The Making of the Middle Sea : A History of the Mediterranean from the Beginning to the Emergence of the Classical World

by: Broodbank, C.

The Making of the Middle Sea
Cyprian Broodbank

The first full, interpretive synthesis for a generation on the rise of the Mediterranean world from its very beginnings up to the threshold of Classical times - winner of the Wolfson History Prize

Overview
The Mediterranean has a history spanning millennia and a sea that borders three continents. It has long been a diverse melting-pot of cultures and one of the global cockpits of human endeavour. Yet in contrast to several outstanding interpretations of its Classical and subsequent history, there has been remarkably little holistic exploration of how its societies, culture and economies first came into being, despite the fact that almost all the fundamental developments that shaped these originated well before 500 BC.

This book offers an interpretive exploration into the rise of the Mediterranean world from its beginnings, before the emergence of our own species, up to the threshold of Classical times. Mediterranean archaeology is one of the world?s richest sources for the reconstruction of ancient societies, yet this book draws in equal measure on ideas and information from the European, western Asian and African flanks, as well as the islands at the Mediterranean?s heart, to achieve a truly innovative focus on the varied trajectories and interactions that created this maritime world. Extensively illustrated, this book is a masterpiece of archaeological and historical writing that ranges across evidence from ancient texts to the cutting-edge science of climate change and genetics. It embraces a timespan from early humans and the origins of farming and metallurgy to the rise and interconnections of the first Mediterranean civilizations, shedding new light on such traditional foci as ancient Egypt, the early Levant, the Minoan and Mycenaean Aegean, Phoenicians, Greeks and Etruscans, while reconfiguring all these within a broader Mediterranean
framework.

Now featuring a significant new preface that highlights the latest game-changing research, The Making of the Middle Sea offers a comprehensive and compelling narrative that illuminates the dynamics of ancient Mediterranean life and their enduring impact on later history, our present, and our future.

Contents List
One: A Barbarian History • Two: Provocative Places • Three: The Speciating Sea (1.8 million – 50,000 years ago) • Four: A Cold Coming We Had of It (50,000 years ago – 10,000 BC) • Five: Brave New Worlds (10,000 –5500 BC) • Six: How It Might Have Been (5500 – 3500 BC) • Seven: The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (3500 – 2200 BC) • Eight: Pomp and Circumstance (2200 – 1300 BC) • Nine: From Sea to Shining Sea (1300 – 800 BC) • Ten: The End of the Beginning (800 – 500 BC) • Eleven: De Profundis

About the Author
Cyprian Broodbank is Professor of Archaeology and a Director at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at the University of Cambridge. He was Professor of Mediterranean Archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London from 1993 to 2014. His book An Island Archaeology of the Early Cyclades won the James R. Wiseman award of the Archaeological Institute of America (for all fields of archaeology), and the Runciman Prize (for all fields of Hellenic Studies).

Reviews
'A major intellectual feat … sets new standards in scholarship, coherence and readability'
Colin Renfrew, The Times Literary Supplement

'An almighty achievement … wonderfully elegant prose … fascinating, intelligent and well-written but also provocative and challenging'
Guardian

'A masterly synthesis that shows us just how much Greece, Rome and other later societies owed to earlier millennia. Beautifully written, up-to-date and elegantly argued'
Brian Fagan, University of California, author of Beyond the Blue Horizon

'An invaluable and beautifully illustrated resource, incomparable in its scope, depth and originality'
History Today

'A vast, brilliantly comprehensive and penetrating account ... an illuminating battery of analysis and understanding'
Adam Nicolson, The Week

'Cyprian Broodbank offers us a Mediterranean like nothing we have seen before'
Daniel Lord Small, Harvard University

The Making of the Middle Sea : A History of the Mediterranean from the Beginning to the Emergence of the Classical World

by: Broodbank, C.

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