Posts com a Tag ‘Mediterrâneo’
Mobilidade e desenraizamento no Mediterrâneo: introdução | Ler História | 2021
This paper was financially supported by the COST ACTION project People in Motion: Entangled Histories of Displacement Across the Mediterranean (1492-1923) (PIMo) as a result of the PIMo workshop “Movement and Displacement”, Centro de História, University of Lisbon, 9-10 March 2020.
1 Mobility, immobility and displacement appear as frequent phenomena in the history of the Mediterranean. The twenty-first century has witnessed an increase in public interest in these themes, with the Mediterranean continuing to be a vehicle of mobility for peoples from around the world, in what the scholarly debate and public discourse have often labelled as a “refugee crisis” or “migratory flood”. Growing societal apprehension about mobility in and around the Mediterranean has been at the very core of the Cost Action project People in Motion: Entangled Histories of Displacement across the Mediterranean (1492-1923) (PIMo).[1] This interdisciplinary historical project aims to problematise current views of mobility around the Mediterranean by regarding mobility, immobility and displacement as part of the Braudelian structures of the Mediterranean (Braudel 1949). As a structure, people in motion across the Mediterranean’s liquid space and its extended hinterlands should not be perceived as problematic, but rather as a historical phenomenon substantially impacting on the personal and communal lives of those located in the orbit of this “great sea” (Abulafia 2011).
2 The “refugee crisis” in 2015 has expanded the boundaries of Mediterranean mobility and has affected even countries not traditionally considered to be part of it or in its orbit. Under the emergency relocation scheme initiated by the European Commission, the EU Member States have committed to expressing their solidarity with the frontline Member States (Italy, Greece, Spain and Malta) by agreeing to accommodate asylum seekers whose first step on European soil was in these countries.[2] While the initial plan was for a two-year commitment, this has since been extended multiple times. But as these extensions have, in practice, failed to increase, increment or intensify intra-European solidarity, new policy instruments have been created to further this cause. The “Pact on Migration and Asylum” has been particularly insistent in establishing mechanisms aimed at promoting continuing solidarity among EU Member States on matters of relocation.[3] The changing patterns of mobility in many EU Member States, particularly those further removed from the Mediterranean’s historical paths, have mostly been “welcomed” with ignorance and resistance. Acceptance has been particularly challenging in those states without a long tradition and experience of mobile resettlement and hosting of international migrants. Indeed, recent studies in some of these states suggest an essential need to raise awareness and inform local communities of the “facts about migrants and refugees in order to be persuaded away from anti-immigrants’ attitudes, prejudices, and stereotypes” (Blažytė, Frėjutė-Rakauskienė and Pilinkaitė-Sotirovič 2020, 15).
3 PIMo connects the past and the present, and individual and community experiences, in seeking to understand which factors have contributed to shaping contemporary representation of migration in the Mediterranean region and beyond, as well as explaining similarities and differences in the experiences and emotional expressions of human movement between the fifteenth century and today. In this way, PIMo has been designed to follow the historiographical premises first proposed by Fernand Braudel (1949) and later amplified and diversified by David Abulafia (2011). However, it also innovates through its perspective and framing. The starting point of the project is that individuals departing from their places of origin become uprooted after a specific window of absence. During their journey, they engage in mobility and, as such, contribute to defining their communities of origin as immobile. In this context, reconstructing the departure of one individual or one community translates into three research axes: mobility (of the individual or community moving), immobility (of the community of origin) and displacement (integration of the individual into the host society). This three-dimensional approach thus introduces an individual and communal-centred focus to a theme often portrayed as a collective abstraction.
