Conference Presentations by Mari Yamasaki
Guest lecture at the Jagiellonian University, Krakow, 2024
Research on the perception of underwater spaces in ancient Mediterranean societies represents an ... more Research on the perception of underwater spaces in ancient Mediterranean societies represents an almost entirely unexplored area of investigation.
This project investigates the multifaceted concepts of underwater spaces in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Aegean in the second and first millennium BCE. It considers the way submarine environments were perceived, both following the direct experience of immersion and through imagination. By bringing together real and imagined underwater spaces through the tools offered by cognitive psychology and philosophy, it is possible to glimpse into a yet unexplored area in the field of ancient studies: to understand the perception of the ancient sea from a full, three-dimensional perspective, introducing new depths to our knowledge of the ancient Mediterranean cultures.
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Humans have been diving with and without technological aid since prehistory; some recent evidence... more Humans have been diving with and without technological aid since prehistory; some recent evidence seems to push the limits even beyond our species, suggesting that also Neanderthals would not see the surface of the sea as a limit to their action. Freediving for pearls, corals and sponges is well attested in the Persian Gulf as early as the third millennium BCE, and the practice was also known in the Mediterranean, the Americas, and Asia. Engaging with the underwater realm was not exclusive to pearl divers. Fishermen and coastal inhabitants may have experienced diving more often than we think, harbour builders may have required underwater expertise, and painters and poets borrowed underwater imagery for their art. But what evidence do we have for these ancient activities? How, as archaeologists, can we approach the subject of underwater engagement? A long and tiresome argument for not approaching the issue has been the lack of evidence-especially the material evidence-and that the marine engagement was probably limited to its surface. We disagree. We believe the evidence is there and needs to be put into the right context, reframed, or simply looked at from an aquatic perspective. This workshop brings together experts from a wide range of disciplines and diverse competences that share one very distinctive element: their interest in the sea and the complex ways humans have engaged and continue to engage with its depths. By addressing the evidence from an interdisciplinary perspective-ranging from human physiology to ethnography and zooarchaeology-we hope to establish a baseline for current and future research on the underwater space as a place of past human action.
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EAA 2022 BUDAPEST 31 August - 3 September 2022. Session 126 CALL FOR PAPERS, 2022
EAA 2022 BUDAPEST 31 August - 3 September 2022
Session 126 - CALL FOR PAPERS
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18th PoCA, Basel 9-11 Dec. 2021, 2021
What this contribution aims to address is the concept of insularity in relation to Cyprus as it e... more What this contribution aims to address is the concept of insularity in relation to Cyprus as it emerges from the written source materials in the Late Bronze Age. When turning the attention to textual sources pertaining to Cyprus, one is immediately confronted with the wall of Cypro-Minoan script. With negligible exceptions, the only written documents found on the island that date to this period are composed in this yet-undeciphered language. Nevertheless, a rich corpus of texts from Akkadian, Egyptian and Hittite sources give us a precious outsiders' perspective on Alashiya-the ancient toponym for Cyprus-and its maritime relations. While the geographical insularity of Cyprus appears obvious to a modern observer, this was not necessarily so from the perspective of its mainland neighbours in the Late Bronze Age. In this paper, I will present a review of the expressions and terminology with which Cyprus was addressed in the sources and discuss the concepts behind this choice of words to answer the question: was Alashiya always considered an island?
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EAA 2021 - Session 525. Of the Water: Fish and Molluscs in the Ancient Eastern Mediterranean. Kiel 8-11 Sept. 2021, 2021
In the Late Bronze Age, fish and molluscs have played an important role in the diet and in the ec... more In the Late Bronze Age, fish and molluscs have played an important role in the diet and in the economy of Eastern Mediterranean coastal societies. Fish-roe cakes and dried splits feature in the list of goods traded over long distances, whilst textiles coloured with the purple dye obtained from murex shells were considered among the most luxurious items of their time and would continue to be so for centuries to come. Accordingly, the ancient textual and iconographic sources deal with these final products as objects of value, in terms of international gift exchanges and temple donations. However, despite their undeniable importance, marine faunal resources, the raw materials from which these valued products were obtained, rarely surface in the discourse of those who profited from them. Surprisingly few ancient sources explicitly deal with either fish or molluscs, nor are the activities related to their procurement and processing described in much detail, if at all. This paper aims at investigating the ancient conceptualization of these resources by combining the analysis of the archaeological remains with the textual and iconographical evidence, and addresses the question as to why these riches from the sea were consistently underrepresented in the sources.
