Mediterranean Society Research Articles

Revisiting ‘honor’ through migrant vulnerabilities in Turkey

ABSTRACTThis essay revisits the trope of honour and takes stock of its critiques by foregrounding the elusive bodies of undocumented migrant women in Turkey. Specifically, I engage with the extent to which the legal normalization of the culture of honour results in routinized sexual violence against undocumented migrant women and in impunity for the perpetrators. On the one hand, I pursue the critique of honour as an essentalized, generalized and timeless notion about Middle Eastern and Mediterranean societies. On the other hand, I ponder whether our efforts to battle such stereotypical explanations may occasionally result in giving short shrift to the reality of sexual violence as experienced by those who bear the brunt of it. In avoiding culturalizing honour and yet recognizing its continuing cultural power, I take my inspiration from the concept of ethnographic refusal to navigate a potentially lethal terrain in which migrants, activists, and academics enact, with converging and discrepant stakes, deliberate or unwitting engagements with the demands of ‘honor’. I suggest that being cognizant of the kinds of ethnographic refusals we undertake to foreground or avoid the discomfiting aspects of honour as a gendered norm can aid us in our pursuit towards yet thicker ethnographies of exactly where and when honour continues to matter.

Wino, ciemierzyca i mirra albo o lekarzach i ich pacjentach. Analiza fragmentu V księgi „De materia medica” Dioskurydesa

Artykuł stanowi analizę fragmentu piątej księgi traktatu De materia medica spisanego w I w. n.e. przez Dioskurydesa, wybitnego znawcę substancji leczniczych. Autorzy omawiają w nim passus z rozdziału poświęconego winom o działaniu terapeutycznym z dodatkiem ciemierzycy przez pryzmat ingrediencji wykorzystywanych do aromatyzowania poszczególnych trunków. Zwracają uwagę, że dobór tych ostatnich uzależniony był nie tylko od właściwości leczniczych, lecz także od sytuacji materialnej pacjenta.
 Informacje te stają się punktem wyjścia do rozważań na temat roli wina w antycznej praktyce medycznej. Autorzy zauważają, że mogło być ono wzbogacane powszechnie dostępnymi dodatkami lub ingrediencjami importowanymi z odległych krain. Wśród tych ostatnich szczególną uwagę poświęcają mirrze. Dodatek tej egzotycznej i kosztownej żywicy sprawiał bowiem, że wspomniany napitek cieszył się w antyku szczególnym uznaniem zarówno ze względu na wyjątkowe walory smakowe, jak i działanie farmakologiczne.
 Poprzez zestawienie receptur Autorzy zwracają uwagę na kilka kwestii dotyczących społeczeństwa obszaru basenu Morza Śródziemnego w epoce antyku. Po pierwsze, ukazują przekrój społeczny pacjentów Dioskurydesa. Po drugie, obrazują kompetencje lekarza jako osoby umiejętnie dostosowującej poszczególne medykamenty do możliwości finansowych chorych. Po trzecie, uzasadniają powszechność i popularność zagadnień związanych z medycyną w ówczesnym społeczeństwie. W końcu udowadniają, że traktaty medyczne mogą stanowić cenne źródło w badaniach nad historią gospodarczą i społeczną starożytności.

Incorporation of Sprouted Wheat Seeds as Functional Ingredient in a Mediterranean Breakfast Cereal Based Product, Bsissa: A Mixture Design Approach

Evolution of life style markedly modified people's eating habits. Fortunately, consumers are more aware by the importance of a healthy diet and are more demanding for functional foods. The Mediterranean Diet is a dietary pattern recognized by its positive health effect. However, this diet is disappearing in Mediterranean societies. The aim of this study was to promote a local Tunisian breakfast cereal product by improving its nutritional properties. The methodology consisted on using dried sprouted durum wheat seeds (Triticum durum) as a functional ingredient. The proportion to use without affecting Bsissa functional properties was defined by optimization of a mixture design where the used components were: wheat, dried sprouted wheat and chickpea. The selected responses were water and oil absorption capacity. Based on a mathematical analysis, germinated dried wheat decreased water absorption capacity and had no effect on oil absorption capacity. The optimal formula was composed of: 17.2% wheat, 41.4% germinated dried wheat and 41.4% chickpea. With such composition an increase of +32% in total phenol content and +228.5% in reducing sugar were obtained. However no significant changes on protein content were seen. Interestingly, the use of dried sprouted wheat (not roasted) did not affect the consumers’ acceptance of Bsissa. In conclusion, the use of dried sprouts successfully improved nutritional properties of Bsissa. The use of mixture design approach allowed attempting a balance between functional and nutritional properties.