4 Individual and communal mobilities have an equally transformative effect on their societies of origin as on their host societies. Upon arrival, individuals, even when transient, fit in and integrate through complex processes of adaptation, inclusion and exclusion. In these processes, three elements are crucial for framing the place that individuals assume in the new society. The first of these is the personal experience of mobility as voluntary, forced or traumatic, with this experience formatting the way individuals perceive their own existence. The second reflects the emotions surrounding the experience of mobility (of the self) and immobility (of the group of origin), given that emotions define the extent of tolerance and acceptance of and in the new society (O’Loughlin 2017). The third and final element entails reconstructing a memory of displacement, whereby new identities are forged and belonging is redefined. The ultimate result of this process is the development of construed ergo- and exo-identities, the former referring to the identity conceived of by the “self”, and the latter to the identity assigned by host societies to the individuals or groups (Hoppenbrouwers 2010).
5 For historians, exo-identities can be found in institutional archives (of states, towns, religious institutions and so on). Ergo-identities, by contrast, are more difficult to pinpoint, given that ergo-documents (such as diaries, personal descriptions, personal correspondence and novels) for the period before the eighteenth century do not abound (Antunes 2014). However, the combination of institutional archives and ergo-documents offers a unique window for understanding the emotions individuals experienced while moving, while their feelings of displacement, integration and mobility shed unique light on the human experience of the multiple Mediterranean crossings (Tarantino 2020). In the case of this special issue, religious minorities, maritime groups, diplomats, merchants and writers take centre stage. Even though other groups deserve particular attention, as is the case of armies, captives, refugees or intellectuals, the allotted space of reflection (a total of four articles) imposes some unavoidable analytical constraints.
6 This special issue provides insight into the way different individuals and communities moved and circulated in and around the Mediterranean from the Middle Ages up until the early nineteenth century. It unites four complementary and innovative ways of looking at Mediterranean mobility, immobility and displacement. In the first place, it covers a geographical space that includes the Eastern, Central and Western Mediterranean in its internal dynamics and connections to worlds beyond the “great sea”. This approach highlights the importance of not limiting studies of the Mediterranean to its geographical constraints. The work by Barros and Tavim privileges the circulations between Morocco, Portugal and, to a lesser extent, Spain, with a particular focus on the Moorish and Jewish communities on both sides of the Mediterranean and the way these communities reacted, dealt with and responded to the mobility of specific individuals. Hugo Martins, on the other hand, looks at Mediterranean mobility as a consequence of communal customs and needs of Jewish groups located primarily outside the direct scope of the Mediterranean and, as such, redefines a geographical conceptualisation of the “great sea” well beyond the boundaries imposed by its shores. David do Paço, meanwhile, combines the centrality of the Mediterranean as a space of circulation and connection between empires (Ottoman and Habsburg) in seeking to conceptualise the importance of the sea as a means of imperial integration of political entities perceived as socially and geographically distant. Lastly, Katrina O’Loughlin analyses how the Mediterranean geography was paramount in defining an abstract space for incorporating displacement and establishing who may be perceived as “the other”.
7 Secondly, the authors rethink the Mediterranean geography through the lens of mobility and as a result these articles provide innovative insights into the human experience of motion. All the authors reflect on how historical actors’ mobility determined their fate (historically or fictionally), but also on how the same mobility condemned communities and families left in places of origin to immobility. The articles reflect the many ways in which this dichotomy seems to have weighed heavy in how people perceived, felt and communicated their sense of displacement and, in so doing, greatly influenced the forming of individual and communal identities in the host society. It was this latter process that ultimately determined the levels of integration into, adaptation to or rejection of people’s new social context, thus influencing the core of their identity transformation and reshaping of belonging (Antunes 2014).
8 The third way in which these articles advance scholarly understanding of human motion in and around the greater Mediterranean is by examining how specific individuals framed their mobility as a life experience and, as such, re-created, construed and shaped what Pierre Nora (1984-1992) has long associated with the lieux de mémoire. The articles demonstrate how spaces that Nora would readily associate with a lieu de mémoire were shaped and imagined by the individual and communal experiences of the few and entered the collective memory of the many as truisms. This insight is particularly helpful for historians as the often almost emotional relationship that scholars develop with their historical actors can endanger the neutrality that historians have been required to contemplate ever since Marc Bloch (1949) defined the major principles of the profession.