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Broadening Horizons 6 - Bridging the Gap. Berlin 24-28 june 2019, 2019
This paper explores the feminine side of the sea in the Eastern Mediterranean cults. It focuses o... more This paper explores the feminine side of the sea in the Eastern Mediterranean cults. It focuses on the transmission of common traits of the sea goddesses between the Levant and the Aegean in the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages, and on cultural hybridization resulting from the encounter of their individual traditions. Aspects taken into account will be the goddesses' individual characteristics as extrapolated from autochthonous material, the way they relate to the sea, to maritime activities, and to ritual practices. Material culture, iconography and the textual sources will be combined to gain a picture of these "ladies of the sea" with a special attention for elements of cultural contamination. The topic will be dealt with from a diachronic perspective with comparative goals. This paper will highlight what appears to be the shared features of marine goddesses in the area and period under examination, and what instead can be considered specific to each goddess in her representativeness of the sea within her specific cultural framework.
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Paper presented at "Islands in Dialogue", 14-16 Nov. 2018, Universitá degli Studi di Torino
Rela... more Paper presented at "Islands in Dialogue", 14-16 Nov. 2018, Universitá degli Studi di Torino
Relating to the framework of studies which have already focused on the issue of insularity, in this paper I will tackle the topic by examining the relationship between the ancient Cypriots and their sea.
In understanding Cyprus in its maritime context, it is important to investigate various degrees of affinity to the sea and maritime perception. On these grounds, I argue that it may be possible to operate a distinction between maritime and non-maritime communities. Through a series of case studies, this paper aims at highlighting the key elements that indicate the existence of a maritime culture and thus whether it is possible to speak of a distinctly maritime culture on Cyprus.
Further, I will evaluate how such a maritime oriented culture may define itself as either diverging from, overlapping with or adding to a land-based culture. Taking the case of Bronze Age Cyprus, I will assess how Cypriot maritimity compares with its counterparts in the Mediterranean.
Specifically, through the exam of evidence from Cyprus and the Levant that can be associated to maritime identities, I hope to prove that a stronger connection existed between seafarers from opposite shores, rather than within the island confines. I maintain that only those engaged with activities on the opposite shores would have had a concept of insularity as the latter only acquires sense in relation to the separation from the rest of the mainland. In other words, the perception of Cyprus as insular only concerned maritime matters, whilst this had no relevance for those strictly grounded on land-centred activities.
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Angesicht trauriger Nachrichten über die Plünderung und Zerstörung von Museen und archäologischen... more Angesicht trauriger Nachrichten über die Plünderung und Zerstörung von Museen und archäologischen Stätten in Kriegsgebieten ist der Kulturgüterschutz einmal mehr zu einem öffentlich stark diskutierten Thema geworden. Im Alltag von ArchäologInnen spielt Kulturgüterschutz zwangsläufig eine tragende Rolle, denn archäologische Arbeit, gleich, ob am Schreibtisch, im Museum oder auf der Ausgrabung, steht immer im Spannungsfeld zwischen Dokumentation, Erhaltung und Zerstörung. Anhand konkreter Beispiele aus dem "Archäologenalltag" wird dies verdeutlicht.
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Presented at "Environment, Landscape and Society. Diachronic perspectives on settlement patterns ... more Presented at "Environment, Landscape and Society. Diachronic perspectives on settlement patterns in Cyprus", CAARI, Nicosia 17-19 February 2017
Located in the southwestern region of Cyprus, the Kouris catchment is the major drainage system of the island, extending from the southern side of the Troodos Massif to the Mediterranean. Most of the area is characterized by a mountainous landscape made of steep, canyon-like valleys alternating with isolated plateaux with a null or gentle slope. Intense archaeological research in the Kouris area has indeed revealed evidence of a long-standing human occupation and complex settlement patterns from recent Prehistory to the Roman and then over the Late Antique Cypriote and Medieval periods. However, palaeoenvironmental data from this area are very scarce and an accurate reconstruction of the environmental history of the Kouris region has not yet been accomplished. In this paper we discuss aspects of the Bronze Age settlement patterns in the Kouris River valley, focusing on the site of Erimi Laonin tou Porakou and on the environmental, social and economic factors which may have played a role in establishing and developing a peculiar productive centre in this specific area. In particular, recent evidence gathered from isotopic measurements for palaeodiet reconstruction and GIS-based spatial analysis will be presented and discussed in relation to the archaeological data-set with the purpose of better characterizing the ecological context of this Middle Bronze Age community.
