The Mediterranean around 800: On the Brink of the Second Trade Cycle
Chris Wickham
not moving from East to West, West East. There was never a moment in which the connectivity between microregions, for example small-scale cabotage port port, present, as Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell have recently stressed. And Michael McCormick, also very recently, has put powerful case maintenance of network communication all kinds Mediterranean throughout early Middle Ages, including across low point interregional movement, he would date ca. 650-780.1 So, on one level, there is problem with realities relationships, symposium title puts it. It does require so dense communications region influence another its material culture-a single princess can do it (as Theophan6 court culture late 10th-century Germany), or artisan group artisans different twopronged spread glazed pottery eastern Constantinople Rome eighth century Iraq Syria Egypt, then Tunisia, Sicily, Spain, ninth).2 certainly commercial exchange regions interconnect at level their culture. All same, give space an analysis more specifically economic type, larger scale than movements individuals. Those latter movements, indeed, themselves sorts meaning environments where high respect those are rather reduced. Jerome could go Bethlehem 386 without thinking twice about it, write letters
Dumbarton Oaks papers