Abstracts Thursday, June 1 9:00am-11:00am 1A. The Ancient Eastern Mediterranean: Cultures and Economies Chair: Helen Dixon, University of Helsinki Helen Dixon, University of Helsinki, “Altars to Baal: Understanding the Use of Levantine Phoenician Sacred Space” Though rarely explored on their own terms, the ten temples and shrines known from the Iron Age (ca. 1100 – ca. 300 BCE) Phoenician Levantine ‘homeland’ show evidence of significant stylistic diversity, which may be attributed both to chronological change and regional variation. This paper will focus on structures recovered from within the extant temple complexes, paying special attention to stones identified by their excavators as altars. What do the highly variable materials, shapes, and carved features of these Levantine Phoenician altars potentially tell us about the use of sacred space? How might we interpret the relationships between each ‘altar’ and other temple features, like water basins or standing stones? Evidence from neighboring Mediterranean cultures that has previously been brought to bear on the interpretation of Phoenician altars will also be reevaluated. Malgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba, University of Texas at San Antonio, “Trypillian Culture as the Cradle of European Civilization” ​My paper examines the motifs found on today’s folk embroideries, weavings, ritual dress, wood carvings, painted Easter eggs, and paper cutouts from East-Central Europe, the Balkans, and Anatolia, and traces their origin to the pre-Indo-European, Neolithic, Trypole-Cucuteni culture, considered the cradle of European civilization. This culture, from the geographic area of today’s Ukraine, Moldova, and Romania, developed from the sixth till the third millennium BC, and was one of the most highly developed cultures of Neolithic Europe. Trypillian civilization was characterized by a sedentary lifestyle, and is famous for its painted pottery and female statuettes, full of feminine symbols and diagrams presenting a complete world view. Today, these symbols can be found on objects throughout Europe, Asia, and the Americas, including the Mediterranean. I examine and explain the meaning of the system of symbols of Tripillian imagery, and show their correlation with motifs on contemporary folk embroideries, weavings, and carvings. Agata Kubala, Institute of Art History, University of Wrocław, Poland, “White-Ground Lekythoi as the Evidence of Athenian Funerary Rites in the Fifth Century B.C.E.” ​Among the surviving ancient Greek objects from the collection of the nineteenth-century Wrocław architect Eduard Schaubert there is a white-ground lekythos decorated with a sepulchral scene. It represents a very interesting category of ancient Greek vessels produced for funeral purposes. White-ground lekythoi with polychrome decoration were made almost exclusively by Athenian ceramists and connected with Athenian funeral rites from 470 to about 410 B.C. There are two general categories into which the scenes depicted on these particular vessels can be divided: those on which Death is represented allegorically by its ministers, Hermes, Charon Hypnos and Thanatos, and those on which made almost exclusively by Athenian ceramists and connected with Athenian funeral rites from 470 to about 410 B.C. There are two general categories into which the scenes depicted on these particular vessels can be divided: those on which Death is represented allegorically by its ministers, Hermes, Charon Hypnos and Thanatos, and those on which Athenians are seen executing the rites of burial practised at Athens in the Classical period. There are also scenes which provide evidence, that at Athens in the fifth century B.C. tombs were seen as places where one could contact the dead. Representations of the white-ground lekythoi on red-figured vases show them brought to the grave, standing or lying broken on the steps of the tomb or under the bier at the prosthesis what indicates, that they also played a role in this part of the funeral rite. The white-ground lekythoi, unlike many their red-figured counterparts, were produced at Athens and for the Athenians what makes them a very important source for our understanding of Athenian funerary rites in the fifth century B.C. as well as Athenian ideas and attitudes about death and the afterlife. Paul Sant-Cassia, University of Malta, “Why is the ‘Ancient Economy’ So Problematical?” ​Over the past 20 years’ debates on the economy of the Classical World were initially dominated by the controversy between the ‘primitivists’ (or more properly ‘substantivists’) and ‘modernists’ (i.e. ‘formalists’) (Finely et al). In an attempt to move beyond the limitations of that debate, focus has now shifted to periodic oscillations between ‘efflorescence’ and ‘equilibrium or