CfP Blessing and curse

Call for Proposals for the International Conference, organised at the University Côte d'Azur, 27-28th March 2025, by Léonie Boissière and Simon Dolet Proposals in French or English (1 and 3,000 characters) should be sent before 30 September 2024 by email to [email protected] and [email protected]. This international conference will be published.

2023

Deep-seated mythologies and powerful stereotypes have driven perceptions of mountain landscapes for millennia. Particularly damaging is the concept that mountains and mountain societies are static and stable, in both time and place. A critical approach replaces static and simplistic models of mountain practices with interaction among human and ecological communities within lively mountain landscapes. There are challenges to doing archaeological fieldwork in the mountains, but recent projects have shown how rich highland and rugged landscapes can be in archaeological material, particularly when systematic survey and historical analysis are combined with ethnological and ecological approaches. This is particularly productive when exploring the dynamic relationships among pastoralists, their animals, and their upland grazing grounds. Similarly, focusing on practices and socioecological relationships helps in understanding how human emotional connections with mountains can be expressed through everyday action and performance.

This paper focusses on the modern practice of archaeology, setting aside definitional debates of “Mediterranean” and “prehistory”. Many challenges and opportunities for archaeology are of course global, but this paper looks at two themes which present particular challenges and opportunities for Mediterranean prehistory. The first recognises inherited, politicised and appropriating narratives, institutions and practices, an inescapable context which must be managed, but which creates paradoxical opportunities. The second theme is the vast amount of Mediterranean data, much of it old or under-published. The challenge of preserving data - that previously examined, that awaiting recording and that within the heritage industry – and of accessing new opportunities, is often in political and economic contexts over which archaeologists have little control.

For Citation: Hilmi S. Salem, 2012, on "Mediterranean Mountain Environments" - Editor: Ioannis Vogiatzakis. Published by Wiley-Blackwell. Abstract: After the publication in 1992 of J.R. McNeil’s The Mountains of the Mediterranean World and despite the general textbooks on the physical geography of the Mediterranean, there has not been a book dedicated to the mountains of the region. There is currently increasing interest for teaching and research on the topic due to rapid changes induced by anthropogenic forces, including changes in primary economic sectors operating in those areas (such as agriculture, forestry, etc.) and potential impacts of climate change. Current shifts in people’s perception about the countryside have increased tourism and recreation pressures on both the natural and cultural environment, posing new threats but also providing new opportunities for the sustainable development of the Mediterranean mountains. The importance of interdisciplinary approaches to the study of mountain environments has recently been highlighted by both academics and practitioners; however, there is still a lack of integrated reading material on Mediterranean mountains that encapsulates both natural and cultural elements of the mountain environments in the region. Mediterranean mountains unsurprisingly share many common biotic ecological, physical and environmental elements with mountains worldwide. At the same time they also display specificities as a result of a long and complex human presence in the area. However, they do not receive the same attention as their American, Asian and European counterparts. Compared to the environmental historical account by McNeil, this volume is more of a textbook with chapters on physical and human geography of the mountains that correspond to topics taught in undergraduate courses at various universities worldwide. It is therefore much hoped that it will be received and adopted as such. This is hopefully just the start that will trigger a greater response to Mediterranean mountains, their landscapes and people.

2004

Current Issues, 2004

1999

We present results pertaining to the potential impact of the 4.2 ka calBP climate event in the eastern Mediterranean, with special focus on the Early Bronze Age (EBA) in north-western Anatolia, the southern Aegean, and Italy.

Although geological study of Pleistocene cave sites goes back to the nineteenth century, a new paradigm was set in train during the 1920s, when G. Caton-Thompson and E.W. Gardner established a sequence of prehistoric occupations linked to the changing spatial and ecological contours of fl uctuating lakes in Egypt's Faiyum Depression. Subsequent collaborations have carried research beyond geochronology and climate stratigraphy to address human settlement within changing environments, which served both as resource and artifact.