Dead or alive? The holy man as healer in East and West in the late sixth century

A rigid distinction cannot be drawn between the living holy man as healer in Eastern Christendom and the dead man healing from his tomb in the West, since examples of both kinds of healing are found throughout the Mediterranean area. As examples of dead holy men working miracles from their tombs, a comparison is made between Martin, as described in the writings of Gregory of Tours, and Demetrius of Thessalonica. Nevertheless the dead holy man as cult-figure is more common in the West than in the East, because of certain differences between the pre-Christian religious in East and West. Roman law attached great importance of the sacrosanctity of a corpse, whereas in the East there was not always the same distaste for the dismemberment of bodies, though there are many exceptions to this general principle. The cult of the living holy man in the East may be a Christianization of the Greek notion of the hero. At any rate the cultural and spiritual unity of the Mediterranean area was such that the idea of the living holy man as healer could penetrate to Western Christendom.     

Toggles and Sails in the Ancient World: Rigging Elements Recovered from the Tantura B Shipwreck, Israel

Excavation of the 9th-century AD shipwreck B in Tantura Lagoon, Israel, yielded four toggles, numerous rope fragments, and three pierced wooden spatulate objects believed to be associated with the ship's rigging. In the first half of the article, the toggles are described and compared to a corpus of similar devices found on both land and shipwreck sites. The spatulate devices are tentatively identified as spill-toggles, pierced for attaching a trip-line. The second half of the article traces the textual and iconographical evidence for toggles and sail types––in particular, the lateen––in the ancient Mediterranean, and their possible association.
© 2008 The Author     

On The Medieval Antiquities of Anglesey

The excavations at Aulnat-Gandaillat are producing evidence of the pre-urban settlement system belonging to the last centuries B.C. The agricultural settlement was also engaged in industry, including the working of bronze, iron, gold, silver, glass, bone and possibly other substances such as coral. It is also providing us with the most refined chronology yet available from a La Tène settlement, and also with details of the development of trade with the Mediterranean world. The site was abandoned around 40–20 B.C. when the oppidum of Gergovie was founded.     

The politics of violence and trade: Denia and Pisa in the eleventh century

In the eleventh century, as ports and cities expanded their involvement in the Mediterranean, they came into contact and conflict with one another; both were integral parts of the Mediterranean renewal after the relative decline of the early Middle Ages. Of these cities, relations between Pisa and Denia were perhaps the most exemplary of the extremes possible within the new Mediterranean. On the surface, theirs would seem to be merely a series of clashes based on religious friction, jihād, or territorial ambitions, as shown by their conflict over Sardinia. However, when viewed together with diplomatic and commercial relations, it becomes apparent that violence was only a part of the Mediterranean dynamic, and that where conflict did exist it was along new lines. Economic ambitions were becoming the motivating factor, and trade routes and commerce were the new stakes in the medieval Mediterranean.     

Late Bronze Age Oxhide and oxhide‐like ingots from areas other than the Mediterranean: problems and challenges

Oxhide ingots are probably one of the most remarkable metal artefacts that ever circulated throughout the Mediterranean during the second millennium BC. From the Levantine coast to Sardinia, oxhide ingots were produced, exchanged, used and transformed for almost six centuries (c.1600–1100/1000 BC). They are generally regarded as a class of material that is found only in the Mediterranean area. However, there are a number of oxhide ingots that have been encountered far beyond the coasts of the Mediterranean. The aim of this paper is to throw some light on these items and their significance in order to increase our understanding of the complex and far‐reaching Bronze Age metal supply networks in Europe. The application of a commodity branding model also allows the possibility of achieving a deeper understanding of these items as tokens of the long‐lasting links between Continental Europe and the Mediterranean.     

Southern Iberia and the Mediterranean Trade-routes

The early Iron Age sites of southern Iberia (8th century to c. 600 BC) have produced large numbers of imports from the eastern Mediterranean, while only a very small number of southern Iberian objects found their way to other parts of the Mediterranean. Despite their scarcity these items can provide valuable information about the shift of trade routes in the Mediterranean at around 600 BC.     

