Conference: Global Dynamics in Antiquity. Situated experience in an extended ancient world: worldviews, objects and environments (ca. 750 BCE – 750 CE)

In the Afro-Eurasian sphere, a dramatic (if uneven) increase of the scale of connectivity and intensity of contact took place in the period from ca. 750 BCE to 750 CE. This increased connectivity had a pronounced impact on the wider Mediterranean area and the Near East (large parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa, including the Arab world) and its repercussions are felt until today. While in the West the Greco-Roman world was long considered central to these developments, expanding scholarly horizons have revealed how ‘Classical’ Antiquity in fact depended on supra-regional networks. This resulted in imperialism, massive slavery, and identity-wars but equally in crucial and long-lasting innovations in science, economy, and culture.

Connectivity is a driver of change in the social, economic and political domains. It confronts societies with new, previously unknown possibilities. It also makes people experience their own situatedness: becoming part of a bigger world results in heightened attention for one’s own sense of place and time. This, in turn, leads to the creation of new world views. In this meeting we will investigate the situated experience of people and social groups ‘on the ground’, in the ancient wider Mediterranean and Near East, through an analysis of their worldviews and their reactions to changing objectscapes and environments.

What differences have the dramatic changes taking place in this period made to the lived experience of people ‘on the ground’? What was it like for them? How was increasing complexity cognitively managed, and how did situated differences impact failure or success in such management? And can investigating these historical experiences, as we do in this conference, create critical distance from explosive debates on dealing with change in the present and shed new light?

To participate please register via: s.m.van.de.velde arch.leidenuniv.nl

Click here for the program