A Companion to Mediterranean History, First Edition. Edited by Peregrine Horden and Sharon Kinoshita.
© 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
chapter three
“Prehistory” is seldom an apt or helpful term, and particularly for a theatre such as the
Mediterranean, where it creates an unfortunate division between the domains of deep
time archaeology and traditional text-based history.^1 In fact, as we shall see, many of
the fundamental elements of Mediterranean life, as these are understood in later
times, first emerged and began to coalesce before (often long before) the mid-first
millennium bce formation of the classical world.^2 Examples include seafaring prac-
tices, the major components of Mediterranean agriculture and their impact on the
basin’s landscapes, the formation of towns, the creation of extensive trading networks,
and the definition of distinctive cultures of consumption; indeed, the very constella-
tion of natural conditions that defines the Mediterranean’s environment is far from
eternal, but has identifiable origins, preceded by markedly different regimes.
Fortunately, thanks to a long tradition of archaeological exploration and a dramatic
burgeoning of data over the past few decades, including in the realms of landscape-
scale analysis, underwater investigation, and archaeological science, coupled with no
less spectacular advances in climate reconstruction, we are exceptionally well-placed
to examine how the world of the Mediterranean first came into being. Perhaps sur-
prisingly for historians of later periods, the problem is not that we know too little, but
that we are swamped with new information, albeit (a significant rider) highly uneven
in distribution, with frustrating spatial and temporal lacunae still along the southern,
African, shore of the Mediterranean. This chapter’s aims are to outline the overall
insights to be derived from this cornucopia of knowledge, here presented chrono-
logically in view of the fact that this field is liable to be unfamiliar to most readers, and
to show how these alter our perspective on subsequent Mediterranean dynamics. In
order to avoid the snares of a teleologically-imposed investigative agenda, a diverse
range of early trajectories needs to be traced, only certain of which, over time, began
to converge, braid, blend and grow into (to our eyes) recognizably Mediterranean
ways of doing things, ways that eventually expanded to create a cultural world around
a Middle Sea.
Mediterranean “Prehistory”
cyPrian BroodBank