Dead or alive? The holy man as healer in East and West in the late sixth century

A rigid distinction cannot be drawn between the living holy man as healer in Eastern Christendom and the dead man healing from his tomb in the West, since examples of both kinds of healing are found throughout the Mediterranean area. As examples of dead holy men working miracles from their tombs, a comparison is made between Martin, as described in the writings of Gregory of Tours, and Demetrius of Thessalonica. Nevertheless the dead holy man as cult-figure is more common in the West than in the East, because of certain differences between the pre-Christian religious in East and West. Roman law attached great importance of the sacrosanctity of a corpse, whereas in the East there was not always the same distaste for the dismemberment of bodies, though there are many exceptions to this general principle. The cult of the living holy man in the East may be a Christianization of the Greek notion of the hero. At any rate the cultural and spiritual unity of the Mediterranean area was such that the idea of the living holy man as healer could penetrate to Western Christendom.     

Patterning and Its Causation in the Pre-Neolithic Colonization of the Mediterranean Islands (Late Pleistocene to Early Holocene)

In 1981 one of us (Cherry) first attempted to identify spatial and temporal patterning in the human colonization of the Mediterranean islands. Since the 1980s, slowly accumulating evidence has suggested that the Mediterranean islands were sporadically inhabited by hunter-gatherers during the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene. Here we seek to establish whether or not these data exhibit regularity. We suggest that evidence for Upper Palaeolithic to Mesolithic activity, tending to cluster on larger or less remote islands, indicates that while humans were clearly capable of reaching the Mediterranean islands prior to the Neolithic, their general reluctance to do so can be explained in terms of the variable environmental attractiveness of the insular Mediterranean. Tending to be relatively small, dry, and biologically depauperate, the Mediterranean islands were largely inhospitable to mobile groups preferring extensive territories with diverse and robust biotas. Sedentism only became a widely viable strategy in the insular Mediterranean with the development in the Neolithic of what we might regard as “terraforming”—that is, the introduction of cereals, pulses, and ovicaprids, all tolerant of xeric environments.     

The coral Cothonion from the lower Cambrian of North Greenland

Originally described from the Coonigan Formation of New South Wales, Australia, a second occurrence of the operculate coral Cothonion sympomatum is here described from the Paralledal Formation of North Greenland. Both finds are of late early Cambrian age, Series 2, Stage 4 in the emerging fourfold classification of the Cambrian. The new find supports widespread distribution patterns seen in early Cambrian Small Shelly Fossils, although associated trilobites belong to traditional redlichiid (Australia) and olenellid (Greenland) realms, respectively.     

Late Triassic (Carnian) corals from Timor-Leste (East Timor): their identity,setting, and biogeography

Four scleractinian coral taxa are described from limestones within a sandstone-shale séquence correlated with the Late Triassic Babulu Formation, Manatuto township, on the northern coast of Timor-Leste (East Timor). The coral fauna consists of three phaceloid taxa, Paravolzeia tìmorìca gen. et sp. nov., Craspedophyll ramosa sp. nov., Margarosmilia confluens (Münster), and a generically indeterminate solitary taxon attributed to the family Margarophylliidae. Ali four corals are related at various taxonomie levels to Carnian faunas from the Dolomites of northern Italy. Previously, only Norian coral faunas were known from the Triassic of Timor. The fauna exhibits both similarities to and differences from Carnian faunas of the Dolomites and helps confirm palaeogeographic affinities with the western Tethys, although during Late Triassic time Timor lay in the distant southeastern portai of the Tethys. Despite isolation from the western Tethys, the presence of two species foundalso in the Dolomites indicates that larvai dispersai occurred between the two areas.     

Geo-strategy and the persistence of antiquity: surveying mythical hydrographies in the eastern Mediterranean, 1784–1869

This paper explores late eighteenth-century and nineteenth-century mappings of three strategic sites in the Eastern Mediterranean, each with a notable ancient history: the Straits of the Dardanelles, and the isthmuses of Suez and Mount Athos. Considering mapping as a culturally and historically situated cognitive practice, the paper focuses on the rhetorical use of Classical antiquity (the Persian Wars) in the geopolitical discourse of that period and in the legitimization of great hydraulic projects, like the Suez Canal. At the same time, it also seeks to re-evaluate Mediterranean straits and isthmuses in their geographical specificity, as physical and imaginative ‘gateways’ to the Orient, as ‘connecting points’ and boundaries between the Self and the Other.     

