Mediterranean Studies

Remains of an ancient harbor buried under sand dunes have been accidentally found in 1987 during
construction works at the innermost northeast corner of the Gulf of ‹skenderun. The ancient harbor
registered as an Archaeological Site is located in Afla¤› Burnaz village of the Erzin town in Province of
Hatay. Surveys conducted at the site dated the site from the Early Roman Imperial to the Late Antique
periods and the surveys recorded materials of both Islamic and Byzantine cultures. Finds and results
of the archaeological investigations denote that the Burnaz harbor played a major role in economic wealth of the settlements at its close periphery and hinterland in the Late Antique period.

Following the Fourth Crusade, layers of social, ethnic, and religious affiliation combined to create complex individual and group identities in areas with mixed religious and ethnic populations. The island of Crete, a formerly Byzantine territory, was a Venetian colony from 1211 to 1569. During this time, the indigenous, Greek Orthodox population was ruled by foreign settlers who adhered to the Latin rite. The degrees of interaction varied from the coastal cities that were transformed to resemble Renaissance urban centers, to the countryside, where the Orthodox religion and Greek language and lifestyle prevailed. The local nobles, stripped of their landed property and political authority, retreated to the countryside, where they sustained the memory of the Byzantine Empire and a hope for regaining leadership of the island.

In this paper, I show how this development was best captured in the numerous commemorative portraits and representations of clothing that survived in the Orthodox village churches in the island’s interior. Away from the overseeing eye of the Venetian colonial government and the Latin Church, these small village churches served as an ideal medium for social and political commentary. These monumental portraits show the endurance of traditional, outdated Byzantine clothing styles and imperial insignia, and the inscriptions that accompany them recall Byzantium’s political authority and the leadership of some prominent local families. The memory, repetition, and invention of clothing models understood to be purely Byzantine played a crucial role in how the local, Greek Orthodox elite redefined their Byzantine identity long after the Empire lost control of its islands in the Mediterranean in the wake of the Fourth Crusade of 1204, or the fall of Constantinople in 1453. There, a traditional—i.e. Byzantine—type of clothing expressed not only the villagers’ allegiance to Byzantium, but also the Empire’s tremendous cultural authority even after long periods of foreign rule. The field research I conducted in Crete shows that a significant number of commemorative portraits painted from the 1300s on—well into the period of Venetian rule—show a style that decidedly echoes elite clothing fashionable during the Middle Byzantine period (943-1204), a period of intense cultural and political effervescence.

Heraldic insignia prominently displayed on Cretan clothing depicts the most recognized symbol of Byzantium, the double-headed eagle. It is interesting to note that the double-headed eagle appears more often on female clothing, rather than on male apparel. One cannot escape the subversive, and sophisticated attempt to reclaim lost political power without stirring conflict openly—as the representation of the imperial symbol on male dress would have conveyed. Strengthening this imperial message, inscriptions written in Greek above these portraits mention the Byzantine Emperor, or the local Greek nobles as the rightful leaders of the Orthodox. Dress, therefore, was a powerful and subversive visual tool to contest Latin authority.

New York: Fordham University Press, 2015.
Edited with introductory essay by Ryan Szpiech.
Essays by Sarah Stroumsa, Sidney Griffith, Walid Saleh, Thomas E. Burman, Antoni Biosca i Bas, Ursula Ragacs, Harvey J. Hames, Yosi Yisraeli, Ángel Sáenz-Badillos, Alexandra Cuffel, Nina Caputo, Esperanza Alfonso, and Steven F. Kruger.

On the dawn of the 24th of June 1607, a small force comprising of Tuscan, Corsican, Spanish, English and other soldiers, mercenaries and corsairs, attempted to storm the fort of Famagusta in an attempt to take it by surprise. Finding that their ladders were too short, their petards ineffective and their numbers cut short by insufficient organisation, the attackers retreated by the end of the day, having lost 21 men. After roaming the south-eastern coast of Cyprus, waiting in vain for the promised support by the local Christian populace, they departed under a cloud of failure, dispute and blame.
This paper tracks the progress of this doomed expedition on the map, providing precise information as to its preparations, information, the route it followed, the tactics employed and ultimately assessing the reasons why it failed. It is also an attempt to place the expedition on the map in terms of its approach to the Famagusta walls and the focus of its attack. It will discuss the background to this raid, and juxtapose the aspirations of Cypriot post-Venetian notables with the more pragmatic aims of the Tuscan and Spanish courts in the context of the Mediterranean corso.
Based on manuscripts from Venice, Florence and Siena, this paper focuses on the military aspects of the expedition and goes in search for the towers, bastions and gates of Famagusta in order to corroborate documentary evidence based on the evidence found on the landscape.

