Vient de paraître The Emporion in the Ancient Western Mediterranean. Trade and Colonial Encounters from the Archaic to the Hellenistic Period sous la direction d’Éric Gailledrat, Michael Dietler & Rosa Plana-Mallart aux Presses universitaires de la Méditerranée

Vient de paraître The Emporion in the Ancient Western Mediterranean. Trade and Colonial Encounters from the Archaic to the Hellenistic Period sous la direction d’Éric Gailledrat, Michael Dietler & Rosa Plana-Mallart aux Presses universitaires de la Méditerranée, coll. "Mondes anciens", 2019, 276 p. ISBN : 978-2-36781-275-5 Prix : 24 €.

"Twenty-five years ago, publication of the landmark volume L’emporion (Bresson & Rouillard 1993) had a major impact on studies of the ancient Mediterranean. It marked one of the first attempts to focus attention systematically on the kinds of trade enclaves that ancient Greeks named "emporia" and to review the existing textual and archaeological evidence concerning these spaces of cross-cultural encounter and the roles they played in ancient economic systems and processes of colonial interaction. The questions, enigmas, and evidentiary lacunae revealed by that exploratory venture provoked a torrent of vigorous empirical research and theoretical debate, especially in the western Mediterranean, where programs of archaeological research on this theme became particularly active in France, Italy, and Spain. The current volume re-examines the phenomenon of the emporion in the light of this subsequent wealth of new studies and data. However, it also seeks to set the analysis within an expanded international and cross-disciplinary framework and to enlarge the audience for this discussion. The authors include scholars from France, Italy, Spain, and the United States, and from the fields of anthropology, archaeology, classics, and history."

Éric Gailledrat is Research Director at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), UMR 5140 "Archéologie des Sociétés Méditerranéennes" (Montpellier, France). Former member of the Ecole des Hautes Etudes Hispaniques (Madrid, Spain), his research conducted both in France and Spain focuses on the relations between native and colonial societies in western Mediterranean. Michael Dietler is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago (USA). He conducts archaeological research in France on ancient Mediterranean colonial encounters, and ethnographic and historical research in Africa, Europe, and the US. Rosa Plana-Mallart is Professor of Classical Archaeology at the University Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3, UMR 5140 "Archéologie des Sociétés Méditerranéennes" (Montpellier, France). Her research focuses on the processes of urbanisation and territorialisation in North-Western Mediterranean and the contacts between Iberian and Greek societies.

Nous tenons à remercier chaleureusement Gérard L.F. Chouin pour nous avoir signalé cette précieuse publication, centrée sur le monde antique mais faisant également une part à des perspectives comparatistes, notamment dans l’article qu’il a co-écrit avec Christopher R. DeCorse : "Atlantic Intersections : African-European Emporia in Early Modern West Africa"