Ponchia Simonetta, Prandi Luisa (Eds.). Shaping Boundaries: Ethnicity and Geography in the Eastern Mediterranean Area (First Millennium BC)

Zaphon, 2023. — 284 p. — (Melammu Workshops and Monographs 8).Proceedings of the 15th Melammu Workshop, Verona, 19–21 January 2022This conference volume assembles 16 contributions to “Ethnicity and Geography in the Eastern Mediterranean Area (First Millennium BC). In combination with the corresponding “Shaping Boundary” project of the University of Verona it aims to analyse a crucial period: the formation of Greek identity, the first one documented in the West, at the time of the contacts with the Near East during the first millennium BC. More in detail, the authors examined the interactions between the Syro-Mesopotamian, Levantine and Aegean worlds that took place along the coastal region extending from Bosporus to Syria and Lebanon. Special attention was paid to methodological issues and diverse approaches in the investigation of boundaries and borderlands. These can be interpreted as different kinds of geo-political, or socio-cultural lines of separation, but should also be interpreted by taking into account their fundamental functions of communication spaces, where new, mixed, or hybrid identities took shape over time.Simonetta Ponchia / Luisa Prandi - Introduction
Giovanni B. Lanfranchi - Border(s) between Polities of Unequal Power: Assyria and Northwestern Iran from the IXth to the VIIth century BCE
Raija Mattila - Reporting from the Border
Alvise Matessi - Identities in the Making: Cultural Frontiers in Central Anatolia in the 2nd Millennium BCE
Simonetta Ponchia - Boundary Definition in the Aramean Socio-political Context
Silvia Gabrieli - Tarsus Foundation Myth: Assyrian Propaganda and Hellenistic Fascination
Marco Iamoni - Pots and People again? Changing Boundaries in the Levant between the Canaanites and Phoenicians
Luigi Turri - Boundaries, Borders, and Interaction Points: Some Considerations from Cyprus.
Stéphanie Anthonioz - The Place and Frontiers of Judea in Judg 1 or How the Tribal System builds Greater Judea
Mary R. Bachvarova - The Seer Mopsos: Legendary Foundations in Archaic Anatolia before the Neileids
Madalina Dana - «Mobilités mythiques»: Récits de fondation, liens légendaires et traversée des frontières entre cités grecques de Troade et de Propontide
Fabrizio Gaetano - Civiltà a contatto in Asia Minore: Frigi, Lidi e Persiani
Omar Coloru - From the ends of the earth you are come: Greek Perceptions of the Boundaries of the Near Eastern Empires. A Brief Journey
Claudia Posani - Alcune considerazioni sull’iscrizione luvio-geroglifica TELL AHMAR 2 e sull’episodio erodoteo di Gige e Candaule: I verba videndi e le connotazioni etico-sociali della vergogna connessa alla nudità
Sarah P. Morris - “Yauna across the Sea?” Northwest Boundaries of Achaemenid Expansion (Anatolia and the North Aegean)
Ennio Biondi - I fiumi nell’impero achemenide: Frontiere naturali o mezzi di espansione imperiale?
Luisa Prandi - The Cimmerian Bosporus as a Boundary between Europe and Asia according to Aeschylus: An Invented Tradition?