Indonesian quarter-rudder mountings

Ten quarter-rudder arrangements found in Indonesia are described and illustrated with evidence for an 11th arrangement. Some types have been used on vessels of over 100 tons, while others occur on offshore fishing craft and outrigger canoes. The ethno-archaeological evidence gathered in the field is used as a basis for consideration of quarter-rudders used in the Classical and Medieval Mediterranean.     

Sasanian period drop-tower gristmills on the Deh Luran Plain,southwestern Iran

Abstract

The nature of the Deh Luran gristmill system is described, and archaeological and ethnohistorical observations provide insights into ancient rural technology, economics, and socio-politics. Optically Scanned Luminescence, ceramics, and other archaeological associations, date the Deh Luran gristmills to the Sasanian period (A.D. 225–700). A Middle East/Mediterranean origin as early as 250 B.C. is suggested for the drop-tower side-shot water wheel technology used.

The Deh Luran gristmill technology was well adapted to the topography and limited, variable water supply. Currently farmed lands, and their productivity, are found to be far less than projected grain surpluses for an expanding Sasanian Empire in Deh Luran. Population estimates based on gristmill productivity contradict those from archaeological data. Data suggest that Deh Luran, and similar rural areas, were relatively autonomous.     

亨利·皮朗的史学思想与地中海史研究

亨利·皮朗是20世纪初西方史坛的著名学者。他提出的“皮朗命题”被誉为20世纪最具影响力的史学命题之一。皮朗创造性地将地中海视为一个整体,从不同文明之间大范围互动的角度解读欧洲的起源与发展,开拓了新的研究视野与范式。随着全球化的深入发展,作为新区域史主要研究对象之一的地中海成为学术研究的热',而费尔南·布罗代尔的《地中海与菲利普二世时代的地中海世界》是地中海史研究里程碑式的著作。通过对皮朗史学思想与布罗代尔等地中海史研究学者的著作进行对比分析可以看出,皮朗强调经济与社会史研究,倡导超越民族主义史学的局限性与注重在大范围空间对历史进行长期性与结构性分析,对布罗代尔的地中海史研究产生了直接影响。而对“皮朗命题”中有关伊斯兰教与基督教二元对立的中世纪早期地中海分裂性论断的反思,则推动了新地中海史研究的发展。     

Training,education, management and prehistory in the Mediterranean: Work in progress on a European Union research project

Abstract

This paper presents the work in progress of TEMPER (Training, Education, Management and Prehistory in the Mediterranean), a research project conducted by a consortium of seven partner institutions in the UK, Greece, Malta, Israel, and Turkey. TEMPER is funded by the European Union, as part of their Euromed Heritage II programme [1] and is the only project funded by the programme focusing on our prehistoric cultural heritage. The aim of TEMPER is to make the prehistory of the Mediterranean more accessible. This will be achieved through the development of educational programmes at pilot sites around the Mediterranean, the development of management plans for pilot sites, the delivery of a related training programme and dissemination of the project results. The project runs from January 2002 to June 2004.     

Upper Palaeolithic hunter-gatherer subsistence in Mediterranean coastal environments: an isotopic study of the diets of the earliest directly-dated humans from Sicily

The subsistence of hunter-gatherers in the Mediterranean Basin has been the object of few studies, which have not fully clarified the role of aquatic resources in their diets. Here we present the results of AMS radiocarbon dating and of isotope analyses on the earliest directly-dated human remains from Sicily, the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. The radiocarbon determinations show that the Upper Palaeolithic (Epigravettian) humans from Grotta di San Teodoro (15 232–14 126 cal. BP) and Grotta Addaura Caprara (16 060–15 007 cal. BP) date to the Late-glacial and were possibly contemporary. The diets of these individuals were dominated by the protein of large terrestrial mammalian herbivores, such as red deer (Cervus elaphus). There is no evidence for the consumption of marine resources, which is probably the result not only of the oligotrophic nature of the Mediterranean, but also perhaps of the lack of adequate technology for exploiting intensively the resources from this sea. In spite of being contemporaneous and of the cultural and technological affinities present between the San Teodoro and Addaura humans, the carbon (δ¹³C) and nitrogen (δ¹⁵N) isotope composition of their bone collagen suggests that significant differences were present in their diets. In particular, the hunter-gatherers from Grotta di San Teodoro, in NE Sicily where coastal plains are backed by high mountain chains (Monti Nebrodi), probably had easy access to resources such as anadromous brown trout (Salmo trutta), which might not have been similarly available in the NW of the island, where reliefs are noticeably lower and watercourses fewer and farther between. This study shows that the high biodiversity of this region, which results from the complex topography of Mediterranean landscapes, was probably exploited opportunistically by Late-glacial foragers. Our data also suggest that intensification and diversification of food acquisition in Sicily did not start in the closing stages of the late Pleistocene, as in other Mediterranean regions, probably because the island had only been (re-)colonized by humans around the Last Glacial Maximum.     

