New book out: Sinews of Empire: Networks in the Roman Near East and Beyond

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

New publication: The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea: A network approach

The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea is a Roman period guide to trade and navigation in the Indian Ocean. Justly famous for offering a contemporary and descriptive account of early Indian Ocean trade, the work has been subject to and a point of departure for numerous studies. Its extensive influence on scholarship is, however, also problematic, as it reflects the limited information and cultural and personal bias of its unknown author. Network analysis allows us to map, visualize and measure interconnectedness in this text. Many of these connections are not explicitly mentioned in the text, but by connecting not only places with places, but also products with places that export and import them, we get a partly different impression of Indian Ocean trade from that conventionally gathered from the Periplus. It allows us to ask questions about the relationship between coastal cabotage and transoceanic shipping, to identify regional trading circuits, and unexpected centres of long-distance exchange.

Asian Review of World Histories // Volume 4, Issue 2/JULY 2016, pp. 191-205

Zoomable figures and dataset are available from Bergen Open Research Archive

New publication on Palmyra

Together with colleagues Jørgen Christian Meyer and Nils Anfinset I have a new edited book out. Very little networks, but lots of Roman Near East. These are the proceedings of a conference we hosted at the Norwegian Institute in Athens in December 2012 as a part of a research project on Palmyra. It brings together results of international fieldwork and research on the Syrian caravan city until the start of the Syrian civil war. The book can be bought in paper or as e-book from Archaeopress. See their web-site for full details on contents. 

New publication: Writ in water, lines in sand

I've got a new article out. It is called "Writ in water, lines in sand: Ancient trade routes, models and comparative evidence" and deals with the problems of tracing connectivity in the distant past. It started as a paper at  the workshop A Thousand Worlds: Network Models in Archaeology, Durham October 2013. Thanks to Rune Rattenborg for inviting me to the workshop and to Kristoffer Damgaard for his extensive comments to the manuscript.

The article is published in Cogent Arts & Humanities, a new Open Access mega-journal for the humanities, and can be dowloaded for free from their website. They demand a public interest statement for each article, explaining why it is interesting and important. I've pasted mine with the abstract below:

Abstract

Historians and archaeologists often take connectivity for granted, and fail to address the problems of documenting patterns of movement. This article highlights the methodological challenges of reconstructing trade routes in prehistory and early history. The argument is made that these challenges are best met through the application of modern models of connectivity, in combination with the conscious use of comparative approaches.


Public Interest Statement

Trade is a driving force in the global economy, and among the prime agents of wealth distribution as well as cultural and political change. Historical and archaeological research has demonstrated that this is no recent phenomena, but that forerunners of the processes today labelled as globalization have been at work within all spheres of society throughout human history. While acknowledging the central role played by long-distance trade in the past, I argue in this article that scholars often take connectivity for granted, overlooking the major physical and institutional obstacles to travel in the premodern period, as well as the problems inherent to reconstructing the dynamic process of trade from the static evidence of texts and archaeological data. By insisting that scholars should not limit themselves to observing that objects moved and changed hand, but also ask how, we may not only increase our understanding of premodern economies, but also be in a position to better appreciate the nature of contemporary exchange.

Publication: Palmyra-chapter in new Silkroad book

Photo: ACANSRS

I have a new book chapter out: "Preconditions of Palmyrene long-distance trade: Land, River, and Maritime routes in the first three centuries CE" in a book called The Silk Road: Interwoven History, edited by Mariko N. Walter and James P. Ito-Adler published by the Association for Central Asian Civilizations & Silk Road Studies. I will see if I can eventually post a PDF of my chapter. Meanwhile the book can be purchased from the publishers. Below is the table of contents:

Tim Williams “Mapping of the Silk Road”;

Leonardo Gregoratti “Parthian Empire and the Political Role of the Silk Road: Romans, Jews, Nomads, and Chinese”

Rachel Mairs “Heroes and Philosophers? Greek Personal Names and their Bearers in Hellenistic Bactria”

Eivind Heldaas Seland “Preconditions of Palmyrene Long-distance trade: Land, River, and Maritime routes in the first three centuries CE.”

Ulrike-Christiane Lintz “Survey of Judaeo-Persion Tombstone Inscriptions from Djām, Cnetral Afghanistan"

Djamilya Kurbanova “History of Musical Culture of Turkmenistan: From Ancient Merv to Modern Times”

Borbala Obrusanszky “Nestorian Christianity in the Ordos in Inner Mongolia"

Bin Yang “Cowry Shells and the Emergent World Trade System (1500 BCE-1700 CE)”

Michael Laver “The Maritime Silk Road: Silver and Silk in Japan's Trade with Asia in the 16th /17th Centuries”

Gerald Roche “Village Ritual and Frontier History on the Northeast Tibetan Plateau: the Mangghuer Nadun.”

Update May 5: I've posted a PDF of my chapter at academia.edu. Several of the other chapters can also be found there.

New publication: Early Christianity in East Africa and Red Sea/Indian Ocean Commerce

I've got a new article out in a special volume of African Archaeological Review, on Africa and the Indian Ocean. Inspired in particular by Rodney Stark's work on early Christianity, and Michael Mann's on social power networks, the article makes use of social network perspectives in order to understand how religions spread into new regions, and how the process of conversion might have taken place. In my opinion the network perspective adds value, by reconciling our literary and archaeological sources with modern sociological models of conversion, and by showing how networks of ideology, trade and political power interact.

Abstract:
The ancient East African kingdom of Aksum gradually adopted Christianity from the early- to mid-fourth-century reign of Ezana onwards. The well-known narrative of the late Roman church-historian Rufinus relates a top-down process of conversion, starting with the ruler himself. The report, corroborated by the adoption of Christian symbolism on Ezana’s late coinage, and monotheistic as well as overtly Christian references in royal inscriptions, is generally considered trustworthy. While not challenging the significance of charismatic and powerful individuals, this article argues that Christianity was present in the region before Ezana, and that the introduction of Christianity should be situated within the context of early Red Sea/Indian Ocean commerce. Trade was the carrier of ideological impulses from communities in the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean worlds and created the social infrastructure that expatriate believers, early converts, and later, church officials and local elites could draw upon.

The article is open access, and can be downloaded from the journal website. It is published online first, and volume and page numbers will be added when the printed version is out.

New publications

Ancient West & East 13 / 2014 / Textile trade and Distribution in Antiquity, Kerstin Droß-Krüpe (ed.) 2014

As I got back from fall-break, the print versions of our two latest publications, one article and one book chapter, were on my desk. Call me old-school, but I enjoy holding the book in my hands, and book chapters are really best read in context with the rest of the volume.

Eivind Heldaas Seland (2014) Caravans, Smugglers and Trading Fairs: Organizing Textile Trade on the Syrian Frontier. Pages 83-90 in Kerstin Droß-Krüpe (ed.), Textile Trade and Distribution in Antiquity. Harrassowitz Verlag.

Eivind Heldaas Seland (2014) The  organisation of the Palmyrene caravan trade. Ancient West and East 13, pp. 197-211. doi:10.2143/AWE.13.0.3038738.

As a word of warning to Network Analysis enthusiasts, there is nothing of that in these articles, both, however, address how networks operated, and how we can approach this by means of modern models, in this case New Institutional Economics.

The AWE article is available online, the book chapter unfortunately not. Also, it was not possible to publish these open access. Preprints should appear in Bergen Open Research Archive (BORA) in time (they are not there yet). Meanwhile, drop me a line if your library does not have these and you require an offprint.