ANCIENT MEDITERRANEAN REVOLUTIONS
A Conference to Commemorate the 50th Anniversary of AHMA at UC Berkeley
September 6 to September 8, 2018
The Graduate Group in Ancient History and Mediterranean Archaeology (AHMA) was a revolutionary initiative. It brought together a number of previously segregated fields, disciplines, and methods in an attempt to produce a broader, deeper, and more richly textured vision of Mediterranean antiquity. The program was designed to bridge two persistent gaps in particular: between the disciplines of History (text) and Archaeology (material culture), on the one hand, and between the civilizations of Greece and Rome and those of the Near East and Egypt, on the other. As the first interdisciplinary program of its kind in the world—long before “interdisciplinarity” had become an academic buzzword—AHMA helped to set an ambitious agenda that has transformed the study of the ancient Mediterranean world.
1968 was also, of course, a year of revolution—at Berkeley, throughout the United States, and around the world. Given the timing of this important anniversary, we have organized a conference devoted to the problem of revolutions in antiquity. We do not seek to make a political statement—to appropriate a revolutionary past for the aims of a present that might (but perhaps ought not) be conceived as revolutionary; nor, conversely, do we seek to examine “revolutionary” change in antiquity through the lens of contemporary politics. We aim rather to explore the factors that contributed to significant and long-lasting change in the ancient Mediterranean, in political and economic life, as well as in the structures of human settlement, human knowledge, and cultural production. We are also interested in understanding the ways in which gradual, incremental change intersected with sudden and massive shifts, and in unpacking the complex relationship between evolution and revolution.
In accordance with these aims we have arranged a series of panels, following a keynote address by Nicholas Purcell (Camden Professor Ancient History, University of Oxford), organized neither by region nor by period, but rather in terms of different domains of change: cultural, political, religious, legal, intellectual/scientific, artistic, urban, and economic. By juxtaposing such modalities of change across time and space, we hope to identify and explain some of the wider frameworks within which both evolutionary and revolutionary change took place in the ancient Mediterranean world as a whole.
A full program will be available at http://ahma.berkeley.edu/
Questions may be sent to Carlos Noreña (norena@berkeley.edu)
CONFIRMED SPEAKERS
Arrington, Nathan (Princeton University)
Boehm, Ryan (Tulane University)
Bryan, Betsy (Johns Hopkins University)
Cooney, Kara (UCLA)
Eberle, Lisa (Tübingen University)
Elm, Susanna (UC Berkeley)
Feldman, Marian (Johns Hopkins University)
Forsdyke, Sara (University of Michigan)
Hallett, Christopher (UC Berkeley)
Humfress, Caroline (St. Andrews University)
Kaye, Noah (Michigan State University)
Maas, Michael (Rice University)
Magness, Jodi (Univerity of North Carolina)
McInerney, Jeremy (University of Pennsylvania)
Morris, Ellen (Columbia University)
Purcell, Nicholas (University of Oxford)
Quinn, Josephine (University of Oxford)
Reed, Annette (New York University)
Russell, Amy (Durham University)
Shaw, Brent (Princeton University)
Terrenato, Nicola (University of Michigan)
Van Alfen, Peter (American Numismatic Society)
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(Photo: "Empty Boardroom" by Reynermedia, licensed under CC BY 2.0)
