Mobility and Migration in Antiquity: Rethinking the Ancient World through Movement

Mobility and Migration in Antiquity investigates human movement in the context of the ancient world from the Iberian Peninsula to the Indian Ocean, addressing small-scale, everyday mobility as well as movement that engenders major socio-political change. Mobility and Migration in Antiquity investigates human movement in the context of the ancient world from the Iberian Peninsula to the Indian Ocean, addressing small-scale, everyday mobility as well as movement that engenders major socio-political change. The volume’s fundamental concern is to interrogate how historical transformations in Antiquity may be better understood once movement is recognised as a pervasive phenomenon. The chapters span a wide chronological and geographical range, collectively providing openings for a new history of societal change that takes movement as its starting point – in its myriad of forms – from personal to community, from local to long-distance, from temporary to permanent, from voluntary to forced. It is organised in seven sections: borders and boundaries; environmental adaptions; cosmopolitanism; forced mobility and displacement; trade, craft, and labour; journeys and pilgrimages; and sedentism, gender, and immobility. The final part of the volume pivots towards the future of these disciplines in their approach to mobility. Each of these sections is united by an overarching theme and focus while also addressing larger historical questions associated with mobility in the ancient world and explicitly placing approaches from classical literature, history and archaeological sciences side by side. Mobility and Migration in Antiquity is an invaluable resource for anyone working on mobility and migration in the ancient Mediterranean world, as well as those interested in theories of migration across history, and societal change more broadly.