9 The fourth and final way in which these articles contribute to a new understanding represents a direct response to three historiographical challenges posed by Maria Fusaro, Rogers Brubaker and Joep Leerssen. In revising Braudel’s oeuvre, Fusaro (2010) calls on historians to view the mobility of goods (trade) as being inherent and concomitant to human mobility. This revisionist approach thus envisages a Mediterranean playing its part in a global world of human and material exchanges extending from China to Scandinavia. Although less geographically extensive, the articles in this issue translate the human geography of Mediterranean mobility well beyond the constraints of its shores and, as such, highlight the need to include the Mediterranean in the current historiographical turn towards global history. In adopting this global approach to Mediterranean mobility (here understood as motion, displacement and immobility), the authors reflect on the crucial problem of identity formation and identification. In doing so, they replicate the call by Rogers Brubaker (2004) to rethink and reconceptualise ethnicity as a social phenomenon outside the group and not necessarily aligned with it. The consequence of such realisation is that labelling human mobility as diasporic or communally based falls short when seeking to explain the development of construed identities, identity hybridity and, ultimately, alterity as postulated by Joep Leerssen (2007).
10 The solution that this special issue found for resolving the apparent paradox between answering Brubaker’s call and responding to Leerssen’s premises is to offer a multidisciplinary approach to the identity/hybridity/alterity problem by combining methodologies and scientific queries well known to historians and complementing them with the enriching analytical views of anthropologists and creative writers. This collaboration represents a first step towards rethinking the meaning and impact of mobility in the Mediterranean in both the past and the present. One final note is in order. While preparing this special issue, we learned, discussed and reconceptualised our approaches and the interpretation of the respective primary sources. This was an enjoyable and fruitful exchange that we will cherish moving forward. However, we faced a great loss during the last phase of this project. The sudden passing of Filomena Barros, co-author of one of the articles, left us shocked and stunned, leaving Medieval and Early Modern historiography on mourisco communities in Portugal and elsewhere poorer. This special issue stands partially as a celebration of her work on mobility, displacement and identification of religious minorities.
Notas
1. See www.peopleinmotion-costaction.org.
2. The Council of the European Union. Council Decision (EU) 2015/1523, dated 14 September 2015 (https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32015D1523).
3. The European Commission. Migration and Asylum Package: New Pact on Migration and Asylum, dated 23 September 2020 (https://ec.europa.eu/info/publications/migration-and-asylum-package-new-pact-migration-and-asylum-documents-adopted-23-september-2020_en).
Cátia Antunes – Leiden University, The Netherlands. E-mail: c.a.p.antunes@hum.leidenuniv.nl
Giedrė Blažytė – Diversity Development Group, Lithuanian Centre for Social Sciences, Lithuania. E-mail: giedre@diversitygroup.lt
ANTUNES, Cátia e BLAZYTÊ, Giedré. Mobilidade e desenraizamento no Mediterrâneo: Introdução. Mobility and Displacement in and around the Mediterranean: An Introduction. Ler História, Lisboa, n.78, p.9-15, 2021. Acessar publicação original [IF]
L’Époque romaine ou la Mediterranée au nord des Alpes | Flutsch