Lucien Basch: Ancient wrecks and the archaeology of ships A comment

The material we have today indicates that shell building was known and practised in the Mediterranean in classical antiquity. Comparative material shows that the‘intermediate stages’between shell and skeleton shipbuilding are in most, or all, cases shell building with some skeleton influence. The date when‘the skeleton idea’first struck a boatbuilder is not established. There are indications that this happened in the Mediterranean. No definite proof of skeleton work is found in the Mediterranean earlier than the Yassi Ada wreck, where a bottom shell may have been equipped with a skeleton on which topsides were built. The shell-skeleton division is a working tool for research on shipbuilding history, and should be used critically. The wrecks from Blackfriars I and New Guy's House indicate a kind of skeleton approach to shipbuilding in northern Europe (Marsden, 1967). If the 'skeleton idea’existed in the Mediterranean in classical antiquity, especially in warships, proof will turn up sooner or later. In the meantime, publishers of shipwrecks should take into consideration that we know very little, and that all details count. Field work on the existing tradition in the Mediterranean should be pursued. The lesson learned in Scandinavia is that the archaeologist may theorize as much as he wants, but the boat-builders will be able to give definite answers, if he takes the trouble to ask them, and watch them at work.     

Tsunamigenic Analysis in and around Makran

The Makran region is only segment east of the Mediterranean and west of Andaman arc in which subduction of oceanic lithosphere is still an ongoing process. We applied statistical models for the possible explanation of earthquakes in and around Makran, and described a method of Fault Plane Solutions to present seismicity picture in the investigated region, and their possible tsunamigenic effects on Gwadar Coast. We also applied the Community Modeling Interface for Tsunami (ComMIT) for the estimation of tsunami hazard along the coast of Gwader due to the Arabian and Eurasian plate boundary earthquakes along the Makran subduction zone.     

Pliny the Elder and Sr–Nd isotopes: tracing the provenance of raw materials for Roman glass production

In Roman and Byzantine times, natron glass was traded throughout the known world in the form of chunks. Production centers of such raw glass, active from the 4th to 8th century AD, were identified in Egypt and Syro-Palestine. However, early Roman primary glass units remain unknown from excavation or scientific analysis. The ancient author Pliny described in 70 AD that besides Egyptian and Levantine resources, also raw materials from Italy and the Gallic and Spanish provinces were used in glass making. In this study, the primary provenance of 1st–3rd century AD natron vessel glass is investigated. The use of combined Sr and Nd isotopic analysis allows the distinguishing and characterizing of different sand raw materials used for primary glass production. The isotope data obtained from the glass samples are compared to the signatures of primary glass from known production centers in the eastern Mediterranean and a number of sand samples from the regions described by Pliny the Elder as possible sources of primary glass. Eastern Mediterranean primary glass has a Nile dominated Mediterranean Nd signature (higher than −6.0 ? Nd), while glass with a primary production location in the western Mediterranean or north-western Europe should have a different Nd signature (lower than −7.0 ? Nd). Most Roman glass has a homogeneous ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr signature close to the modern sea water composition, likely caused by the (intentional) use of shell as glass raw material. In this way, strontium and neodymium isotopes now prove that Pliny's writings were correct: primary glass production was not exclusive to the Levant or Egypt in early Roman days, and factories of raw glass in the Western Roman Empire will have been at play.