the  blue  web
  • The Blue Web
  • About
  • Antiquity
    • Finding trade networks in Strabo's Geographica: 'Here we Rome'
    • Olympia as the Center of the Greek World
    • the rise of archaic colonies
    • Greek Curse tablets and the possibilities of social network analysis
    • The Great Panathenaia and the Imperial Importance of Religion
    • Trade between Gauls and Romans in Gaul
    • Networking the Iliad
    • The Hellenistic Polis: Networking to Survive
    • Greek Networks in the Cimmerian Bosporus
    • The Roman Indian Trade Network
  • Middle Ages
    • The Qur'an in Medieval Europe
    • Jewish networks in the Caïro Genizah
    • The transition from Roman to Hindu-Arabic numerals
    • The Magi, the Medici and Roberto Martelli
    • On the Threshold: The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili’s Narrative Network
    • Female pilgrimage in Late Middle Ages
    • Corpus Domini: an enclosed convent in the middle of society
    • Venetian explorers
    • The Network Behind A Book
  • Early Modern Era
    • Piero della Francesca and the Legend of the True Cross
    • Slave Trade in 18th century Darfur
    • Anno 1579: The dream of an Ottoman Indian Ocean
    • Changing power relations between Europe and Algiers in the late eigteenth and early nineteenth century.
    • Jewish Life in Early Modern Italy
    • Travelogue for Ottoman Mentality
    • Tomé Pires and the rise of the Portuguese empire
    • The trade network of the Manila Galleon
    • Safavid-Venetian religious trade networks

economic networks and cultural change
in the antique mediterranean

dr. S. Roselaar

 This seminar focused on economic networks in the Greek and Roman worlds and how these impacted on the identities of the people involved, both at the personal level as well as that of cities and states. Trade networks often lay at the base of further social and political relations, and economic relations of contributed to the spread of cultures and ideas throughout the Mediterranean world.  Who were the actors in these networks? Which locations or people can we identify as nodes or ties? How did the flow of information spread from one node to the next? Were ‘weak ties’ or ‘strong ties’ the most effective? In these sessions we considered these issues with regard to the economic role of emporia, defined as small settlements of traders from different cultural backgrounds (e.g. Emporion in Spain or Pithecusae in Italy), the role of state-organized trade (such as grain imports to Rome), and the role of free traders in exchanging cultural ideas. We examined the role of traders and political representatives as network specialists, and their contribution to the development of a larger oikoumene in the Greek and Roman worlds.

The pages here showcase the seminar's projects on antique Mediterranean networks.


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