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Paper presented at the 15th meeting of Postgraduate Cypriot Archaeology meeting. Turin 25-27 Nov.... more Paper presented at the 15th meeting of Postgraduate Cypriot Archaeology meeting. Turin 25-27 Nov. 2015
CURRENTLY BEING REVIEWED
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The Research Training Group 1876 "Early Concepts of Man and Nature: Universal, Local, Borrowed" i... more The Research Training Group 1876 "Early Concepts of Man and Nature: Universal, Local, Borrowed" invites to its International Workshop "Resurrecting the Ancient Mind - Cognitive Science in Archaeology and Philology", to be held on 5th and 6th December 2017 at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (Germany).
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Posters by Mari Yamasaki
Co-authors: V. Carniel, S. Caggiano, G. Di Camillo, O. Menozzi, M. Yamasaki, L. Marinangeli
Prese... more Co-authors: V. Carniel, S. Caggiano, G. Di Camillo, O. Menozzi, M. Yamasaki, L. Marinangeli
Presented at "Environment, Landscape and Society. Diachronic perspectives on settlement patterns in Cyprus", CAARI, Nicosia 17-19 February 2017
Preliminary results of the Underwater Archaeological Survey within the Moni Pyrgos Pentakomo Monagroulli Project.
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Books by Mari Yamasaki
Conceptualizing Bronze Age Seascapes, 2023
The Mediterranean has, for millennia, formed the heart of an intensive trading network of ideas, ... more The Mediterranean has, for millennia, formed the heart of an intensive trading network of ideas, goods, and people. For the ancient populations of the Levant, Cyprus, and Southern Anatolia, interactions with the sea — from fishing to seafaring, and from trade to dye production — were a constant presence in their life. But how did the coastal peoples of the Bronze Age understand the sea? How did living on the shore influence their lives, from daily practices to mythological beliefs? And what was the impact on their conceptual world? This volume seeks to engage with these questions by addressing the relationship between environment, diet, material production, perception, and thought formation through a combination of archaeological analysis and engagement with primary sources, and in doing so, it offers unique insights into the conceptual world of the ancient Mediterranean maritime cultures of the 2nd millennium BCE.
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by Luca Bombardieri, Marialucia Amadio, Caterina Scirè Calabrisotto, Jennifer Webb, Mari Yamasaki, Grazia Tucci, Giulia Muti, Francesca Dolcetti, Martina Monaco, Erika Albertini, and Elena Vassio with contributions by Erika Albertini, Marialucia Amadio, Valentina Bonora, Alessandro Conti, Giu... more with contributions by Erika Albertini, Marialucia Amadio, Valentina Bonora, Alessandro Conti, Giulia Dionisio, Francesca Dolcetti, Mariaelena Fedi, Marco Fioravanti, Lidia Fiorini, Martina Fissore, Peter Gasson, Carole McCartney, Martina Monaco, Giulia Muti, Daniele Redamante, David S. Reese, Alessanda Saggio, Caterina Scirè Calabrisotto, Grazia Tucci, Elena Vassio, Jennifer M. Webb and Mari Yamasaki
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Papers by Mari Yamasaki
Shima Journal, 2024
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Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 2024
In ancient navigation, the safety of a ship depended in no small measure on the stability of her ... more In ancient navigation, the safety of a ship depended in no small measure on the stability of her anchors, and this crucial role at sea was not overlooked in the ritual symbolism of maritime communities. Accordingly, there is a general consensus on the fact that the anchors deposited at Eastern Mediterranean Bronze Age temples were important carriers of meaning for seafaring groups. Nevertheless, little effort has been made to understand the role of anchors in the conceptual world of the ancient seafarers beyond the fact that they were powerful symbols of maritimity. Borrowed and adapted from linguistics, Conceptual Blending Theory (CBT) provides the theoretical framework to use material culture as a source for the investigation of ancient thought processes. In this paper, I apply the perspective of CBT to the anchors found at the Late Cypriot sanctuary of Kition-Kathari, with comparisons to those from Byblos and Ugarit, and I examine the cognitive implications of anchors as material metaphors and investigate how they embody the blending of the mental spaces of the sacred, the city, and the sea.
