Negotiating Identity In The Ancient Mediterranean

Explores the creation of identities through cross-cultural interactions in multiethnic commercial settlements in the Archaic and Classical Mediterranean.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said that “all history becomes subjective,” that, in fact, “properly there is no history, only biography.” Today, Emerson’s observation is hardly revolutionary for archaeologists; it has become conventional wisdom that the present is a battleground where interpretations of the events and meanings of the past are constantly being disputed. What were the major events? Whose lives did these events impact, and how? Who were the key players? What was their legacy? We know all too well that the answers to these questions can vary considerably depending on what political, social, or personal agenda is driving the response. Despite our keen eye for discerning historical spin doctors operating today, it has been only in recent years that archaeologists have begun exploring in detail how the past was used in the past itself. This volume of ten original works brings critical insight to this frequently overlooked dimension of earlier societies. Drawing on the concepts of identity, memory, and landscape, the contributors show how these points of entry can lead to substantially new accounts of how people understood their lives and why things changed as they did. Chapters include the archaeologies of the eastern Mediterranean, including Mesopotamia, Iran, Greece, and Rome; prehistoric Greece; Achaemenid and Hellenistic Armenia; Athens in the Roman period; Nubia and Egypt; medieval South India; and northern Maya Quintana Roo. The contributors show how and why, in each society, certain versions of the past were promoted while others were aggressively forgotten for the purpose of promoting innovation, gaining political advantage, or creating a new group identity. Commentaries by leading scholars Lynn Meskell and Jack Davis blend with newer voices to create a unique set of essays that is diverse but interrelated, exceptionally researched, and novel in its perspectives. CONTENTS 1. Peering into the Palimpsest: An Introduction to the Volume Norman Yoffee 2. Collecting, Defacing, Reinscribing (and Otherwise Performing) Memory in the Ancient World Catherine Lyon Crawford 3. Unforgettable Landscapes: Attachments to the Past in Hellenistic Armenia Lori Khatchadourian 4. Mortuary Studies, Memory, and the Mycenaean Polity Seth Button 5. Identity under Construction in Roman Athens Sanjaya Thakur 6. Inscribing the Napatan Landscape: Architecture and Royal Identity Lindsay Ambridge 7. Negotiated Pasts and the Memorialized Present in Ancient India: Chalukyas of Vatapi Hemanth Kadambi 8. Creating, Transforming, Rejecting, and Reinterpreting Ancient Maya Urban Landscapes: Insights from Lagartera and Margarita Laura P. Villamil 9. Back to the Future: From the Past in the Present to the Past in the Past Lynn Meskell 10. Memory Groups and the State: Erasing the Past and Inscribing the Present in the Landscapes of the Mediterranean and Near East Jack L. Davis About the Editor About the Contributors Index

Cultural identity in the classical world is explored from a variety of angles.

Material Connections eschews outdated theory, tainted by colonialist attitudes, and develops a new cultural and historical understanding of how factors such as mobility, materiality, conflict and co-presence impacted on the formation of identity in the ancient Mediterranean. Fighting against ‘hyper-specialisation’ within the subject area, it explores the multiple ways that material culture was used to establish, maintain and alter identities, especially during periods of transition, culture encounter and change. A new perspective is adopted, one that perceives the use of material culture by prehistoric and historic Mediterranean peoples in formulating and changing their identities. It considers how objects and social identities are entangled in various cultural encounters and interconnections. The movement of people as well as objects has always stood at the heart of attempts to understand the courses and process of human history. The Mediterranean offers a wealth of such information and Material Connections, expanding on this base, offers a dynamic, new subject of enquiry – the social identify of prehistoric and historic Mediterranean people – and considers how migration, colonial encounters, and connectivity or insularity influence social identities. The volume includes a series of innovative, closely related case studies that examine the contacts amongst various Mediterranean islands – Sardinia, Corsica, Sicily, Crete, Cyprus, the Balearics – and the nearby shores of Italy, Greece, North Africa, Spain and the Levant to explore the social and cultural impact of migratory, colonial and exchange encounters. Material Connections forges a new path in understanding the material culture of the Mediterranean and will be essential for those wishing to develop their understanding of material culture and identity in the Mediterranean.

A revisionist exploration of identities and interactions in the 'Punic World' of the western Mediterranean.

A Companion to Ethnicity in the Ancient Mediterranean presents a comprehensive collection of essays contributed by Classical Studies scholars that explore questions relating to ethnicity in the ancient Mediterranean world. Covers topics of ethnicity in civilizations ranging from ancient Egypt and Israel, to Greece and Rome, and into Late Antiquity Features cutting-edge research on ethnicity relating to Philistine, Etruscan, and Phoenician identities Reveals the explicit relationships between ancient and modern ethnicities Introduces an interpretation of ethnicity as an active component of social identity Represents a fundamental questioning of formally accepted and fixed categories in the field

In April, 2008, an international colloquium was held at the University of Heidelberg—the fourth convocation of a group of scholars (with some rotating members) who gathered to discuss the status of Judah and the Judeans in the exilic and postexilic periods. The goal of this gathering was specifically to address the question of national identity in the period when many now believe this very issue was in significant foment and development, the era of the Persian/Achaemenid domination of the ancient Near East. This volume contains most of the papers delivered at the Heidelberg conference, considering the matter under two rubrics: (1) the biblical evidence (and the diversity of data from the Bible); and (2) the cultural, historical, social, and environmental factors affecting the formation of national identity. Contributors: K. Schmid, J. Schaper, A. C. Hagedorn, C. Nihan, J. Middlemas, D. Rom-Shiloni, J. Wöhrle, Y. Dor, K. Southwood, D. N. Fulton, P.-A. Beaulieu, L. E. Pearce, D. Redford, A. Lemaire, J. F. Quack, B. Becking, R. G. Kratz, O. Tal, J. Blenkinsopp, R. Albertz, J. L. Wright, D. S. Vanderhooft, M. Oeming, and A. Kloner. Earlier volumes in the series of conferences are: Judah and the Judeans in the Neo-Babylonian Period, Judah and the Judeans in the Persian Period, and Judah and the Judeans in the in the Fourth Century B.C.E.