Across The Corrupting Sea

Across the Corrupting Sea: Post-Braudelian Approaches to the Ancient Eastern Mediterranean reframes current discussions of the Mediterranean world by rereading the past with new methodological approaches. The work asks readers to consider how future studies might write histories of the Mediterranean, moving from the larger pan-Mediterranean approaches of The Corrupting Sea towards locally-oriented case studies. Spanning from the Archaic period to the early Middle Ages, contributors engage the pioneering studies of the Mediterranean by Fernand Braudel through the use of critical theory, GIS network analysis, and postcolonial cultural inquiries. Scholars from several time periods and disciplines rethink the Mediterranean as a geographic and cultural space shaped by human connectivity and follow the flow of ideas, ships, trade goods and pilgrims along the roads and seascapes that connected the Mediterranean across time and space. The volume thus interrogates key concepts like cabotage, seascapes, deep time, social networks, and connectivity in the light of contemporary archaeological and theoretical advances in order to create new ways of writing more diverse histories of the ancient world that bring together local contexts, literary materials, and archaeological analysis.

Across the Corrupting Sea: Post-Braudelian Approaches to the Ancient Eastern Mediterranean reframes current discussions of the Mediterranean world by rereading the past with new methodological approaches. The work asks readers to consider how future studies might write histories of the Mediterranean, moving from the larger pan-Mediterranean approaches of The Corrupting Sea towards locally-oriented case studies. Spanning from the Archaic period to the early Middle Ages, contributors engage the pioneering studies of the Mediterranean by Fernand Braudel through the use of critical theory, GIS network analysis, and postcolonial cultural inquiries. Scholars from several time periods and disciplines rethink the Mediterranean as a geographic and cultural space shaped by human connectivity and follow the flow of ideas, ships, trade goods and pilgrims along the roads and seascapes that connected the Mediterranean across time and space. The volume thus interrogates key concepts like cabotage, seascapes, deep time, social networks, and connectivity in the light of contemporary archaeological and theoretical advances in order to create new ways of writing more diverse histories of the ancient world that bring together local contexts, literary materials, and archaeological analysis.

The Corrupting Sea is a history of the relationship between people and their environments in the Mediterranean region over some 3,000 years. It offers a novel analysis of this relationship in terms of microecologies and the often extensive networks to which they belong.

This volume brings together for the first time a collection of twelve articles written both jointly and individually by Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell as they have participated in the debates generated by their major work, The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History (2000). One theme in those debates has been how a comprehensive Mediterranean history can be written: how an approach to Mediterranean history by way of its ecologies and the communications between them can be joined up with more mainstream forms of enquiry – cultural, social, economic, and political, with their specific chronologies and turning points. The second theme raises the question of how Mediterranean history can be fitted into a larger, indeed global history. It concerns the definition of the Mediterranean in space, the way to characterise its frontiers, and the relations between the region so defined and the other large spaces, many of them oceans, to which historians have increasingly turned for novel disciplinary-cum-geographical units of study. A volume collecting the two authors’ studies on both these themes, as well as their reply to critics of The Corrupting Sea, should prove invaluable to students and scholars from a number of disciplines: ancient, medieval and early modern history, archaeology, and social anthropology. (CS1083).

What is the Mediterranean? - Physical setting - Trading empires - Sea routes - Mare Nostrum - Christian Mediterranean - Resurgent Islam - Battleground of the European powers - Globalized Mediterranean.

Physical Oceanography of the Dying Aral Sea describes the background, present crisis state, and possible future of this peculiar inland water body from the physical oceanographic standpoint. Based on a wide range of material, a large part of which was published in Russian and has not been previously available to the international reader, the book first provides an historical overview of this unique system, which possesses both lake and sea properties. Next, the current physical state of the lake is described, partly based on original field research and model experiments, along with the remote sensing data, model results and analyses extracted from recent literature. Next, book attempts to forecast the forthcoming state of the Aral Sea and identify plausible future scenarios. Finally, the book discusses the Aral Sea dessication viewd as a part of the global perspective.

Cataloging the sights, smells, sounds, and features common to the many peoples who share the Mediterranean, this fascinating portrait of a place and its civilizations is sure to appeal to active and armchair travelers alike. 58 illustrations.

The Struggle for Sea Power is the fourth book in M. B. Synge's engaging Story of the Worlds series. This edition focuses on the age of European Empires and world colonization in America, Australia, South Africa, and India. Synge also covers the American and French Revolutions, as well as the campaigns of Napoleon. This volume makes history come alive for your child.

The story of Jason and the Argonauts and Homer's tales of Ulysses' wanderings are among the greatest of the ancient epics, but they are not merely fiction. Following the clues in the classical texts, Mauricio Obregón here maps the likely routes of these adventurers and reveals the remaining traces of the things and places they describe, re-creating the geographical discovery of the ancient world. Obregón takes us with him on his reenactments of the hazardous adventures of Jason, sailing east along the coast of the Black Sea, and of Ulysses, sailing clockwise around the Mediterranean. These voyages map the two major seas of the ancient era and help us understand how the Greeks viewed their world — including the many startling deductions they were able to make about it (such as the circumference of the earth) from what today seems like limited knowledge. Obregón has also traced the voyages depicted in the Norse legends, followed adventurous Muslims on southern journeys, and emulated the Polynesians who managed to traverse the seemingly limitless Pacific. He scrutinizes every detail of sailing in ancient times, such as the mechanics of navigation: The stars, for example, which the mariners took as their guides, were not in the positions that we see them in today, a crucial fact in re-creating past voyages. This wonderful book contains more than forty drawings and photographs, including depictions of the explorers' ships based on the descriptions in the literature that has come down to us, the facts hidden in the fiction, from ancient times.

Connecting Europe, Asia, and Africa, the Mediterranean Sea has been for millennia the place where religions, economies, and political systems met, clashed, influenced and absorbed one another. In this brilliant and expansive book, David Abulafia offers a fresh perspective by focusing on the sea itself: its practical importance for transport and sustenance; its dynamic role in the rise and fall of empires; and the remarkable cast of characters-sailors, merchants, migrants, pirates, pilgrims-who have crossed and re-crossed it. Ranging from prehistory to the 21st century, The Great Sea is above all a history of human interaction. Interweaving major political and naval developments with the ebb and flow of trade, Abulafia explores how commercial competition in the Mediterranean created both rivalries and partnerships, with merchants acting as intermediaries between cultures, trading goods that were as exotic on one side of the sea as they were commonplace on the other. He stresses the remarkable ability of Mediterranean cultures to uphold the civilizing ideal of convivencia, "living together." Now available in paperback, The Great Sea is the definitive account of perhaps the most vibrant theater of human interaction in history.