This ambitious book adds to the growing body of work employing the concept of ‘Mediterraneanism’ as a heuristic for exploring the long-term history of the region. D., the author of the introductory textbook A History of Ancient Greece in its Mediterranean Context3 (2012), has been a leading voice in calling for greater attention to the crucial role that neighbouring civilisations played in shaping Greek history. She now turns to a higher-level synthesis of connectivity and interaction in the Mediterranean from the Mesolithic to the Iron Age. Arguing that developments in Greece have too often been studied in isolation, D. explicitly places her book in the company of recent work by scholars such as P. Horden and N. Purcell, I. Malkin and others. In a brief introduction D. appeals to the image of the ‘fantastic cauldron’ of Mediterranean interaction first employed by J.P. Morel in a classic article (‘Greek Colonization in the West’ in Crossroads of the Mediterranean: Archaeologia Transatlantica II, 1984). This is not so much a ‘model’, as the dust jacket promises, as an overriding metaphor, which D. develops and amplifies as an alternative to locating the origins of the polis in the agrarian village of mainland Greece. The book does not so much advance a sustained theoretical argument as marshal the latest documentation for the ‘overall pattern’ (p. xv) of sea-borne Mediterranean interaction, which D. maintains has considerable explanatory force for the rise of the polis and situating early Greek history.
The first chapter begins with the earliest evidence for organised seafaring in the Mediterranean during the Mesolithic. The acquisition and distribution of obsidian can be traced with accuracy, and D. reconstructs the main networks of trade oriented around three major centres: the Aegean, the central Mediterranean and Anatolia. Rounding out the picture is early human activity on previously uninhabited islands like Cyprus. The chapter closes with a brief discussion of whether a ‘Mediterranean Interaction Sphere’ (p. 11) is already in evidence in this early period of seafaring. Some scholars have argued that maps of obsidian movement show discrete networks, representing limited interaction and even cultural boundaries. D. points to the undue weight placed on obsidian sourcing over other commodities that are less easy to track and may have operated on alternative networks but offers little positive evidence to reconfigure the traditional picture.
Two concise chapters (2–3) turn to the Neolithic, where D. traces the evidence for the rise of the first permanent overseas settlements in Cyprus in the context of the adoption of sedentary agriculture in the Fertile Crescent in the late-ninth millennium. There followed a period of crisis, marked by migration and dislocation at the end of the seventh millennium. The causes and nature of this ‘troubled transition’ are controversial, but D. emphasises the ‘revolutionary’ (p. 57), experimental character of the age, coining the term ‘Neolithic Diaspora’ to describe the period. This expansion led to the spread of the Neolithic way of life into Anatolia and across the Aegean Islands into Greece and westward into Italy, Sicily and Spain.
Chapter 4 examines the birth of cities, drawing on new research to revise the traditional account of the earliest urbanisation in southern Mesopotamia in the fourth millennium, pushing this development back to the end of the fifth millennium at the Ubaid sites in upper Mesopotamia. D. endorses the view that metallurgy drove social stratification and, with it, the development of organised, urban communities. This technology spread to Anatolia and fuelled the ‘urban revolution’ in southern Mesopotamia and the expansion of Uruk and Egypt. D. stresses connectivity and the transfer of technology and goods as crucial factors for the developments of the fourth millennium, from the role of metallurgy at its beginnings, to a burgeoning maritime exchange hinging on the Levant at its close.
Chapter 5 discusses the great expansion of maritime trading networks in the third millennium in the context of the rise of Mesopotamia and Egypt. The Levantine ports, chiefly Byblos, developed into successful city-states in this period, and the sprawling ‘Anatolian Trade Network’ centred on Troy extended across the Aegean into Greece and the Cyclades. Cyprus and Crete developed into important centres of metallurgy and contact. This growing organisation ended in an extensive collapse, felt across the eastern Mediterranean.
Chapters 6–8 are devoted to the Mediterranean in the Middle and Late Bronze Age, following the recovery of maritime networks and the revival of Egypt, the Levantine ports and Minoan Crete. By the Late Bronze Age the Mediterranean reached a high point of interconnectedness, and D. provides a detailed reconstruction of the complex intermeshing of local, regional and long-distance networks that encompassed a wide variety of markets, intermediaries and economic actors, making it a ‘vast interactive complex’ (p. 162). Cyprus, Ugarit and the Mycenaean palaces receive special attention, along with a fresh review of the evidence provided by shipwrecks. Chapter 8 provides a useful overview of the current theories and debates surrounding the collapse at the end of the Late Bronze Age, assembling the latest archaeological evidence from the entire Eastern Mediterranean.
The final chapter, ‘Recovery and Expansion 1050–850’, examines the revival of Mediterranean maritime networks in the context of (primarily) Phoenician expansion. Cyprus and Crete, as nodes of exchange and interaction, receive particular attention, but also early state formation in Italy and major developments within mainland Greece (e.g. Lefkandi). The chapter concludes with a discussion of Pithekoussai, the earliest Greek overseas foundation, although it postdates the strict chronological limits of the chapter. Readers may find it somewhat puzzling that a book seeking to explain the origins of the Greek polis closes in 850, before the crucial developments of the eighth century and before the dynamic exchange of the Orientalising period. Indeed, the conclusion of this detailed reconstruction is a brief discussion of state formation, focussing mainly on Crete (pp. 248–9). In many ways D.'s work seems conceived as a detailed prolegomenon to the study of the period of Greek colonisation, in which many have seen the final crystallisation of the polis. As such, it is an interesting counterpart to recent work such as I. Malkin's A Small Greek World (2011), which draws on a more theoretically based exploration of networks in the period of Greek colonisation. Still, the chronological limits of the book perhaps deserve somewhat more justification than is provided.
This long march of Mediterranean interaction is punctuated by two major episodes of systemic collapse, first at the end of the third millennium and again at the end of the Late Bronze Age. D. views the pattern of these cycles of expansion and contraction as illustrative of the usefulness of J. Marcus' ‘Dynamic Model’ (‘The Peaks and Valleys of Ancient States’ in Archaic States [1998]) (p. 249). Documenting many points of continuity across these events, D. emphasises that the rise of the polis cannot be conceived of in the terms articulated by models of primary state formation. D. accepts Marcus' model with little discussion. Comparative anthropologists such as B. Trigger (Understanding Early Civilizations: a Comparative Study [2003]) and A.T. Smith (The Political Landscape: Constellations of Authority in Early Complex Polities [2003]) have recently levelled important criticisms of Marcus' model of state formation, and it would be useful to situate all this data more deeply within the context of current theoretical debates.
It should be emphasised that this is a most useful book. At almost 100 pages, the bibliography is a major resource in itself. The scope is impressively wide, and assembling this extensive documentation from widely disparate periods, geographies and disciplines is a major achievement. In particular it goes a long way towards bridging the divide between archaeologists and historians of the Aegean/Greek world and those of the Near East. Its lucid and concise presentation makes it a convenient introduction for non-specialists, and it will be of special use for students as well as scholars interested in comparative studies. It is most successful when presenting new light that the most recent archaeological research sheds on old problems. Although confronting highly controversial and complex issues along the way, D. admirably succeeds in summarising the terms and stakes of these debates. This work serves as an important new resource for framing the study of Mediterranean history for a generation of students and scholars increasingly interested in crossing the traditional lines of periodisation and discipline.