No final do século V a.C. os celtas ocuparam o território da atual Suíça, sobrepondo-se às antigas populações lacustres, agrícolas e de pastores. Nova invasão ocorreu no final do séc. II a.C., quando os helvécios – também celtas – liderados por Divico, avançaram do sul da Germânia em direção à Gália. Em 61, então já estabelecidos no território alpino, que os romanos englobavam no nome genérico de gaulês, prepararam-se para nova migração em direção ao oeste, comandados por Orgétorix, migração fracassada pelo assassinato do líder. Entretanto os romanos já haviam dominado parcialmente esse território, isto é, todo o sul da Gália, e o conflito foi inevitável, terminando com a vitória dos romanos sobre os helvécios em 58 a.C.. Tomando partido desse fato Júlio César obriga os helvécios a permanecer na região alpina e dá início à conquista completa da Gália. Estas e outras circunstâncias, afirma Flutsch, têm impedido os suíços contemporâneos de reconhecer Divico ou Orgétorix como heróis nacionais, e leva o autor a falar da cultura ou do legado da romanização mais em termos de galo-romanos (mais abrangente) do que helveto-romanos – mais restrito e discutível, já que os helvécios não defenderam uma “pátria” contra os romanos, mas foram por eles impedidos de sair de onde se tinham estabelecido. Após a vitória sobre os helvécios os romanos iniciaram o estabelecimento de colônias e legiões: por volta de 44 a.C. foi criada a Colonia Julia Equestris (atual Nyon, próximo a Genebra, na margem do lago), e por volta de 20 a. C. começaram as construções na Colonia Raurica, em território dos rauraques, outra população celta – é a atual Augst, próxima a Basiléia, cujos vestígios estão hoje em muito bom estado de recuperação. Portanto no I século a.C. a presença romana embora marcante deixava quase total independência às populações alpinas. Com a chegada do Império as terras da atual Suíça foram ocupadas pelas legiões e pelas instituições políticas e administrativas romanas, que, contudo, não eliminaram as estruturas sociais e a organização dos vários grupos celtas. Nessa fase o território estava dividido por cinco distintas províncias romanas: o norte pertencia à Germânia Superior, o oeste à Narbonense, o sul aos Alpes e à Itália, e o leste à Récia. Ao destacar este fato Flutsch faz notar que a romanização, embora não tenha contribuído para criar uma consciência de unidade no que veio a ser o povo suíço, definiu a “cantonização” que hoje constitui a Confederação Helvética (em que pese a dubiedade deste termo, que ele evitou). De fato, na confederação o norte e centro é de língua alemã, o oeste de língua francesa, o sul de língua italiana, e o sudeste romanche. Depois do seu apogeu no século II d.C. o Império Romano entrou em decadência e em meados do séc. III a crise econômica da Itália atingiu as províncias: as guerras e a anarquia, aliadas aos impostos escorchantes fizeram os agricultores desistir da lavoura, e engrossar as turbas de ociosos e bandidos. Fome e peste provocaram a baixa demográfica, e os germanos, aproveitando-se da fraqueza imperial, começaram a atacar as fronteiras e fazer suas primeiras incursões em território alpino. Apesar da recuperação sob Diocleciano, e depois sob Constantino, os romanos continuaram a sofrer os embates com os invasores, e repetidas vezes os alamanos (354, 365, 375) atacaram as legiões e penetraram no território rauraque. Mas o território dito gaulês, ou helvécio, da posterior Suíça não recebeu, antes do séc.VI, invasões maciças germânicas, mesmo quando as legiões abandonaram o território em 401. Quando os Borguinhões, em 443, se instalaram na região de Genebra, rapidamente se incorporaram à cultura galo-romana. Já os alamanos, que ocuparam o norte no século seguinte, impuseram seu idioma germânico, que se mantém até hoje. Depois dessa revisão histórica do período romano (I a.C. a V d.C.) que ocupa metade do livro, o autor dedica um capítulo à “globalização econômica”, ou seja, às marcas deixadas pela romanização no modo de vida material. A incorporação das regiões alpinas gaulesas e helvéticas à economia do Império trouxe estruturas administrativas eficientes; todos os tipos de produção usual da época floresceram, novas profissões surgiram, estradas foram construídas – definindo em seus cruzamentos e passagens quase todas as principais cidades suíças da atualidade. A ligação dos Alpes com o Mediterrâneo (razão do subtítulo da obra) não só exportava os produtos locais, mas propiciava à população das montanhas consumir produtos até então desconhecidos ou reservados à elite celta: vinho, azeite, frutas e conservas de