A Companion to Mediterranean History -- Copyright -- Content -- List of Figures -- Notes on Contributors -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- Part I Climate and Vegetation -- Chapter One The Mediterranean Climate -- Formation and structure of the mediterranean climate system -- Climate variability since the mid-Holocene -- Sources of data -- Linking climate variations to the events of human history -- Chapter Two The Vegetative Mediterranean -- A sea of plants -- The deforested sea -- The Mediterranean exchange -- Empires of plants I: Rome -- Empires of plants II: the caliphate -- Conclusion -- Part II Turning Points and Phases -- Chapter Three Mediterranean "Prehistory" -- The speciating sea -- Seafaring and farming -- The formative "long" third millennium -- Big worlds, small worlds -- The making of a middle sea -- Chapter Four The Ancient Mediterranean -- "Mediterranean antiquity"-an abusive relationship? 1 -- Primary production marks out a different world2 -- "The powers that ruled the sea" 3 -- The accidents of integration 4 -- Maritime civilizations? Ancient history and cross-cultural exchange 5 -- Chapter Five The Medieval Mediterranean -- The "breakdown of Mediterranean unity" -- From Muslim to Latin Mediterranean -- From a compartmentalized sea to a Mediterranean inserted into complex networks -- The production of a "Mediterranean normativity" -- Conclusion -- Chapter Six The Early Modern Mediterranean -- The Ottoman Mediterranean -- From Italian to Ottoman merchants -- The Mediterranean viewed from the east -- The Mediterranean in the world -- The question of decline -- From traders to imperialists -- Chapter Seven Mediterranean Modernity? -- A modern Mediterranean? -- A Mediterranean modernity? -- Honor and shame -- Patronage and corruption -- Cosmopolitanism and modernity -- The sea's seven souls -- Chapter Eight Po-Mo Med.

Part III Politics and Power -- Chapter Nine Thalassocracies -- Meanings -- Origins -- Infrastructures -- Chapter Ten Nautical Technology -- Chapter Eleven Piracy -- Three vignettes -- Lessons learned -- Rethinking the history of Mediterranean piracy -- Tactical matters matter -- The distinctiveness of Mediterranean piracy -- Conclusion -- Chapter Twelve Cartography -- Part IV Settlement and Society -- Chapter Thirteen Settlement Patterns -- Introduction -- Micro-locations -- The fission-fusion model -- Markets, administrative and military foci -- Sustaining radii: their transformation over time, and the density of central places -- Commerce and empire, settlements and industry, consumer and producer cities -- Gateway and entrepreneurial communities -- Regional growth trajectories -- Warfare -- Plans and functions of internal settlement space -- Mediterranean uniqueness? -- Chapter Fourteen Cave Dwelling -- Constructing a chronology of cave living and cut-rock architecture -- The morphology of cave villages -- Defensive structures -- Hydraulic systems -- Inside the cave residences -- Religious houses -- The economy of cave villages -- The disappearance of troglodyte settlements -- Chapter Fifteen Family and Household -- A problem of evidence -- A long-term Mediterranean pattern of marriage and family? -- Questions of unity and continuity: 30 years of debates -- Variability and change within a single setting: the case of Egypt -- Household and family as welfare agencies -- Chapter Sixteen Disease -- Chapter Seventeen Forms of Slavery -- Historiographic premises -- Sources of slavery -- A Greco-Roman Mediterranean -- The rise of a medieval Mediterranean -- The Mediterranean and the globalization of slavery -- Clash of economies or of economic conceptions? -- Concluding remarks -- Part V Language and Culture -- Chapter Eighteen Material Culture.

Approaches to material culture -- The idea of Mediterranean material culture and Braudel's other paradigm -- Prehistoric and ancient things: pots and copper -- Medieval and early modern things: silk and Cosimo's breeches -- Modern things: souvenirs and Wedgwood -- Conclusion -- Chapter Nineteen Visual Culture -- The Mediterranean's comparative agenda -- A history of Mediterranean visual culture: what constitutes Mediterranean art and architecture? -- A Mediterranean history of visual culture: the Mediterranean as an optic for art and architecture -- The painterly Mediterranean -- Chapter Twenty Mediterranean Literature -- Mediterranean multilingualism and its literary consequences -- Cross-readings -- A literature of the Mediterranean -- Chapter Twenty-One Lingua Franca -- Nomenclature -- Origins and early history -- The textual record -- Negative evidence -- Afterlife of the lingua franca -- Chapter Twenty-Two Hybridity -- Part VI Religions in Conflict and Co-existence -- Chapter Twenty-Three Ethno-Religious Minorities -- Minorities and majorities -- Through late antiquity (to c . 600 CE) -- The Islamic Mediterranean in the Middle Ages (c. 600-c. 1550 CE) -- Mediterranean Christendom in the Middle Ages (c. 600- c. 1550 CE) -- The modern and contemporary Mediterranean (post-c.1550 CE) -- Connectivity and interdependence -- The "principle of convenience" and minority-majority relations -- A Mediterranean phenomenon? -- Chapter Twenty-Four Shared Sacred Places -- Introduction -- Ethnographic examples -- Cosmopolitanism and "multiculturalism" -- Shared shrines: a Mediterranean specificity? -- Pilgrims' habitus -- The challenges and stakes of shared sacred spaces: the politics of sacra -- Shared shrines as places of conflict and violence -- Chapter Twenty-Five Jews -- The Great Sea -- The rabbis and the Mediterranean -- Merchants.

Early modern and modern migrations -- Part VII The Mediterranean and a Wider World -- Chapter Twenty-Six The Mediterranean and the Atlantic -- Introduction: preludes -- The Mediterranean and the Atlantic in the late middle ages and the early modern period -- The rise of the Atlantic and the decline of the Mediterranean -- Aftermath: from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean -- Conclusion -- Chapter Twenty-Seven The Mediterranean and Africa -- The oasis caravan-system and middle Niger cities -- Mediterranean hinterlands -- Mediterranean in Africa? -- Conclusion -- Chapter Twenty-Eight The Mediterranean and Asia -- West Asia and the making of the Mediterranean world -- Persia and the imperial state tradition -- The Far Easts: long-distance exchanges -- Asia's pastoralists -- Chapter Twenty-Nine The Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean -- What Mediterranean? What Indian Ocean? Changing scales of connectivity -- Sources for Mediterranean and Indian Ocean interaction -- Linking the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean: interrelated levels of exchange over time -- Looking forward and back: oil and Dürer's rhino -- Index.