aleppo and then in Cairo. From there she traveled to Jerusalem, where she lived until her death. Her tomb at the Sts. James Monastery in Jerusalem is often mentioned in medieval and postmedieval texts, but the information in later historiography concerning Mariun and some of her contemporaries who survived the fall of the Armenian kingdom and lived through the fourteenth century has been subject to inaccuracies. This article considers some of these accretions and misrepresentations using textual and archaeological documentation, and reconstructs several key episodes in the life and afterlife of Mariun. The story of this remarkable noblewoman crosses the political realms of at least three Mediterranean communities—Armenian, Mamluk, and Latin—and reflects the scope of the ever-changing geopolitical complexities that continued to mark the eastern Mediterranean under Mamluk domination. Spending the finalstages of her life in exile and on pilgrimage, the former queen of Armenia appeared in the Holy City at a time when female spirituality was flourishing within self-organized monastic institutions.

Maritime Interaction and Mediterranean Communities

This chapter introduces the argument and background for the study, exploring Mediterranean connectivity through interaction across the sea. It reviews relevant motivators and logistics behind Roman maritime connections and situates these aspects within broader discussion and debate over Rome’s economic history. The dataset of shipwreck and port sites along the coasts of Turkey and Cyprus that forms the basis of analysis for the case study is introduced and contextualized alongside recent efforts to amass and analyze bulk data, with a particular focus on the challenges and opportunities of working with uneven evidence. A brief overview of the book’s structure is provided.

Southern France

A distinct material culture, economy, and society developed in the south of France during the Iron Age. This phenomenon was related to the way in which local communities were situated between the traditional Celtic societies of temperate Europe, and Mediterranean communities such as the Phoenicians, Etruscans, Greeks, and Romans. This chapter examines the changing nature of settlement types (architecture, urbanization, material culture, topography) and territorial organization during the first millennium BC. From the eighth century BC, local forms of production (agriculture, crafts, trade) were confronted with market activity that greatly expanded after the foundation of Massalia in 600 BC, and towns began to develop soon after. The distinctive monuments and sculpture, public buildings, and burial grounds of the region provide a wealth of insight into religious and funerary practices. The place of different ethnic groups in the regional history is also considered.

Unequal contributions of species’ persistence and migration on plant communities’ response to climate warming throughout forests

Community reshuffling is lagging behind climate warming for many taxa, thereby generating a climatic debt. However, only few studies have attempted to assess the underlying factors that explain this debt, and none has gone further to explore this issue from a biogeographical perspective. Here I examine how effects of species’ migration and persistence on the current climatic debt vary spatially in forest herbaceous communities throughout the French territory. I show that Mediterranean communities are responding to climate warming through both high species’ migration and persistence effects, while alpine forest is the only ecosystem where species’ migration overtakes species’ persistence mechanisms. Such an approach seems promising in assessing the underlying mechanisms of the biodiversity response to climate change locally, and it can be applied for conservation issues to assess biodiversity sensitivity and optimize its management.

Regional asynchronicity in dairy production and processing in early farming communities of the northern Mediterranean

In the absence of any direct evidence, the relative importance of meat and dairy productions to Neolithic prehistoric Mediterranean communities has been extensively debated. Here, we combine lipid residue analysis of ceramic vessels with osteo-archaeological age-at-death analysis from 82 northern Mediterranean and Near Eastern sites dating from the seventh to fifth millennia BC to address this question. The findings show variable intensities in dairy and nondairy activities in the Mediterranean region with the slaughter profiles of domesticated ruminants mirroring the results of the organic residue analyses. The finding of milk residues in very early Neolithic pottery (seventh millennium BC) from both the east and west of the region contrasts with much lower intensities in sites of northern Greece, where pig bones are present in higher frequencies compared with other locations. In this region, the slaughter profiles of all domesticated ruminants suggest meat production predominated. Overall, it appears that milk or the by-products of milk was an important foodstuff, which may have contributed significantly to the spread of these cultural groups by providing a nourishing and sustainable product for early farming communities.