peixe passaram a estar ao alcance de grande parte da população alpina. Percorrendo diversos aspectos da vida comum, desde a tecnologia de construção à produção agrícola, Flutsch vai mostrando como o período romano lançou as bases da sociedade suíça; contudo adverte: a romanização operou-se principalmente nos centros urbanos, enquanto nas regiões rurais a cultura celta permaneceu; por outro lado, após o desmoronamento do Império muitas de suas características desapareceram, como certos tipos de bens de consumo e de conforto, que só voltaram à Suíça no séc. XX. Se ao falar de economia Flutsch mostra sua formação e pendor de arqueólogo, apoiando-se freqüentemente nos vestígios materiais da romanização, o último capítulo – “o casamento das culturas” – é ainda mais objetivo e concreto na apresentação de elementos materiais: para comprovar a importância das construções civis e da urbanização como modeladoras e ao mesmo tempo indicadores da vida social; ao trazer inscrições latinas que denotam peculiaridades da continuidade da cultura celta, inclusive familiar, sob capa romana, ou a presença das mulheres nas atividades da elite; receitas médicas evidenciando a introdução da medicina greco-romana; mosaicos e esculturas caseiras mostrando a aceitação da mitologia e da religião romanas; a completa alteração dos hábitos de alimentação pela importação de muitos produtos e dos modos de cozinhar mais sofisticados. Os exemplos que aduz são muitos bastando completá-los com os traços referentes ao que é menos material: as crenças. Uma cabeça de touro tricórnio celta esculpida em estilo romano; as inúmeras estatuetas de Lug disfarçado de Mercúrio; Caturix, deus protetor dos helvécios, que surge como Marte Caturix; Taranis empunhando o raio de Júpiter; o culto às novas divindades orientais que tinham entrado no Império, inclusive o cristianismo, cuja presença em território suíço é atestada desde o final do séc. IV, ou ainda os costumes celtas de velório e sepultamento modificados pelos romanos. Na conclusão, intitulada “um parêntese que não se fechou” o autor retoma e resume as principais aportações da romanização à Helvécia galo-romana desde o latim e a telha ao gato doméstico e ao alho, para defender as suas teses, entre as quais destacamos: 1. a arqueologia é uma ciência bem fundamentada em técnicas de interpretação de vestígios materiais, mas não está imune a influências doutrinais e ideológicas, nem à percepção do antigo pelos olhos da atualidade; é assim que discretamente alude à integração alpina na cultura mediterrânica e na globalização imperial para sugerir (129) que essa antiga abertura conduz a Suíça à integração na União Européia; 2. a romanização lançou os fundamentos do modo de vida suíço da atualidade, mas não construiu uma consciência de nacionalidade unificada, que é muito recente; daí as suas críticas às alusões do passado como criador dessa identidade de povo, que ele considera um erro de interpretação que falseia a própria visão da Suíça – aliás o autor continuamente se dirige a seus patrícios, pois usa muito o termo “nós” e “nosso” para falar da região. Deste modo, um pequeno volume de introdução a um período histórico é de fato, como toda a coleção Savoir Suisse, um chamado à revisão da percepção que os suíços têm de si mesmos e do seu papel na atualidade. De alguma forma a arqueologia de Laurent Flutsch, diretor de escavações, de exposições e do Museu romano de Lausanne-Vidy, é uma ciência de intervenção política.
João Lupi – Departamento de Filosofia UFSC. E-mail: lupi@cfh.ufsc.br
FLUTSCH, Laurent. L’Époque romaine ou la Mediterranée au nord des Alpes. Lausana: Presses polytechniques; Universitaires romandes, col. Le Savoir Suisse, 2005. Resenha de: LUPI, João. A Suíça e o Mediterrâneo. Brathair – Revista de Estudos Celtas e Germânicos. São Luís, v.7, n.1, p. 101-103, 2007. Acessar publicação original [DR]
Space and Time in Mediterranean Prehistory – SOUVATZI; HADJI (DP)
SOUVATZI, Stella; HADJI, Athena (Eds.). Space and Time in Mediterranean Prehistory (Routledge Studies in Archaeology). London: Routledge, 2014. 304p. Resenha de: SRAKA, Marko. Documenta Praehistorica, v.41, 2014.
