Year: 2016
Type: book-chapter
Abstract: Connectivity and MobilityForces of sea-bound connectivity in antiquity are believed nowadays to have been strong enough to overcome geographical barriers and unfavourable natural conditions; as well as to cross boundary lines once thought impenetrablebe it of cultural, political, or religious nature.1 And, within the sphere of connectivity, coastal seafaring-also referred to in professional literature as cabotage-gradually reveals itself to have been enduring, and to have functioned continuously, regardless of shifting circumstances.It is now considered by modern scholarship as one of the key agents of connectivity.The focus of the study of maritime activity in the ancient Mediterranean has thus shifted from large freighters, carrying high-value commodities from one major port to another along sea-crossing routes, to smaller vessels, operating locally, mostly along the coast, while servicing trade in elementary goods.This understanding may have significant implications for the topic of this volume-particularly with regard to issues of mobility and empire-but not necessarily in the way that appears the most obvious.Direct links have often been drawn between Mediterranean connectivity and actual maritime mobility, to the effect that the two terms often seem to overlap in current discourse.But if, like commerce, much of mobility relied on cabotage, grave difficulties and limitations would have been imposed on travellers-certainly those who 1 Geniza documents have been famously shown by S.D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society:The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1967-1993) to disprove notions of a Muslim-Christian divide across the Mediterranean, as previously perceived by H. Pirenne, Mahomet et Charlemagne (Paris 1937).Theories of connectivity have reached their culmination with the publication of P. Horden and N.
Source: BRILL eBooks
Author: Gil Gambash
Language: English
Subfield: Anthropology
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W2731235486