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Bridging the Gap: Disciplines, Times, and Spaces in Dialogue, 2022
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ISLANDS IN DIALOGUE (ISLANDIA) Proceedings of the First International Postgraduate Conference in the Prehistory and Protohistory of the Mediterranean Islands, 2021
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Ancient Cyprus, an Unexpected Journey. Communities in Continuity and Transition, 2017
The archaeology of islands and coastal societies has become increasingly relevant to a variety of... more The archaeology of islands and coastal societies has become increasingly relevant to a variety of anthropological as well as historical topics. The goal of this paper is to present the development of the relationship between the island communities and the marine environment, focusing upon the case-study of prehistoric Cyprus. Between the Late Aceramic
Neolithic and the beginning of protohistoric Bronze Age, we witness an apparent drop in the contacts with the mainland and in the exploitation of marine and coastal resources. In recent years, however, indirect evidence that this kind of interregional links was not lost is emerging, and it similarly appears that the maritime activities did not stop. Therefore, the trends relevant to the evidence of interregional contacts will be taken into account and will be compared to those regarding to the exploitation of marine and coastal resources related to prehistoric subsistence economies. Seeing how both these economic phenomena rely on seafaring technologies, this study focuses on establishing whether the rise and fall in transmarine contacts mirrors that of the higher or lower incidence of locally procured sea-related goods in the archaeological record of coastal settlements.
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Book Reviews by Mari Yamasaki
Shima, 2023
Review of Sarah A. Rich & Peter B. Campbell (Eds.), Contemporary Philosophy for Maritime Archaeol... more Review of Sarah A. Rich & Peter B. Campbell (Eds.), Contemporary Philosophy for Maritime Archaeology: Flat Ontologies, Oceanic Thought, and the Anthropocene (2022).
Shima 17(2), 277-283.
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Conference Presentations by Mari Yamasaki
This project investigates the multifaceted concepts of underwater spaces in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Aegean in the second and first millennium BCE. It considers the way submarine environments were perceived, both following the direct experience of immersion and through imagination. By bringing together real and imagined underwater spaces through the tools offered by cognitive psychology and philosophy, it is possible to glimpse into a yet unexplored area in the field of ancient studies: to understand the perception of the ancient sea from a full, three-dimensional perspective, introducing new depths to our knowledge of the ancient Mediterranean cultures.
Relating to the framework of studies which have already focused on the issue of insularity, in this paper I will tackle the topic by examining the relationship between the ancient Cypriots and their sea.
In understanding Cyprus in its maritime context, it is important to investigate various degrees of affinity to the sea and maritime perception. On these grounds, I argue that it may be possible to operate a distinction between maritime and non-maritime communities. Through a series of case studies, this paper aims at highlighting the key elements that indicate the existence of a maritime culture and thus whether it is possible to speak of a distinctly maritime culture on Cyprus.
Further, I will evaluate how such a maritime oriented culture may define itself as either diverging from, overlapping with or adding to a land-based culture. Taking the case of Bronze Age Cyprus, I will assess how Cypriot maritimity compares with its counterparts in the Mediterranean.
Specifically, through the exam of evidence from Cyprus and the Levant that can be associated to maritime identities, I hope to prove that a stronger connection existed between seafarers from opposite shores, rather than within the island confines. I maintain that only those engaged with activities on the opposite shores would have had a concept of insularity as the latter only acquires sense in relation to the separation from the rest of the mainland. In other words, the perception of Cyprus as insular only concerned maritime matters, whilst this had no relevance for those strictly grounded on land-centred activities.
Located in the southwestern region of Cyprus, the Kouris catchment is the major drainage system of the island, extending from the southern side of the Troodos Massif to the Mediterranean. Most of the area is characterized by a mountainous landscape made of steep, canyon-like valleys alternating with isolated plateaux with a null or gentle slope. Intense archaeological research in the Kouris area has indeed revealed evidence of a long-standing human occupation and complex settlement patterns from recent Prehistory to the Roman and then over the Late Antique Cypriote and Medieval periods. However, palaeoenvironmental data from this area are very scarce and an accurate reconstruction of the environmental history of the Kouris region has not yet been accomplished. In this paper we discuss aspects of the Bronze Age settlement patterns in the Kouris River valley, focusing on the site of Erimi Laonin tou Porakou and on the environmental, social and economic factors which may have played a role in establishing and developing a peculiar productive centre in this specific area. In particular, recent evidence gathered from isotopic measurements for palaeodiet reconstruction and GIS-based spatial analysis will be presented and discussed in relation to the archaeological data-set with the purpose of better characterizing the ecological context of this Middle Bronze Age community.
CURRENTLY BEING REVIEWED
Posters by Mari Yamasaki
Presented at "Environment, Landscape and Society. Diachronic perspectives on settlement patterns in Cyprus", CAARI, Nicosia 17-19 February 2017
Preliminary results of the Underwater Archaeological Survey within the Moni Pyrgos Pentakomo Monagroulli Project.
