Contacts and networks in the Mediterranean: the northern Aegean from a local, regional, and global perspective.

Abstract

This dossier brings together a set of contributions dedicated to the analysis of dynamics of contact, connectivity, and cultural transformation in the ancient Mediterranean, with particular emphasis on the Northern Aegean region. Drawing on different approaches and types of evidence, the studies presented here explore the complexity of interactions between Greek populations and local communities, highlighting processes of negotiation, hybridity, and identity formation over time. The choice of the Northern Aegean as the central axis of this dossier stems from its historical relevance as a zone of intense circulation of people, objects, and practices, visible in the material record, including ceramics, coins, inscriptions, cult spaces, and settlement contexts, which attest to multifaceted interactions since the Bronze Age. Far from representing unilateral configurations, these contexts reveal a dense web of interactions in which local agents played an active role in the appropriation, reinterpretation, and transformation of cultural elements. Inspired by recent debates in Mediterranean archaeology, the dossier engages with theoretical and methodological perspectives that emphasize the analysis of materiality in context, the agency of objects, and the articulation of different scales of observation. In this sense, concepts such as connectivity, networks, localism, and glocalization provide tools to rethink the relationship between the local and the global, moving beyond explanatory models based on fixed hierarchies or exclusively diffusionist interpretations. By foregrounding postcolonial approaches and the centrality of local dynamics, the contributions in this volume participate in the revision of traditional interpretations that have long privileged a Hellenocentric perspective. In its place, a more plural and situated reading is proposed, attentive to regional specificities and to the multiple forms of cultural interaction in the ancient Mediterranean. Organized within the framework of research developed at the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology of the University of São Paulo (MAE-USP), this dossier is directly connected to the project “Studies on the Global and Local in the Northern Aegean: Interconnections, Hybridization, Materialities and Transformation in a Religious Context (8th–5th centuries BCE),” funded by the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP), process no. 2024/15679-3, under the Young Investigator grant scheme. Linked to the activities of the Laboratory for Studies on the Ancient City (Labeca-MAE/USP), the project proposes the development of an innovative research agenda on the Northern Aegean, combining contemporary theoretical approaches, such as glocalism, connectivity, and postcolonial perspectives, with the systematic analysis of material culture, epigraphy, and archaeological data. In this context, the present dossier brings together national and international specialists, reflecting the collaborative and interdisciplinary nature of the initiative and consolidating a field of research still underexplored in Brazilian scholarship on the ancient Mediterranean. By articulating different perspectives, scales, and bodies of evidence, this volume proposes to reflect on the Mediterranean as a space of networks and connections, in which local experiences not only participate in, but also actively transform broader processes of circulation and interaction.