The collection of papers Space and Time in Mediterranean Prehistory is an outcome of the collaboration between Stella Souvatzi, who regularly writes on spatiality within social archaeological themes such as households, as in her recent book A Social Archaeology of Households in Neolithic Greece, and Athena Hadji, whose Berkeley PhD thesis was entitled on The Construction of Time in Aegean Archaeology.
The editors invited researchers from a predominantly interpretative (post-processual) archaeological tradition who deal with Mediterranean prehistory and included a few selected revised contributions to the similarly named session at the 16th Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists in the Hague. The collection of papers contains 15 chapters by archaeologists, anthropologists and an architect.
This timely volume is an anticipated continuation of the critique of space and time as passive and homogenous backdrops to human life, and treats them as socially constructed, as well as inseparable from human lives and experience. It not only restates the urgency of a theoretical discussion of the conceptualisation of space and time in archaeology, but attempts, perhaps for the first time in archaeology, to treat them as inseparable and as essential to understanding past social relations at different scales. The volume is also innovative in its focus on the whole of the prehistoric Mediterranean, which is too often fragmented in narratives along national, linguistic, academic and other boundaries. The volume stems from
“… the ever-growing interest in space and spatiality across the social sciences; the comparative neglect of time and temporality; the lack in the existing literature of an explicit and balanced focus on both space and time; and the large amount of new information coming from the prehistoric Mediterranean”, which serves “… as an empirical archaeological background for the application and detailed analysis” (Preface, p. xv).
The first chapter, written by the editors, serves as a theoretical introduction to the volume and reviews some focal points of research into Mediterranean prehistory, which is then further developed in the following chapter by Robert Chapman. Although not complete in its coverage of the theoretical discussions, the editors’ introduction separately presents the conceptualisation of both space and time first in the social sciences in general and then within theoretical archaeology. The volume is an engaging and diverse collection of papers, and the reader can find plenty of useful information and thought-provoking ideas. The editors point to diverse and interesting topics and concepts applied to Mediterranean prehistory in this volume (p. 19–20): houses, households, settlements and communities (Stavrides, Harkness, Watkins, Düring, Marketou, Márquez- Romero & Jiménez-Jáimez and Athanasiou), urban space and planning (Athanasiou), architecture and the built environment (Harkness, Meegan and Márquez- Romero & Jiménez-Jáimez), the social production of space and the dialectical relationship between people and space (Stavrides), embodied space, movement (Harkness, Meegan and Skeates), cultural diversity and differences, social transitions, meaning, identity and memory (Skeates, Miller Bonney, Marketou, Murrieta-Flores and Yasur-Landau and Cline), the concepts of time in terms of social memory, identity and continuity, the transmission of social knowledge and reproduction of architecture (Meegan, Watkins, Düring, Miller Bonney Murrieta-Flores, Márquez- Romero & Jiménez-Jáimez and Yasur-Landau & Cline) as well as residential mobility, discontinuity, abandonment and destruction (Skeates and Marketou).
Many contributors deal with similar topics and concepts, but approach them from different spatio-temporal scales. The editors (p. 19) recognise the importance of time perspectivism and of
“… a multiscalar approach to both space and time that will explore linkages between a whole range of spatial an temporal relationships”, critique the overuse of the large-scale, long-term approach and express the “… lack of a sense of short-term and small-scale social action and the bewildering and contradictory complexity of everyday lived reality”.
However, many contributors retain the large-scale, long-term approach, even if enriched by perspectives offered by local contexts, by selecting case studies from across the Mediterranean region or the millennia-long periods of prehistory (Watkins, Düring, Bonney). Some articles are more descriptive (Marketou, Yasur-Landau & Cline) with the addition, of course, of a theoretical commentary.