internal states’ (Goldstone, Ober, etc). Yet some of the troubling issues in the substantivist/formalist debate (dual economies, economic rationalities) have not been fully resolved by the Efflorescence/Equilibrium model, that in turn through its reliance on Schumpeterian models of economic growth (‘destructive investment’, lower transaction costs, innovation and entrepreneurship, etc) risks creating other ‘essentialist’ accounts of ancient economies. This paper tries to navigate a way out of these two debates by showing (i) how the classical Athenian economy was integrated through the circulation of two relatively ‘invisible’ social categories (women and slaves) who bridged the divide between the citizen and the metic social and economic worlds, and (ii) how the means of destruction (in particular, the military -coinage- slavery complex) was as important as the means of production in explaining ‘efflorescences’ than any putative ‘cultural genius’. 1B. Piracy in the Medieval Mediterranean: Politics and Economy Chair, Kathryn L. Reyerson, University of Minnesota John Manke, University of Minnesota, “Piracy and State Authority in Fourteenth-Century Genoa” ​The violent factionalism that characterized Genoese politics during the Middle Ages was not limited to the city itself. Often, exiled nobles would retreat to their lands in the hinterlands of Liguria and equip pirate vessels to prey on local shipping. This problem became particularly acute when a new popular government came to power in 1339 and many nobles were sent into exile, which caused piracy to become rampant in the Ligurian Sea. To combat this, the 1339 government reformulated the Officium Robarie. This administrative apparatus was originally created to facilitate reprisal claims from foreign powers. In the 14th century, however, the focus of the Robarie shifted to prosecuting piratical activities that disaffected nobles directed at Genoese shipping. This paper will argue that this change was part of a larger process wherein the popular administrations of the 14th century sought to expand communal authority and bring stability to the "comune." Kathryn L. Reyerson, University of Minnesota, “Lordship and Piracy in the Medieval Mediterranean World” ​In this study, I will explore literary sources and documents of practice to investigate the connection between piracy and lordship in the medieval Mediterranean world. There is a range of piratical activity among the ex-patriot Genoese who flooded the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Mediterranean. There were the noble corsair lords like Enrico Pescatore, Henry, count of Malta, who had ambitions of conquering Crete in the face of Venetian dominance. Enrico served in the maritime service of Emperor Frederick II of Germany/Sicily. The Genoese pirate Vignolo de Vignoli collaborated with the Pescatore, Henry, count of Malta, who had ambitions of conquering Crete in the face of Venetian dominance. Enrico served in the maritime service of Emperor Frederick II of Germany/Sicily. The Genoese pirate Vignolo de Vignoli collaborated with the Hospitallers to conquer Aegean islands, particularly Rhodes. An admiral when he was not a corsair the remarkable Benedetto Zaccaria came to dominate Phocaea, renowned as a source of alum, and for a brief time the island of Chios, a source of mastic. Insights regarding the relationship between politics and piracy, particularly in terms of islands and pirates, should emerge from this investigation. Emily Sohmer Tai, Queensborough Community College, CUNY, “The Division of the Spoils: Cargo and Commerce in Medieval Piracy” ​“Successful merchant networks have historically been built on connections,” writes Reyerson in her study of medieval Mediterranean trade, The Art of the Deal (Brill, 2002). Scholarship has often presented maritime theft, or piracy, as an activity disruptive to such networks. As sanctioned maritime aggression, or corsairing, seizures of ships and cargo could represent a strategic campaign to rupture networks that sustained the commerce of political and economic rivals. Unsanctioned maritime theft has, meanwhile, been seen as the foundation of a “parasitic” economy, that preyed upon legitimate commerce. This paper will explore characterizations of piracy as a parallel economy in the medieval Mediterranean by focusing upon the question of what was seized in an episode of maritime interruption and how it was disposed of. An examination of these commercial interactions will show that pirate captains, however disruptive they might have been, may also be regarded as “deal-makers” in the medieval Mediterranean. 1C. Fear, Identity, and the Imagination with Respect to the Premodern Mediterranean Chair: Daniel T. Reff, The Ohio State University Michael North, University of Greifswald, “The