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In the Dichin (north central Bulgaria) store-buildings destroyed in about the 480s, the large quantities of imported Eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea amphorae typify late Roman military supply (annona) to the forts of the lower Danube limes. A dearth of amphorae at Dichin for most of the sixth century is linked ultimately to alterations in trading patterns in the Mediterranean as a whole. A slight increase in amphorae shortly before the final destruction of c.580 reflects a significant recasting of supply sources. The few imported red-slipped wares are mostly late fifth century and of Pontic origin. During the sixth century, modifications in the local coarse pottery reflect cultural changes in the region — the decline of Romanized eating practices and the impact of the barbarian social traditions. The wider significance of ‘foederati ware’ for the Germanic settlement of the region and its influence on the technology of indigenous ceramics production are also explored.

A wide variety of radical leftist ideas in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries began circulating among segments of the populations of Eastern Mediterranean cities. These ideas, which are best defined as selective adaptations of socialist and anarchic principles, included specific calls for social justice, workers' rights, mass secular education, and anticlericalism, and more broadly a general challenge to the existing social and political order at home and abroad. The ideas of social justice that constituted central themes in leftist thought rarely had a reformist agenda. Radicals in Beirut, Cairo, and Alexandria forged a culture of contestation in which they challenged existing and emerging class boundaries, redefined notions of foreignness and belonging, and promoted alternative visions of the social and world order.

This introductory chapter sets out the book's purpose, which is to explore the rich legal tradition of the Eastern Mediterranean. It assesses the tension between law and religion as two cultural (sub)systems within society that compete for absolute power. It addresses the question of how these two systems exist next to each other in either harmony or conflict, and what strategies are employed in ancient societies to fuse both concepts in a meaningful unity that would govern society. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.

This chapter demonstrates that colonial development during the mandate period was the culmination of a longer running process that stretched back well into the Ottoman period. Contrary to British colonial rhetoric, the districts of the Ottoman Empire that later formed the Palestine Mandate were undergoing rapid change in the decades before the First World War as they were increasingly incorporated into global networks of trade and political reform, all under the umbrella of a centralizing Ottoman state. The chapter begins by taking a general look at the establishment of new routes of infrastructure in the coastal areas of Ottoman Syria, with Palestine appearing as a frontier zone at the southern end of this region. The Ottoman-era interest in developing Haifa and the Dead Sea is then documented, introducing some of the individuals, both locals and outsiders, who aspired to play a role in their development.

This chapter examines the failure of colonial administrators in French West Africa to enforce legislative checks upon Lebanese migration in the years before the Second World War. This lack of success stands out amidst the global proliferation of migration controls in the first half of the twentieth century. For it is not simply that these functionaries were unable to implement effectively the measures they had drafted; more than that, they remained stymied in their very efforts to introduce such controls. That this was so was largely due to the commitments of the French imperial state in the Eastern Mediterranean, which drove administrators in Paris to adopt a benign attitude towards the movements of Lebanese migrants, and to override the efforts of their counterparts in West Africa. To the diplomats at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Lebanon — whether as part of the Ottoman empire or as a French Mandate — was far more important than West Africa. And the Quai d’Orsay, in turn, carried greater weight than the Ministry of Colonies. This tale, then, enhances our understanding of the workings of an imperial polity which was a congeries of conflicting agents, interests, and institutions.

This chapter provides an overall picture of theatrical and musical activity of western origin in south-east Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean from the 16th to the 19th centuries, focusing on religious theatre in the archipelagus, Italian opera on the Ionian Islands as well as ambulant ensembles of prose theatre (mainly Greek) and amateur performances. The investigation focuses on cities such as Constantinople, Odessa, Bucharest, Jassy, Smyrna, Alexandria and islands such as Crete, Corfu, Zante, Chios, Naxos and Cyprus. Moreover, the significant role of translations of libretti by Pietro Metastasio is discussed as well as the activity of Giuseppe Donizetti, who introduced western music to the Ottoman court.

After announcing the principal aims of the book and situating its findings within recent scholarship, the Introduction gives an overview of the political, economic, and intellectual climate in which colonial development was practised in Palestine. It is argued that the Eastern Mediterranean became a crucial testing ground for notions of progress and modernity from the late 19th century onwards as both Ottomans and Europeans formulated a working definition of colonial development. In Palestine this process became particularly marked after 1905—the year in which the exploitation of the Dead Sea and the expansion of Haifa as an industrial port city can first be detected. In terms of British policymaking, Palestine's attraction as the coastal hub of a newly available resource-rich region was greatly enhanced by the changes wrought by the First World War. As Ottoman power crumbled during the war, the advocates of colonial development rose to positions of influence in British government, urging that a more effective use of empire resources could help rebuild the post-war economy.

