WG1. Things in Motion

Objects have always been central to movement in the Mediterranean. Mobility would not be possible without the physical infrastructure of travel: the ship, the caravan, the compass, the map. This working group seeks to use the material culture of mobility to develop a broader history of the multiple lived experiences of movement in the Mediterranean space.

Description

This working group explores what those objects associated with migration in the Mediterranean space can tell us about the material culture of mobility, but also the emotional histories of the movement of people(s). By taking a broad interdisciplinary approach – drawing on archaeology, anthropology, literary studies, cultural history, economic history and the history of emotions – we seek to use artefacts of mobility to reconstruct the physical, cultural, and mental landscapes of movement and exchange across time and space in the Mediterranean world. The group is particularly interested in understanding the place that the physical infrastructures of travel – the ship, the caravan, the compass, the map – have occupied in the mental and emotional histories of mobility in this space. Through a multi-faceted study of the lived experience, memory, and the representation of trans-Mediterranean journeys in different spaces and in different time periods, we hope that we can begin to assess how the materiality of mobility has shaped its broader impact on the economy, culture, and social life of the region.

Objectives

To establish the role of objects in driving and facilitating movement in the Mediterranean.
To understand how these objects shaped the experience, the memory, and the representation of movement in different areas of the Mediterranean and in different time periods.
To use the material culture of mobility to actively engage the broader public with histories of movement in the Mediterranean space.

Activities

We will take the lead in the COST Action’s first conference in Zadar in February 2020, which will focus on shipwrecks and caravans as the dominant configurations of collective movement in the real and imagined histories of the Mediterranean.

We will organise a total of four workshops, one in each year of the COST Action Project. They will all focus on an aspect of the Virtual Museum project that is one of the key outcomes for this working group.

Our first workshop, also in Zadar in February 2020, will introduce participants to the basic concept of the Virtual Museum and the technology that will be used to develop it.

This will be followed by a workshop in 2021 on ‘The Object in Context,’ another in 2022 on ‘Testing and Improving the Model’ and a final workshop in 2023 on ‘Lessons Learned and Future Challenges’.

Outcomes

We are committed to publishing the papers presented at our Conference in Zadar as a special edition of a journal or an edited volume.

We will develop an interactive Virtual Museum of the shipwreck at Gnalić in Croatia that will allow members of the general public to explore the material culture of the site and use it as a window into the broader history of mobility in the Late Renaissance period.