Goitein, the Geniza, and Aspects of Islamic Maritime Laws and Practices

S. D. Goitein left a tangible contribution in many areas relating to the cultural, economic, social, political, and legal history of classical Islam. With three monumental studies—the first volume of A Mediterranean Society, Letters of Medieval Jewish Traders, and India Traders—and numerous academic articles, he also left an indelible imprint on our understanding of the Islamic maritime heritage, providing his readers with a comprehensive overview of this realm, which extended from the Indian Ocean littoral to the eastern shores of the Atlantic, and laying the foundations for further exploration. This essay sheds light on two aspects of Islamic admiralty and maritime law through an examination of two documents published by Goitein in 1960s. The first document is an account statement describing the methods of paying freight charges practiced by shipowners and merchants; the second is a merchant letter discussing among other commercial transactions a point of case law that emerged at journey’s end in Alexandria between the agent of a ship’s proprietor and the merchants/shippers with whom he had contracted. The importance of the letter lies in its relation of a rare and early instance of a ship being assigned a juridical personality and being treated as a judicial entity in order to refund the merchants and shippers on the insolvency of the vessel’s owner.

Goitein and the Study of Slavery in the Medieval Islamic World

This essay assesses S. D. Goitein’s contributions to the study of domestic slavery and the slave trade in the medieval Middle East between the eleventh and the thirteenth centuries. As early as 1950, Goitein begin publishing documentary material from the Cairo Geniza that shed light on the lives of domestic slaves and enslaved factotums. In 1967, he published the first volume of his magnum opus, A Mediterranean Society, which included the chapter “Slaves and Slave Girls” along with detailed notes. Since its publication, the survey “Slaves and Slave Girls” has served as a crucial reference for the study of domestic slavery in the medieval Islamic world. Criticisms of Goitein’s writings on slavery are also explored here. First, his commitment to demonstrating the piety and humanism of Geniza society led Goitein to emphasize the positive treatment that slaves sometimes received and downplay the violence and exploitation also present. Second, he understated the importance of the Geniza documents and Jewish merchants’ activities for historians’ understanding of the slave trade. Ultimately, Goitein viewed his work on slavery, as he did A Mediterranean Society as a whole, as a provisional sketch. Indeed, his published work and research archive continue to provide an invaluable point of departure for new histories of slavery and related topics. This essay suggests avenues for future research on slavery in the medieval Islamic world.

For Sale or Sailors? Towards a Galley Ware Functional Designation Methodology

Publications of materials recovered from ancient shipwreck sites in the Mediterranean increase every decade with each subsequent excavation, adding a wealth of data to the study of ancient Mediterranean societies. To date, however, there have been few detailed discussions of how recovered ceramics are designated as cargo or galley ware. As the field of maritime archaeology continues to grow, the time is ripe to advance methodologies to define and categorize galley ware ceramics, which can thereby aid studies of ancient seafarers and their relationships to the wider societies to which they belonged. This paper presents a methodological framework to aid in the identification of galley wares recovered from ancient Mediterranean shipwrecks and applies the methodology in two case studies. The larger goal of the study is to initiate within the field discussions of functional attribution in order to move beyond intuition and towards an applicable methodological framework.

INSIGHTS INTO MILITARY DEFEAT - (J.H.) Clark, (B.) Turner (edd.) Brill's Companion to Military Defeat in Ancient Mediterranean Society. (Brill's Companions in Classical Studies: Warfare in the Ancient Mediterranean World 2.) Pp. xviii + 382, ills, maps. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2018. Cased, €149, US$172. ISBN: 978-90-04-29858-3.

INSIGHTS INTO MILITARY DEFEAT - (J.H.) Clark, (B.) Turner (edd.) Brill's Companion to Military Defeat in Ancient Mediterranean Society. (Brill's Companions in Classical Studies: Warfare in the Ancient Mediterranean World 2.) Pp. xviii + 382, ills, maps. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2018. Cased, €149, US$172. ISBN: 978-90-04-29858-3. - Volume 69 Issue 1

Jewish Communal History in Geniza Scholarship: Part 2, Goitein’s Successors

S. D. Goitein’s nuanced description of the structure, functioning, and administrative reach of the Jewish community, most fully articulated in the second volume of A Mediterranean Society, was enlarged on, revised, and challenged in the work of two subsequent generations of scholars. Addressing the mixture of hierocratic and democratic elements that Goitein identified within the medieval Jewish community, this growing body of scholarship has examined anew and in greater detail such issues as the balance of power between the centralized leadership and the local community, the extent of the Jewish community’s political autonomy, and the influential role in communal affairs played by wealthy and well-connected elites with access to the Muslim court.

