Our project is inevitably coming to an end, but we'll still have results to present for some time to come. Just today we sent our edited volume Sinews of Empire: Networks in the Roman Near East and Beyond to the press. It is already available for preorder at a special pre-publication price at Oxbow Books.
Below is the cover-text and table of contents:
A recent surge of interest in network approaches to the study of the ancient world has enabled scholars of the Roman Empire to move beyond traditional narratives of domination, resistance, integration and fragmentation. This relational turn has offered tools to identify, map, visualise and, in some cases, quantify interaction based on a variety of ancient source materials. It also provides a terminology to deal with the everyday ties of power, trade and ideology that operated within, below and beyond the superstructure of imperial rule. Thirteen contributions employ a range of quantitative, qualitative and descriptive network approaches in order to provide new perspectives on trade, communication, administration, technology, religion and municipal life in the Roman Near East and adjacent regions.
Sinews of empire
and the relational turn in classical scholarship
Håkon Teigen and Eivind Heldaas Seland
Going mental.
Culture, exchange and compromise in Rome’s trade with the East
Wim Broekaert
Sinews of belief,
anchors of devotion: the cult of Zeus Kasios in the Mediterranean
Anna Collar
Numismatic
communities in the northern South Caucasus 300 BCE–300 CE: A geospatial analysis of coin finds from
Caucasian Iberia and Caucasian Albania
Lara Fabian
The diffusion of
architectural innovations: Modelling social networks in the ancient building
trade
Henrik Gerding & Per Östborn
Texture of
empire: Personal networks and the modus operandi of Roman hegemony
Michael Sommer
Sinews of the
other empire: The Parthian Great King’s rule over vassal kingdoms
Leonardo Gregoratti
Speech patterns
as indicators of religious identities: the Manichaean community in late antique
Egypt
Mattias Brand
Networking beyond
death: Priests and their family networks in Palmyra explored through the
funerary sculpture
Rubina Raja
Trade networks
among the army camps of the Eastern Desert of Roman Egypt*
Yanne Broux
Palmyrene
merchant networks and economic integration in competitive markets
Katia Schörle
Businessmen and
local elites in the Lycos valley
Kerstin Droß-Krüpe
The social
networks of late antique Western Thebes
Elisabeth O’Connell and Giovanni R. Ruffini