The corrupting sea : a study of Mediterranean history
"The Corrupting Sea is a history of the relationship between people and their environments in the Mediterranean region over some 3,000 years. It advocates a novel analysis of this relationship in terms of microecologies and the often extensive networks to which they belong. This is the first major work since Braudel's The Mediterranean to address the problems of studying the area as a whole and on a long time-scale." "The authors emphasize the value of comparison between prehistory, Antiquity and the Middle Ages. They draw on an exceptionally wide range of evidence - literary works, documents, archaeology, scientific reports and social anthropology."--Jacket
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xiii, 761 pages : maps ; 25 cm
9780631136668, 9780631218906, 0631136665, 0631218904
42692026
List of Maps vii Acknowledgements ix Note on References x Abbreviations xi Introduction 1 Part One: ‘Frogs round a Pond’: Ideas of the Mediterranean 7 I A Geographical Expression 9 1. What is the Mediterranean?;2. The Challenge of the Continents;3. The Mediterranean Disintegrated; 4. Intimations of Unity II a Historian’s Mediterranean 26 1. The Imaginary Sea; 2. Four Men in a Boat; 3. The End of the Mediterranean; 4. Mediterranean History; 5. Historical Ecology Part Two: ‘Short Distances and Definite Places’: Mediterranean Microecologies 51 III Four Definite Places 53 1. The Biqa; 2. South Etruria; 3. The Green Mountain, Cyrenaica; 4. Melos; 5. ‘La trame du monde’; 6. Mountains and Pastures; 7. Theodoric and Dante IV Ecology and the Larger Settlement 89 1. An Urban Tradition; 2. Definitions; 3. The Urban Variable; 4. Types and Theories; 5. Consumption; 6. Settlement Ecology; 7. Autarky; 8. Dispersed Hinterlands V Connectivity 123 1. Lines of Sound and Lines of Sight; 2. Extended Archipelagos; 3. Shipping Lanes; 4. Economies Compared; 5. The Early Medieval Depression; 6. Connectivity Maintained?; 7. Conclusion Copyrighted Material Part Three: Revolution and Catastrophe 173 VI Imperatives of Survival: Diversify, Store, Redistribute 175 1. The History of Mediterranean Food Systems; 2. The New Ecological Economic History; 3. Understanding the Marginal; 4. The Integrated Mediterranean Forest; 5. The Underestimated Mediterranean Wetland; 6. ‘These Places Feed Many Pickling-Fish .’; 7. Mediterranean Animal Husbandry; 8. Cereals and the Dry Margin; 9. The Case of the Tree-Crop; 10. The Mediterranean Garden; 11. The Smaller Mediterranean Island VII Technology and Agrarian Change 231 1. Working the Soil; 2. The Irrigated Landscape; 3. On the Diversity of Cultivated Plants; 4. Abatement and Intensification; 5. Anatomy of the Mediterranean Countryman; 6. Colonizations and Allotments; 7. The Reception of Innovation VIII Mediterranean Catastrophes 298 1. On the History of Catastrophe; 2. An Unstable World; 3. Alluvial Catastrophe and its Causes; 4. Sediments and History; 5. The History of Vegetation; 6. Environmental History without Catastrophe IX Mobility of Goods and People 342 1. Inescapable Redistribution; 2. Animal, Vegetable and ; 3. The Problem of Mediterranean Textiles; 4. Problems with High Commerce; 5. The Ultimate Resource; 6. Organized Mobility; 7. Places of Redistribution Part Four: The Geography of Religion 401 X ‘territories of Grace’ 403 1. Religion and the Physical Environment; 2. A Perilous Environment; 3. The Sacralized Economy; 4. The Religion of Mobility; 5. The Religion of Boundary and Belonging Part Five: ‘Museums of Man’? The Uses of Social Anthropology 461 XI ‘mists of Time’: Anthropology and Continuity 463 1. Survivals Revisited; 2. Balanced Arcadias; 3. The Presence of the Past; 4. Upstreaming XII ‘i also Have a Moustache’: Anthropology and Mediterranean Unity 485 1. Grands faits méditerranéens?; 2. Mediterranean Values?; 3. Honour and Shame I; 4. Honour and Shame II; 5. Honour in the City; 6. Pattern and Depth; 7. Distinctiveness; 8. Origins; 9. History; 10. The Case for Mediterraneanism Bibliographical Essays 530 Consolidated Bibliography 642 Index 737