Goitein and Strong Women

This essay examines S. D. Goitein’s tendency to find strong women in Geniza documents. I situate this predilection at the intersection of three separate currents. The first is the growing interest in women’s history in the late 1960s and early 1970s, precisely the time in which Goitein was working on the third volume of A Mediterranean Society. The second is a stereotype with a long history that sees Egyptian women as ruling over their weak husbands. Finally, Goitein seemed to have an interest in dominant female figures even before he turned to the study of the Geniza. I conclude by suggesting that, instead of describing certain women as strong, it is more useful to explore what the sources and types of strength for Jewish women in Egypt were and how they accessed, activated, and deployed their resources.

300-year drought frames Late Bronze Age to Early Iron Age transition in the Near East: new palaeoecological data from Cyprus and Syria

In Eastern Mediterranean history, 1200 BCE is a symbolic date. Its significance is tied to the important upheavals that destabilised regional-scale economic systems, leading to the dislocation of mighty Empires and, finally, to the “demise” of a societal model (termed “the Crisis Years”). Recent studies have suggested that a centuries-long drought, of regional scale, termed the 3.2 ka BP event, could be one of the motors behind this spiral of decline. Here, we focus on this pivotal period, coupling new palaeoenvironmental data and radiocarbon dates from Syria (the site of Tell Tweini) and Cyprus (the site of Pyla-Kokkinokremnos), to probe whether climate change accelerated changes in the Eastern Mediterranean’s Old World, by inducing crop failures/low harvests, possibly engendering severe food shortages and even famine. We show that the Late Bronze Age crisis and the following Dark Ages were framed by an ~ 300-year drought episode that significantly impacted crop yields and may have led to famine. Our data underline the agro-productive sensitivity of ancient Mediterranean societies to environmental changes, as well as the potential link between adverse climate pressures and harvest/famine.

Goitein’s Unfinished Legacies

Goitein’s Mediterranean Society is remarkable and paved the way for a generation —indeed, generations—of scholars. In this brief note, I discuss some of the fundamental questions Goitein left unanswered.

Negotiating Imperialism and Resistance in Late Bronze Age Ugarit: The Rise of Alphabetic Cuneiform

Ugarit was a highly cosmopolitan, multilingual and multiscript city at the intersection of several major Late Bronze Age political and cultural spheres of influence. In the thirteenth centurybc, the city adopted a new alphabetic cuneiform writing system in the local language for certain uses alongside the Akkadian language, script and scribal practices that were standard throughout the Near East. Previous research has seen this as ‘vernacularization’, in response to the city's encounter with Mesopotamian culture. Recent improvements in our understanding of the date of Ugarit's adoption of alphabetic cuneiform render this unlikely, and this paper instead argues that we should see this vernacularization as part of Ugarit's negotiation of, and resistance to, their encounter with Hittite imperialism. Furthermore, it stands as a specific, Ugaritian, manifestation of similar trends apparent across a number of East Mediterranean societies in response to the economic and political globalism of Late Bronze Age élite culture. As such, these changes in Ugaritian scribal practice have implications for our wider understanding of the end of the Late Bronze Age.

Kontakty społeczności Europy Środkowej i strefy egejskiej w II tysiącleciu p.n.e. Próba analizy archeologiczno-chronometrycznej

Long-distance contacts, exchange of goods and more organized forms of trade have been a part of human life since the beginning of what is commonly perceived as culture. One reason for this has always been an unequal geographic distribution of desirable raw materials such as obsidian, flint, or metals. Another driving force comprises the construction of social networks through the exchange of extraordinary objects. My work explores the connectivity and cross-cultural communication between the Bronze Age societies, in particular the Mycenaean world and Central Europe. These links are less researched than those between the Eastern Mediterranean societies of the time. The cultural differences between the Mycenaean Greece and Central Europe, along with the diversity of their societies, provide an interesting and strongly debated case study. There are significant differences in opinions on the nature of these relations, their importance, intensity, and range. Archaeological evidence of cross-cultural contacts between Central Europe and the Aegean is rich and diverse. It includes amber, faience, weapons and tools, dress fasteners, personal ornaments and jewellery, metal vessels, Handmade Barbaric Ware, horse harness made of bone and antlers, loaf-of-bread idols and decorative elements, etc. Despite the often unclear context in which these objects and elements have been found, there is a striking similarity of appearance and this shared materiality may indicate shared notions of technology and ideology.

