6-7, December 2022
Sala Storica Dino Campana, Biblioteca delle Oblate
Conference on Trade, Archaeology and the Integration of the Lands between the Caucasus, Anatolia and Mesopotamia in the Afro-Eurasian World System: 9th -14th Centuries.
This conference is part of the ERC Project ArmEn which seeks to establish a new framework for studying the Armenian plateau and the wider area around it stretching from the south of the Caucasus mountain range to Anatolia and northern Mesopotamia (henceforth CAM) as a space of cultural entanglements between the 9th to 14th centuries. It argues that this region is key to understanding the history of medieval Eurasia but has not attracted sufficient attention.
The conference aims to contribute to this overall theme by exploring the inclusion of CAM in debates on medieval Afro-Eurasian connectivity through trade, focusing especially on the role of Armenians in this trade, the trade routes crossing historical Armenia, or commodities imported or exported within this area. Written sources, maps and routes of communication, artistic representation of travel, merchants and iconography of trade in general, archaeological evidence with a particular emphasis on pottery/glass production, architecture, and numismatics will be considered. The integration of CAM into the Afro-Eurasian world system will be discussed with reference to international circuits connecting CAM with the Byzantine and the Mediterranean world, Europe and the Russian Steppe, North Africa, Central Asia, India, and China.
It is hoped that the conference will create a propitious atmosphere for fruitful conversation between scholars who are engaged in research in fields with a consolidated historiography and those who are venturing into new avenues of research. We wish to encourage an interdisciplinary approach to the subject of trade and connectivity, with an inter-generational emphasis, where well-established scholars and a new generation of researchers can mutually inspire each other.
Organisers: Elisa Pruno, Michele Nucciotti, Zaroui Pogossian