...This chapter analyzes coins and writing in late prehistoric Europe. The development of coinage in temperate Europe and the first regular signs of writing are innovations that share some important features. Both were introduced from outside the region, specifically from the Mediterranean world...

...This epilogue discusses how the Mediterranean and its Jews offer a preeminent platform from which to launch a new understanding of citizenship. North Africa and the Middle East have long been a foil to the West, just as Jews were the oldest Other in Christendom. Nissim Shamama's life and death...

.... It also considers the mountains of the Mediterranean as both divine and human places. The chapter provides a wider context of ancient religious practice as mountains were dwelling places of the gods within mythical narratives and places associated with divine epiphanies and miracles beyond human...

...This chapter asserts that the economy of the early Roman Empire was primarily a market economy. The parts of this economy located far from each other were not tied together as tightly as markets often are today, but they still functioned as part of a comprehensive Mediterranean market...

...This chapter explores the Mediterranean wheat market. The Romans made many products, from wines to pottery and glass, but wheat was the most widely traded commodity during those times. Shipped from distant provinces, the grain changed hands many times before it reached Rome. This trade...

...This chapter shows the profound impact of trade on all the societies it touched, especially from the twelfth century on. In the Mediterranean world, commerce established strong ties between the European seaport cities (such as Pisa, Venice, Genoa, and Barcelona) and ports in the Muslim world...

...This chapter examines the growth of agricultural production in the Greek city-states. It traces the evolutions and mutations of agriculture in the ancient Greek world as well as the consequences of these changes, first by discussing the so-called Mediterranean trilogy that comprised ancient Greek...

... of the third century, the choice for Christianity represented a momentous departure from Roman tradition. The intolerance and violence it engendered upset the equilibrium of Mediterranean diaspora trade, producing an institutional shock. Indeed, religion played a prominent role in how diaspora groups operated...

... it went where it did and at what pace. The chapter looks at the principal modes of circulation with reference to three brief case studies: the Viking-Age circulation of dirhams, gold in the Mediterranean from the fifth to the seventh centuries, and gold and silver in the tenth- and eleventh-century...

...From around 700 BCE until the first centuries CE, the Mediterranean enjoyed steady economic growth through trade, reaching a level not to be regained until the early modern era. This process of growth coincided with a process of state formation, culminating in the largest state the ancient...

... fauna, problems with triggering and timing of flowering, problems of highly dispersed flowers, increased reproductive allocation in plants, and issues of energetics, heat overload, and water balance for desert plants and animals. The chapter proceeds by considering pollination in Mediterranean...

... Christian world. It is argued that women played a notable part in this developing cult of icons. The chapter concentrates on some features of Late Antique Mediterranean culture, shared by Jews and Gentiles, pagan and Christian alike. These provided a common social experience within which the artistic...

... to his estate—a matter that depended on his nationality. Was he an Italian citizen? A subject of the Bey of Tunis? Had he become stateless? Or was his Jewishness also his nationality? Tracing a decade-long legal battle involving Jews, Muslims, and Christians from both sides of the Mediterranean, the book...

...This chapter discusses the extent to which communities in temperate Europe became increasingly integrated into the larger world of the Mediterranean basin and beyond, and how the process of integration worked. Major changes in the visual structure and patterning of objects took place in the context...

...This chapter examines the gap in diplomatic relations between the Carolingian empire and the emirates established within the central Mediterranean. Unpacking the circumstances and the incentives that made diplomacy unattractive in Ifrīqiya and Italy helps reveal the factors that made it more...

... developed local cultures of those who inhabited the mountains of the ancient Mediterranean. Mountains were often connected both economically and culturally with the cities that lay close to them. Homer agriculture Ammianus Marcellinus Res Gestae caves Cyclopes ethnography Isauria Isaurians mountain...

... of extraterritorial privileges. Indeed, the extraterritorial context of legal belonging became a major point of contention in the Shamama lawsuit. Even as Tunis became a magnet for migrants from all over the Mediterranean, a devastating financial crisis was brewing. Short on cash, the bey's government contracted one...

... sides of the Mediterranean transformed the nature of the Shamama case. The legal questions that most preoccupied either side shifted—from a laser focus on nationality to the status of Nissim's will under Jewish law. By the time the court of appeal in Florence delivered the final ruling—a decade after...

...This introductory chapter provides an overview of the economic development of the ancient Mediterranean. From ca. 700 BCE onward, state formation began to have a positive influence on economic activities. A practical reason why that might have been the case readily comes to mind: states provided...

... on a single diaspora: the Phoenician. Because of their centuries-long Mediterranean mercantile tradition, one can trace their interaction with public institutions through much of Greco-Roman history. Cohen Abner cooperation North Douglass trade diasporas Wallis John Weingast Barry Africa Alexander...