Browsing by Subject "Mediterranean"
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Item A Study of Lead Ingot Cargoes from Ancient Mediterranean Shipwrecks(2011-10-21) Brown, Heather GailLead is often relegated to a footnote or sidebar in the study of ancient metals. However, the hundreds of lead ingots discovered in underwater sites over the past half-century have attested to the widespread production and trade of this utilitarian metal. Shipwreck sites allow independent dating evidence not available for many land find. They also provide information about shipment size as well as accompanying cargo which can offer clues about trade patterns and markets for lead in the ancient world. While lead was not particularly rare nor valuable, it represents small- to moderate-scale trade that bridges the gap between luxury trade and the circulation of staple agricultural products. It thus can be viewed as a proxy for the many other perishable materials that supported daily life, such as timber, cloth, cordage, leather and pigments. Due to the abundance of lead ingot finds, published in many different languages with great variation in the details provided, it is difficult to compare all of this material. This thesis, therefore, compiles and presents data on all published lead ingots from Mediterranean and Atlantic shipwrecks through the fourth century C.E., in order to provide a framework to analyze the ancient seaborne lead trade. Sixty-eight sites containing lead ingots, lead ore or lead minerals are included in the analysis, divided into six time periods: Bronze Age, Archaic, Classical, Hellenistic, Roman Republic and Roman Empire. A typology of ingots has been developed to allow for comparison of ingots between wrecks. The uses of lead are reviewed, organized by type of use: domestic, professional, military and infrastructural. This allows insight into both the consumers in need of lead and the volume and regularity of consumption required for each use. An overview of lead production and its economic limitations further informs the discussion of the lead trade. The final analysis considers all of these factors in creating a picture of lead trade for each of the six periods, focusing on the regions of supply, the types of demand, and the dominant forces that drove the mining and production of lead.Item Extracting Cultural Information from Ship Timber(2012-02-14) Creasman, PearceThis dissertation is rooted in one general question: what can the wood from ships reveal about the people and cultures who built them? Shipwrecks are only the last chapter of a complex story, and while the last fifty years of nautical archaeology have managed to rewrite a number of these chapters, much of the information unrelated to a ship?s final voyage remains a mystery. However, portions of that mystery can be exposed by an examination of the timbers. An approach for the cultural investigation of ship timbers is presented and attempts are made to establish the most reliable information possible from the largely unheralded treasures of underwater excavations: timbers. By introducing the written record, iconographic record, and the social, economic, and political factors to the archaeological record a more complete analysis of the cultural implications of ship and boat timbers is possible. I test the effectiveness of the approach in three varied casestudies to demonstrate its limits and usefulness: ancient Egypt?s Middle Kingdom, the Mediterranean under Athenian influence, and Portugal and the Iberian Peninsula during the Discoveries. The results of these studies demonstrate how ship timbers can be studied in order to better understand the people who built the vessels.Item Harboring narratives : notes towards a literature of the Mediterranean(2015-08) Lovato, Martino; Tissières, Hélène; Ali, Samer; Bonifazio, Paola; El-Ariss, Tarek; Harlow, Barbara; Bouchard, NormaThrough the reading of several novels and movies produced in Arabic, French, and Italian between the 1980s and the 2000s, in this dissertation I provide a literary and transmedia contribution to the field of Mediterranean studies. Responding to the challenge brought by the regional category of Mediterranean to singular national and linguistic understandings of literature and cinema, I employ a comparative and multidisciplinary methodology to read novels by Baha’ Taher, Abdelwahab Meddeb, Abdelmalek Smari, and movies by film directors Merzak Allouache, Abdellatif Kechiche, and Vittorio De Seta. I define these works as “harboring narratives,” as they engage with the two shores of the Mediterranean in a complex process of interiorization and negotiation, opening routes of meaning across languages, societies and cultures. As they challenge constructions of otherness that materialize in present-day conflicts in the region, the works of these novelists and filmmakers give voice to a perspective on the Mediterranean radically different from that upheld by the “paradigms of discord.” Whereas according to these paradigms there is nothing in the Mediterranean but an iron curtain, these works present migration and conflict, historiography and religion, intimacy and translation as experiences shared across countries and societies in the region. By following routes of meaning that draw together the linguistic, the geographical, the economic, the historical, and the religious, I study how these novelists and filmmakers establish relationships between “horizons of belonging” and “elsewhere,” selfhood and otherness. In so doing, I respond to Kinoshita and Mallette’s call for challenging the “monolingualism” inherent in our contemporary ways of reading linguistic and literary traditions. As I show how the routes of meaning opened by these novelists and filmmakers across the region lead to hope that one day we will rejoice in sharing a common Mediterranean shore, however, I caution against easy enthusiasms. These novelists and filmmakers urge us to respond to the challenge of the present-day conflicts they address in their works, and a shared Mediterranean shore will eventually appear on the horizon only after we overcome monolingual conceptions of selfhood and otherness, setting sail towards a shore we have never seen.Item The Phoenician Trade Network: Tracing a Mediterranean Exchange System(2012-11-15) Puckett, Neil 1983-The Phoenicians were known as artisans, merchants, and seafarers by the 10th century B.C.E. They exchanged raw and finished goods with people in many cultural spheres of the ancient world and accumulated wealth in the process. A major factor that aided their success was the establishment of colonies along the Mediterranean and eastern Atlantic coasts. These colonies, established by the eighth century B.C.E., supplied valuable raw materials to the major Phoenician cities in the Levant, while also providing additional markets abroad. Excavations at a myriad of these colonial sites have recovered materials that can be used to identify connections between the colonies, the Levantine cities, and non-Phoenician cultures across the ancient world. By establishing these connections the system of maritime exchange can be better understood and modeled as the Phoenician Trade Network. This network involved both direct and indirect exchange of raw and finished products, people, as well as political and cultural ideas. The colonies were involved in various activities including ceramics production, metallurgy, trade, and agriculture. Native peoples they interacted with provided valuable goods, especially metals, which were sent east to supply the Near Eastern Markets. The Phoenician Trade Network was a system of interconnected, moderately independent population centers which all participated in the advancement of Phoenician mercantilism and wealth. Ultimately, the network collapsed in the sixth century B.C.E. allowing other powers such as the Romans, Carthaginians, and Greeks to replace them as the dominant merchants of the Mediterranean.Item Trade, piracy, and naval warfare in the central Mediterranean: the maritime history and archaeology of Malta(Texas A&M University, 2004-09-30) Atauz, Ayse DevrimLocated approximately in the middle of the central Mediterranean channel, the Maltese Archipelago was touched by the historical events that effected the political, economic and cultural environment of Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. The islands were close to the major maritime routes throughout history and they were often on the border between clashing military, political, religious, and cultural entities. For these reasons, the islands were presumed to have been strategically and economically important, and, thus, frequented by ships. An underwater archaeological survey around the archipelago revealed the scarcity of submerged cultural remains, especially pertaining to shipping and navigation. Preliminary findings elucidate a story that contrasts with the picture presented by modern history and historiography. In this sense, a comparison of the underwater archaeological data with the information gathered through a detailed study of Maltese maritime history clearly shows that the islands were attributed an exaggerated importance in historical texts, due to political and religious trends that are rooted in the period during which the islands were under the control of the Order of Saint John. An objective investigation of the historical and archaeological material provides a more balanced picture, and places the islands in a Mediterranean-wide historical framework from the first colonization of the archipelago eight thousands years ago to the twentieth century.