The Mediterranean as a knowable object is fashionable in the social sciences. Yet the best-respected studies of the Mediterranean have been limited to later periods,
beginning with the corralling of the basin’s far-flung corners into what the Romans knew as mare
nostrum – our sea.
This colloquium aims to push such large-scale research projects back before mare nostrum, and will
attempt to see if a prehistory of, not in, the Mediterranean can be grasped coherently. It will bring
together leading and senior scholars, whose regional interests, taken together, cover the huge temporal
and spatial swath of Mediterranean prehistory. Their lectures and seminars will help delineate the
cutting-edge of Mediterranean prehistory in the early 21st century, and outline an agenda for a future
prehistory of the Mediterranean.
Sponsored by the Office of International Affairs and
the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World