Next week I'm heading to Oslo to take part in a pre-project workshop for an exciting project called Local Dynamics of Globalization in the pre-modern Levant. The project, headed by Terje Stordalen, Professor of Theology, Oslo, and Oystein La Bianca, Professor of Anthropology, Andrews University has been awarded Centre for Advanced Study (CAS) status for the academic year 2014/15. Nine scholars from Europe, North-America and Norway along with a wider "outer circle" of project participants will work together to "[investigate] how local cultures in the pre-modern Levant adapted policies, trends, habits, and technologies that reached them through imperial and other globalizing channels, and also how local discourse fed back into trans-local dialogue". Chronologically, our research stretches from the Bronze Age to the Ottoman period. You can read more about our group and our planned work here. My contribution will be a study of The In-Betweens: Studies of Traders, Soldiers, Administrators and Nomads in the Ancient Levant, which will fit nicely into my research on the NeRoNE project. The purpose of this first meeting will be to get to know each other personally and professionally, as well as to meet our hosts and se our facilities at the CAS.
Camel caravan
Mosaic from Deir al-Adas, Syria, 8th century (photo: J.C.Meyer)