The collapse of Bronze Age civilizations in the Aegean, southwest Asia, and the eastern Mediterranean 3200 years ago remains a persistent riddle in Eastern Mediterranean archaeology, as both archaeologists and historians believe the event was violent, sudden, and culturally disruptive. In the first phase of this period, many cities between Pylos and Gaza were destroyed violently and often left unoccupied thereafter. The palace economy of the Aegean Region and Anatolia that characterized the Late Bronze Age was replaced by the isolated village cultures of the Dark Ages. Earthquakes, attacks of the Sea Peoples, and socio-political unrest are among the most frequently suggested causes for this phenomenon. However, while climate change has long been considered a potential prime factor in this crisis, only recent studies have pinpointed the megadrought behind the collapse. An abrupt climate shift seems to have caused, or hastened, the fall of the Late Bronze Age world by sparking political and economic turmoil, migrations, and famines. The entirety of the megadrought’s effects terminated the Late Bronze Age in the eastern Mediterranean.

The most striking aspect of the transformations following the onset of Phoenician trade in Tartessos is the indigenous peoples' apparent adoption of religious iconography and funerary rituals with markedly Eastern characteristics. The cemetery of La Joya and the urban center of the city of Huelva have clearly shown how interested both Phoenicians and Greeks were in this Tartessian settlement. Their interest can be easily explained if we keep in mind not only Huelva's proximity to mining centers and its location along the route to the Portuguese Atlantic but also the experience the indigenous peoples had in long-distance trade. This chapter provides an updated overview of ongoing archaeological research in the Guadalquivir area (Huelva, Seville, etc.), deploying a wealth of new data to challenge traditional interpretations of important sites such as El Carambolo (Seville) while stressing the deep level of interaction and cohabitation between local populations and colonists from the Eastern Mediterranean in this region. It explores the possibility of agricultural colonization and the integration of Semitic and indigenous cultic practices in a commercially active environment.

This chapter considers the challenges faced by plant conservation in the Middle East, outlining what is needed for successful conservation. It describes how humans are exacerbating the ongoing effects of desertification, including wood collection, road construction, and extractive petroleum-related technologies. Meanwhile, massive coastal developments are degrading the diverse and productive marine ecosystems. Agriculture continues to stress the regional ecology through overstocking of livestock, land conversion, and ephemeral agriculture. Negative consequences of wadi-damming and water recharge wells all create additional challenges and the hydro-politics are a major source of conflict. The region’s major biodiversity hotspots are described, including the Horn of Africa and Eastern Afromontane regions, Eastern Mediterranean basin, the Irano–Anatolian region with its ancient “Hyrcanian” forestland south of the Caspian, and the Caucasus mountain refugia of Arcto–Tertiary relicts (with the Colchic and Hyrcan forests there and in Hyrcanian Iran being among the oldest forests in western Eurasia).

This chapter presents a biographical sketch of John Lawrence Angel. This is followed by a discussion of his contributions to paleopathology. Angel was the founder of contemporary physical anthropology and paleopathology in Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean. His was an inclusive and multifaceted approach to paleopathology, frequently melding his perspective on paleoecology with archaeological, osteological, and human anatomical inferences.

This chapter examines legal material from the Dead Sea as encountered in the numerous papyri composed in Greek, Hebrew, Jewish Aramaic, and Nabataean Aramaic. These documents illuminate the complex cultural nexus in the Eastern Mediterranean. The chapter focuses on the deeds of sale from among these documents, and analyses the structure and development of the sale formulary used therein.

This chapter first sets out the book's purpose, which is to understand the internal conflicts and struggles in the later Roman Empire, focusing on the Eastern Mediterranean and the reign of Justinian I (r. 527–65). It then addresses some problems involving the sources for the reign of Justinian. It shows how evidence can be used more effectively in understanding sixth-century society through the application of social theory and more literary readings. It argues for making trans-temporal and trans-cultural comparisons between other societies, including those of the sixth century, and our own. The resulting history is intended not only to help in generating new insights into our period; it also suggests approaches to issues emerging in other times and places which others may want to ponder, even to develop, themselves.

This chapter examines the economic ecology of the two regions from which Eastern Mediterranean migrants to French West Africa hailed – the Matn, in central Mount Lebanon, and Jabal ‘Amil, to the south. It argues that, contrary to long-established narratives which saw migration as the outcome of political oppression and social strife, it was largely economic in nature. While European demand for Lebanese silk brought prosperity to the Matn’s cultivators in the mid-nineteenth century, pulling the region into the world economy, it also accustomed them to a certain degree of prosperity; when the fortunes of sericulture began to wane, some took to migration to maintain their families’ status, establishing an enduring propensity for migration. Migration, then, was not the preserve of the poorest, but of those with the means to move. This was all the more the case in Jabal ‘Amil, where migration was the preserve of men of the middling sort from the region’s market towns.