The Making of the Middle Sea

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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.

The Mediterranean has been for millennia one of the global cockpits of human endeavour. World-class interpretations exist of its Classical and subsequent history, but 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 originated well before 500 BC. Mediterranean archaeology is one of the world's richest sources for the reconstruction of ancient societies, yet this book is the first to draw 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.

The Making of the Middle Sea is extensively illustrated and ranges across disciplines, subject matter and chronology from early humans and the origins of farming and metallurgy to the rise of civilizations - Egyptian, Levantine, Minoan, Mycenaean, Phoenician, Etruscan, early Greek and ultimately pan-Mediterranean.

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

Author Bio

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).