A critical weakness of the volume is the lack of more contributions from archaeologists more affiliated with what it is known as archaeological science, since space and time are central concepts for archaeology in general. The volume would certainly benefit from being more of a bridge between theory and practice in archaeology. When discussing time, the authors, informed of the development in anthropological theory, go further than most other theoreticians; for example, they present a critique of the established dichotomy of linear versus cyclical time, one identified with Western thought and the other with ‘traditional’ or ‘primitive’ societies, as well as the dichotomy of objective and subjective time (p. 6). But they do not problematise the related dichotomy of abstract and substantial time or measured time (chronology) and experienced time, which was established by proponents of interpretative archaeology Michael Shanks and Christopher Tilley in their book Social Theory and Archaeology (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press) and which continues to polarise the treatment of time and perpetuates “The Two Cultures” (cf. C. P. Snow’s 1959 lecture) divide in archaeology. Substantial versus abstract time is of course a valid observation, but it tends to alienate proponents of social archaeology on the one and archaeological science on the other hand. The editors as well as the contributors (with a couple of exceptions: Skeates, Murrieta-Flores) do not attempt to bridge this gap. Most of the articles are written from a phenomenological perspective, which is not contradictory to, and would benefit from, ‘scientific’ approaches, such as a variety of spatial GIS analyses and temporal Bayesian modelling of calendar chronologies.
Nevertheless, this collection of papers is innovative in that it specifically tries to link the top-down with the bottom-up, the large-scale with the small-scale, the long-term with short-term, and most importantly, structure with agency. As expected, the contributors achieve this with varying success. The diversity of themes and views conveyed by individual papers preclude further summary in the context of this short review. We would, however, like to highlight the excellent paper by Patricia Murrieta-Flores (chapter 11). The author of the paper Space and Temporality in Herding Societies (p. 196-213) discusses prehistoric pastoralism and transhumance since the Chalcolithic in the Sierra Morena mountain range of the Iberian Peninsula and integrates space and time through GIS analyses. Time is introduced into the spatial GIS analysis with the help of cost-time models and by accounting for the different types of pasture available during different seasons. The analyses show patterns of regular distances between settlements in travel time. Furthermore, by mapping megaliths, she is able to show that they are located along preferred herding routes. According to the author, “For herders, to travel through the landscape is also to travel through time, as movement resonates with the seasonal changes of the landscape”.
Furthermore, “Through time, the monuments as works of the ancestors might have served as material reminders of the deep past, of a temporality that extended beyond the seasonal cycle, where every movement acquired time depth, becoming the reiteration of the actual movements of the ancestors” (p. 209). The monuments along the herding routes thus connect the immediate here-and-now experience of the traveling herder with social memory, the deep past and the ancestors, who perhaps tracked the same routes. In a way, the herder travels both through space and time. We believe this paper is the closest to the ideal to which the volume aspires, namely the multiscalar integration of spacetime with social archaeology, and goes a step further with the much needed bridging of the divide between social archaeology and archaeological science.
In the last chapter, which serves as a discussion (p.262–291), Stephanie Koerner provides a useful commentary on the major themes and concepts in the volume and ‘contextualises’ the volume within the framework of a broader interdisciplinary discourse of space and time and how these relate to concepts such as structure and agency. The discussion is a challenging yet compelling philosophical text, which adds the finishing touches to the whole volume by stressing the relevance of issues explored in the volume not just for archaeology, but for the social sciences in general. Space and Time in Mediterranean Prehistory is an exciting and innovative collection of papers that should be read by students and researchers interested in the prehistoric Mediterranean, conceptualisations of space and time and those interested in social archaeology and anthropology in general.
Marko Sraka – University of Ljubljana
[IF]Las ánforas fenício-púnicas del Mediterráneo Central y Occidental – TORRES (RHAA)
TORRES, Joan Ramon. Las ánforas fenício-púnicas del Mediterráneo Central y Occidental. Barcelona: Publicacions de la Universitat de Barcelona, col. Instrumenta, n.2, 1995. 661p. Resenha de: KORMIKIARI, Maria Cristina Nicolau. Revista de História da Arte e Arqueologia, Campinas, n.2, p.373-377, 1995/1996.
Maria Cristina Nicolau Komikiari – Universidade de São Paulo, Brasil.
Acesso somente pelo link original
[IF]