Camel caravan

Camel caravan
Mosaic from Deir al-Adas, Syria, 8th century (photo: J.C.Meyer)
The research project Mechanisms of cross-cultural interaction: Networks in the Roman Near East (2013-2017) investigates the resilient everyday ties, such as trade, religion and power, connecting people within and across fluctuating imperial borders in the Near East in the Roman Period. The project is funded under the Research Council of Norway's SAMKUL initiative, and hosted by the Department of archaeology, history, cultural studies and religion, University of Bergen, Norway.

This blog is no longer updated, for any queries, please contact project leader Eivind Heldaas Seland

Friday 8 March 2013

Pre-project workshop: Local Dynamics of Globalization in the pre-modern Levant

Next week I'm heading to Oslo to take part in a pre-project workshop for an exciting project called Local Dynamics of Globalization in the pre-modern Levant. The project, headed by Terje Stordalen, Professor of Theology, Oslo, and Oystein La Bianca, Professor of Anthropology, Andrews University has been awarded Centre for Advanced Study (CAS) status for the academic year 2014/15. Nine scholars from Europe, North-America and Norway along with a wider "outer circle" of project participants will work together to "[investigate] how local cultures in the pre-modern Levant adapted policies, trends, habits, and technologies that reached them through imperial and other globalizing channels, and also how local discourse fed back into trans-local dialogue". Chronologically, our research stretches from the Bronze Age to the Ottoman period. You can read more about our group and our planned work here. My contribution will be a study of The In-Betweens: Studies of Traders, Soldiers, Administrators and Nomads in the Ancient Levant, which will fit nicely into my research on the NeRoNE project. The purpose of this first meeting will be to get to know each other personally and professionally, as well as to meet our hosts and se our facilities at the CAS.