Joshua Hall, Matthew Lloyd, and Josho Brouwers are joined by special guest Dr Lieve Donnellan of Aarhus University to talk about networks and interconnectivity in the ancient Mediterranean. We talk about migration (in some cases erroneously referred to as “colonization”) and about globalization in the ancient world, with a special emphasis on the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Carthaginians. We also tackle the problem that when studying the ancient world, a lot of our focus is usually on the ancient Greeks and Romans and not other peoples, and how we might solve this issue.
The discussion is prompted by our reading of Cyprian Broodbank’s monumental work, The Making of the Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean from the Beginning to the Emergence of the Classical World, published in 2013 by Thames & Hudson. Broodbank offers a history of the entire Mediterranean, including its geological formation, down to around the beginning of the fifth century BC. We talk extensively about the book without going into too much detail. If the topic of this podcast episode tickles your fancy, you should chase down a copy of this (very affordable) book.
This episode is also available on YouTube.