We cordially invite you to participate in the first meeting of the new research group Cultural Interactions in the Ancient World. The meeting is devoted to the concept of ‘Middle Ground’, a topic that stands at the core of the Cultural Interactions theme of our group.

‘Middle Ground’ was introduced as a concept in historical studies by Richard White in his seminal The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815 (Cambridge, 1991). The concept draws attention to the essentially negotiated cultural forms that emerge when two cultures meet. Based on mutual (mis-) conceptions about the social significance of rituals and symbols on the ‘other’ side, such forms are often pragmatically adapted to mediate the needs of distinct cultural groups, but with time may attain the status of cultural institutions in their own right.

Keynote Speakers

We are delighted to have found Corinne Bonnet (Université Toulouse) and Michael Kerschner (Austrian Archaeological Institute, Vienna) willing to grace our constituting meeting as keynote speakers. Professor Bonnet is an eminent scholar of Mediterranean religion and has applied ‘Middle Ground’ theory to Phoenician-Greek interactions, most notably in her recent book Les enfants de Cadmos: le paysage religieux de la Phénicie hellénistique (Paris, 2015). Michael Kerschner is director of the research group “Cult and Sanctuary” at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. He leads the Austrian excavations of the Artemision at Ephesos and has published widely on Greek sanctuaries in Greece and Asia Minor.

Programme:

Some bibliography on the Middle Ground

for pdf’s contact p.f.a.mohring@students.uu.nl

• Carla M. Antonaccio, ‘Networking the Middle Ground? The Greek Diaspora, Tenth to Fifth Century BC’. Archaeological Review from Cambridge 28.1 (2013), 237-251.
• Corinne Bonnet, Les enfants de Cadmos: le paysage religieux de la Phénicie hellénistique (Paris, 2015).
• Corinne Bonnet, ‘The Religious Life in Hellenistic Phoenicia: ‘Middle Ground’ and New Agencies’, in J. Rüpke (ed.) The Individual in the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean (Oxford, 2013), 41-57.
• Irad Malkin, A Small Greek World (Oxford, 2011 – esp. chs. 4 and 5).
• Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the GreatLakes Region, 1650-1815 (Cambridge, 1991).