Abstract
This contribution deals with the recent paradigm shift in thinking about Mediterranean connectedness and how this affected prevalent ideas about the functioning of the ancient economy. It sketches the intellectual, cultural and academic contexts in which connectivity thinking has developed over the last 50 years and discusses some of its basic tenets, notably the notion of unlimited, Mediterranean-wide connectedness and individual economic agency. A blind spot in the current vision of a connected Mediterranean concerns the evidence of regional differentiality in connectivity and the ways and means that connectedness and networks were manipulated to create or reinforce power relations—a point which is illustrated with the help of a long-term study of seaborne and terrestrial connections in the southern part of the Greek island of Euboia.
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Notes
- 1.
I wish to express my thanks to Dr. Reinhard Jung and Dr. Stefanos Gimatzidis for the invitation to participate in the symposium and to contribute to this volume. I also wish to thank the symposium organizers and participants for their feedback on an earlier version of this paper. My contribution draws upon a synthesizing study as part of a research project titled “The sea and land routes of southern Euboea, ca. 4000–1 BCE. A case study in Mediterranean interconnectivity”, funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) as project no. PR-14-08 (abbreviated SESLR).
- 2.
This point is illustrated by the examples of ships that, according to Horden and Purcell (2000: 142, 149), retained “close links with cabotage”, namely the medieval Serçe Liman wreck which carried a valuable glass cargo, and the mid-fifth-century BCE Greek and Phoenician ships mentioned in the Elephantine palimpsest as paying substantial taxes in an Egyptian port.
- 3.
Horden and Purcell (2000: 172) oppose this view, making a case for continuous interconnectivity during the early Medieval period and suggesting that thanks to the long-lasting tradition of cabotage something similar could be assumed for every period that counts as a dark age or period of low interconnectivity in Mediterranean history.
- 4.
Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg not only wrote a document entitled “Connectivity is a Human Right”, but noted on more than one occasion (e.g. in Facebook’s mission statement) that the social network wasn’t originally designed to be a company, “It was built to accomplish a social mission” and “give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together”.
- 5.
Theban Linear B documents mention a place called ka-ru-to, which has been identified with Karystos. However, given the extreme paucity of Mycenaean finds (and especially LH IIIB material), I suggest that this place must be located outside what was later known as Karystia (see Crielaard & Songu, 2017: 276–277; Crielaard, forthcoming, both with further refs.).
- 6.
The earliest metal finds are six symmetrical arched fibulae with twisted bow, three violin bow fibulae and three dress pins of bronze dating to the Sub-Mycenaean period (Crielaard, forthcoming, Fig. 10.3) The earliest identifiable pottery at the site is Early to Middle Protogeometric (see Charalambidou, 2017, 255–256).
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Crielaard, J.P. (2021). Happily Connected? The Interconnectivity Paradigm and the Debate About the Ancient Economy. In: Gimatzidis, S., Jung, R. (eds) The Critique of Archaeological Economy. Frontiers in Economic History . Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72539-6_10
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