In winter 2018, Linda Gosner taught a graduate seminar for the Interdepartmental Program in Classical Art and Archaeology on Connectivity, Mobility, and Global Networks in the Ancient Western Mediterranean. This course was one of the catalysts for our connectivities workshop. The course description, syllabus, and reading list are available below.
Course description: The topics of connectivity, mobility, and movement are particularly significant for archaeologists working in the Mediterranean today, as the world is witnessing mass movements of people across the sea out of war-torn and impoverished zones. As is becoming increasingly clear through the work of archaeologists and historians (e.g., Horden and Purcell, Broodbank, van Dommelen, Hodos), the Mediterranean has always been a place that fostered connections through the movements of materials, people, and ideas. Concepts such as connectivity, globalization, mobility, migration, and networks have come to dominate scholarship on this topic. In this course, we will discuss these varied theoretical and material approaches through an exploration of case studies from the ancient Western Mediterranean. Our focus will be on the trade, colonization, and conquest undertaken by the Phoenicians, Greeks, Carthaginians, and Romans from the 1st millennium BCE through the Late Roman period in the west. We will also discuss small-scale, local, and regional connections that are sometimes obscured in scholarship focusing on the macro-scale. By the end of this course, students will be familiar with the large body of archaeological evidence from the ancient Western Mediterranean, as well as methods and theoretical approaches related to connectivity that are applicable to evidence from other times and places.
Syllabus Part 1 – Course Description and Assignments
CLARCH 855_Connectivity Syllabus Pt. 1
Syllabus Part 2 – Reading Lists