Malta is among the world's top ten most water scarce countries. Only c.23million m³ of groundwater can be sustainably extracted yet Malta consumes c.65million m³ per annum. These 'dry' facts construct the official portrait which lives on the ground both express and counter through more fluid and
intimate interactions with water. An ethnographic encounter with one female 69-year-old part-time farmer traces the way in which water flows through history and relationships, structuring her social domain. Her life is representative of a land-working generation, whose living memory knows water's
worth and weight, once hand-pumped and carried in buckets. Born to a large, poor family, unable to read or write, emigrating to Australia where she married and had children before returning – she translates multi-cultured practices through an embodied principle of water conservation that runs in fading parallel to Malta's modernity. 'Scarcity' is experienced in terms of financial, technical and normative flows not liquid resource. At home – the first in the neighbourhood to have a bathroom – she refrains from using the costly taps and shower, proudly installed on return from Australia. Rather, in exchange for helping relations on their land, they drive over gallon-bottles of
spring-water, which she stockpiles for watering, washing, and toilet-flushing. Widowed, with her children in Australia, water is a means by which she constitutes and reinforces relationships with neighbours and extended kin. It is also how she communes with nature – garden fruits and vegetables return offerings only when she provides nourishment. Due to scarcity, water, a source of delight and consternation, a discussion point and a matter for concealment in relation to hygiene and access,
contains and permeates social meaning.

Abstract – The site of Ashdod-Yam is located on the coast of Israel, ca. 5 km northwest of Tel Ashdod, serving as its main coastal settlement during the Iron Age. Following the uprising of Yamani, the rebel king of Ashdod against the Assyrians, Ashdod was destroyed in 712/711 BCE and the region’s center of gravity was shifted from Ashdod to Ashdod-Yam. The Iron Age enclosure of Asdod-Yam was tested archaeologically between 1965 and 1968, under the
directorship of Jacob Kaplan and according to him, the impressive fortifications were built at Ashdod-Yam by Ashdod’s rebels in anticipation of the Assyrian attack. Following the first season of renewed excavations, the remains of massive ancient fortifications have been rediscovered. The construction, however, appears too impressive to have been done in hurry and the fortifications were probably erected in order to protect a man-made harbor, created either before the rebellion or slightly afterwards. During the period of Assyrian domination, Ashdod-Yam became one of the most important Assyrian international emporia at the empire’s Mediterranean frontier. More recent ruins from the Hellenistic period were also discovered. These buildings were found destroyed as a result of an earthquake, most probably accompanied by a palaeo-sunami.

Il libro si occupa di investigare le attuali direttrici della politica estera italiana, esponendone i punti di forza e di debolezza in sei capitoli. La trattazione prevede un doppio canale, geografico e settoriale: sono state analizzate le caratteristiche dei rapporti politici e commerciali dell’Italia in quattro aree (Estremo Oriente, Balcani, Mediterraneo, Stati Uniti) nonché il concetto di interesse nazionale e l’importanza dell’approvvigionamento energetico. Il filo rosso che collega l’intera opera è rappresentato da un approccio originale alle relazioni tra l’Italia, l’Unione europea e gli altri partner continentali in un contesto di competizione globale. Pur partendo da solide convinzioni europeiste, gli autori desiderano rimarcare la persistente divergenza di interessi in merito ad alcuni aspetti sostanziali della politica estera. Al contempo, però, sono stati evidenziati i punti sui quali un’azione sinergica dei vari attori europei possa essere fruttuosa per tutti, dando vita ad una strategia win-win (mentre in altri casi si tratta di un gioco a somma zero tra i Paesi europei, nel quale al rafforzamento di un soggetto corrisponde l’indebolimento di un altro).

La tragedia avvenuta nel Canale di Sicilia, con circa 700 persone che si teme abbiano perso la vita nell’ennesimo naufragio su un barcone partito dalla Libia, mette in evidenza tutti i limiti delle politiche europee sull’immigrazione. Fino a oggi, infatti, l’Unione Europea non è stata in grado di fornire una risposta comune ed efficace all’emergenza dei flussi migratori e, allo stesso tempo, i singoli governi nazionali non riescono ad affrontare la questione da soli, come evidenziato dalle difficoltà della stessa Italia di fronte ai continui sbarchi. È evidente che l’emergenza ha assunto dimensioni sempre più grandi, il cui trend non sembra destinato a scendere, dal momento che la questione è legata al perpetrarsi di crisi di sicurezza e istituzionali ai confini diretti del Mediterraneo.