Books by Mari Yamasaki
Papers by Mari Yamasaki
https://www.archaeopress.com/Archaeopress/Products/9781803273402
Neolithic and the beginning of protohistoric Bronze Age, we witness an apparent drop in the contacts with the mainland and in the exploitation of marine and coastal resources. In recent years, however, indirect evidence that this kind of interregional links was not lost is emerging, and it similarly appears that the maritime activities did not stop. Therefore, the trends relevant to the evidence of interregional contacts will be taken into account and will be compared to those regarding to the exploitation of marine and coastal resources related to prehistoric subsistence economies. Seeing how both these economic phenomena rely on seafaring technologies, this study focuses on establishing whether the rise and fall in transmarine contacts mirrors that of the higher or lower incidence of locally procured sea-related goods in the archaeological record of coastal settlements.
Book Reviews by Mari Yamasaki
Shima 17(2), 277-283.
This project investigates the multifaceted concepts of underwater spaces in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Aegean in the second and first millennium BCE. It considers the way submarine environments were perceived, both following the direct experience of immersion and through imagination. By bringing together real and imagined underwater spaces through the tools offered by cognitive psychology and philosophy, it is possible to glimpse into a yet unexplored area in the field of ancient studies: to understand the perception of the ancient sea from a full, three-dimensional perspective, introducing new depths to our knowledge of the ancient Mediterranean cultures.
Relating to the framework of studies which have already focused on the issue of insularity, in this paper I will tackle the topic by examining the relationship between the ancient Cypriots and their sea.
In understanding Cyprus in its maritime context, it is important to investigate various degrees of affinity to the sea and maritime perception. On these grounds, I argue that it may be possible to operate a distinction between maritime and non-maritime communities. Through a series of case studies, this paper aims at highlighting the key elements that indicate the existence of a maritime culture and thus whether it is possible to speak of a distinctly maritime culture on Cyprus.
Further, I will evaluate how such a maritime oriented culture may define itself as either diverging from, overlapping with or adding to a land-based culture. Taking the case of Bronze Age Cyprus, I will assess how Cypriot maritimity compares with its counterparts in the Mediterranean.
Specifically, through the exam of evidence from Cyprus and the Levant that can be associated to maritime identities, I hope to prove that a stronger connection existed between seafarers from opposite shores, rather than within the island confines. I maintain that only those engaged with activities on the opposite shores would have had a concept of insularity as the latter only acquires sense in relation to the separation from the rest of the mainland. In other words, the perception of Cyprus as insular only concerned maritime matters, whilst this had no relevance for those strictly grounded on land-centred activities.
Located in the southwestern region of Cyprus, the Kouris catchment is the major drainage system of the island, extending from the southern side of the Troodos Massif to the Mediterranean. Most of the area is characterized by a mountainous landscape made of steep, canyon-like valleys alternating with isolated plateaux with a null or gentle slope. Intense archaeological research in the Kouris area has indeed revealed evidence of a long-standing human occupation and complex settlement patterns from recent Prehistory to the Roman and then over the Late Antique Cypriote and Medieval periods. However, palaeoenvironmental data from this area are very scarce and an accurate reconstruction of the environmental history of the Kouris region has not yet been accomplished. In this paper we discuss aspects of the Bronze Age settlement patterns in the Kouris River valley, focusing on the site of Erimi Laonin tou Porakou and on the environmental, social and economic factors which may have played a role in establishing and developing a peculiar productive centre in this specific area. In particular, recent evidence gathered from isotopic measurements for palaeodiet reconstruction and GIS-based spatial analysis will be presented and discussed in relation to the archaeological data-set with the purpose of better characterizing the ecological context of this Middle Bronze Age community.
CURRENTLY BEING REVIEWED
Presented at "Environment, Landscape and Society. Diachronic perspectives on settlement patterns in Cyprus", CAARI, Nicosia 17-19 February 2017
Preliminary results of the Underwater Archaeological Survey within the Moni Pyrgos Pentakomo Monagroulli Project.
https://www.archaeopress.com/Archaeopress/Products/9781803273402
Neolithic and the beginning of protohistoric Bronze Age, we witness an apparent drop in the contacts with the mainland and in the exploitation of marine and coastal resources. In recent years, however, indirect evidence that this kind of interregional links was not lost is emerging, and it similarly appears that the maritime activities did not stop. Therefore, the trends relevant to the evidence of interregional contacts will be taken into account and will be compared to those regarding to the exploitation of marine and coastal resources related to prehistoric subsistence economies. Seeing how both these economic phenomena rely on seafaring technologies, this study focuses on establishing whether the rise and fall in transmarine contacts mirrors that of the higher or lower incidence of locally procured sea-related goods in the archaeological record of coastal settlements.
Shima 17(2), 277-283.