Climate change and interconnected risks to sustainable development in the Mediterranean

Recent accelerated climate change has exacerbated existing environmental problems in the Mediterranean Basin that are caused by the combination of changes in land use, increasing pollution and declining biodiversity. For five broad and interconnected impact domains (water, ecosystems, food, health and security), current change and future scenarios consistently point to significant and increasing risks during the coming decades. Policies for the sustainable development of Mediterranean countries need to mitigate these risks and consider adaptation options, but currently lack adequate information — particularly for the most vulnerable southern Mediterranean societies, where fewer systematic observations schemes and impact models are based. A dedicated effort to synthesize existing scientific knowledge across disciplines is underway and aims to provide a better understanding of the combined risks posed.

Contextual views on Pauls attitude towards labour and remuneration: Did we forget the poor?

Abstract One of the problems with applications of Pauline teachings to the current context is the way in which elite theologians assumed that first-century Mediterranean societies were similar in most crucial aspects to twentieth-century society. At close scrutiny it is clear that the explanation of self-support and the “free offering of the gospel” from the angle of Paul’s plight for the poor has been overlooked (or only referred to by implication) in commentaries, as well as discussions on “tentmakership” in Practical Theology and even in Missiology. This study is investigating the possible role that the context of the readers played in this oversight.

Mediterranean Society of Coloproctology meeting report.

Mediterranean Society of Coloproctology meeting report.

A Look at Hebrews in the Light of an Akan Perspective on Personality

To interpret biblical texts appropriately, it is important to understand the social institutions and scripts that underlie the text. The similarities between some concepts of personality in first-century Mediterranean society and the Akan society of Ghana makes it possible to read the letter to the Hebrews (hereafter referred to as Hebrews) through the lens of an Akan understanding of personality, enabling us to appreciate Hebrews in much the same way as first-century Mediterraneans. To demonstrate this, this article discusses some relevant theories on personality in first-century Mediterranean society, as well as some concepts of personality of the Akan people of Ghana. It further discusses the portrait of the persons addressed in Hebrews through the lens of some relevant aspects of an Akan concept of personality.

External and internal liberalization that ENP promotes as transmission belts of democratization and political stability: success and failure revisited - the Southern Dimension

The European Neighborhood Policy (ENP) was launched in 2004 with the aim of building new political and economic relations between the EU and its Southern and Eastern neighboring states through support for introduction of reforms and systemic changes in the partner states. In the South, the initiative covered ten countries: Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Palestine, Syria and Tunisia. It was associated with better political and economic relations with the EU, which should result in a wider access to the European market for Mediterranean goods and a larger foreign direct investment in$ow to the partner countries' markets. The aim of the paper is to analyze the effects of ENP on the Southern Mediterranean neighbors in the context of economic liberalization and pro-democratic changes. The paper analyses two problems: economic development and trade liberalization offered by ENP through deeper integration with the EU and marketoriented regulations. The second problem analyzed in the paper concerns the process of democratic changes that the EU committed to promote. Due to the highly controversial nature of democratization for the Mediterranean states, it was replaced by the idea of good governance. For this purpose, general trends within the Mediterranean societies in their approach to that notion of governance are presented.

The frustrated generation youth exclusion in Arab Mediterranean societies

ABSTRACTIn Arab Mediterranean countries (AMCs), insecurities and a lack of opportunities have continuously kept young people from becoming independent and being full, active, and integrated members of society; a process commonly referred to as social exclusion. This paper explores the driving factors of youth exclusion in Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, and Tunisia. It is argued that not only the extent but also the structure of social exclusion varies across countries. Based on the social exclusion framework developed by the UNDP [2011. Beyond Transition – Towards Inclusive Societies. Bratislava: United Nations Development Programme], we construct a social exclusion index that takes economic, social, and political factors into account. The results obtained indicate that the share of young people suffering from social exclusion is highest in Tunisia (46.7%), followed by Algeria (43.4%), Egypt (42.1%), and Lebanon (33.2%). In contrast to the prevailing assumptions on social exclusion, we find that economic exclusion does in fact play a minor role. The strongest driver of youth exclusion in all Arab Mediterranean countries is the exclusion from social and political life.

Pedanius dioscorides' remarks on milk properties, quality and processing technology

Pedanius Dioscorides (active in the 1st century AD), the Greek-writing author of De materia medica, left a great deal of information on milk and dairy products, emphasising their therapeutic properties and applications. In doing so, he included numerous pieces of information on the production and culinary uses of individual dairy products, and provided priceless data on the technologies of food processing. As a result, the work of Dioscorides is also replete with indications concerning the state of the ancient economy and occasionally the history of Mediterranean societies.