Postgraduate Course: Integrated Approaches to Ancient Mediterranean History (PGHC11643)
Course Outline
| School | School of History, Classics and Archaeology |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | This course promotes an "integrated" view of ancient Mediterranean history that steps away from geographical and cultural boundaries. It does so by examining key debates, methods, and approaches that have animated ancient Mediterranean studies in recent times and by putting them to the test against controversial case studies from a variety of contexts and time periods. |
| Course description |
This course explores and critically evaluates debates, approaches, and methods that have animated the study of ancient Mediterranean history in recent times, with an emphasis on their effectiveness and limitations in fostering an integrated vision of the ancient Mediterranean world. Case studies are drawn from within and beyond the Greek and Roman worlds, expanding to Etruria, the western Mediterranean, as well as to Anatolia, the Levant, and the wider Near East so as to allow students to engage with the region's complexity across time and space. Case studies selected for discussion shall purposefully be controversial ones where scanty, dubious, or ambiguous evidence has produced conflicting interpretations and/or raised hot scholarly debates. The philosophy here is to train ourselves to disentangle the different types of reasoning (and agendas) of historians confronting such kind of evidence. The goal is to develop analytical and interpretive skills that are broadly transferable and will be useful to navigate sources, methods, and theories across a variety of historical periods and cultural contexts.
Questions that we shall explore include the following: is there any unity in the diversity of the ancient Mediterranean world? Does ancient Mediterranean history show converging patterns? What are the usefulness and limits of local, global, and "planetary" approaches and how should we integrate them in a multiscalar approach? How should we approach the question of periodisation while expanding the geographical horizons of historical inquiry and writing integrated histories? How do we explain material culture change and linguistic variation on a broad scale? What is their relation to migration and population movements? Can genetics and bioarchaeology help answering these questions? How should we approach ethnicity and cultural contact? How does evolutionary anthropology help studying socio-political complexity? Finally, what are the advantages of comparative history and what are its limitations
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | Visiting students should usually have at least 3 courses in Classics, History or Archaeology (at least 1 of which should be in Ancient History) at grade B or above (or be predicted to obtain this) for entry to this course. We will only consider University/College level courses.
** as numbers are limited, visiting students should contact the Visiting Student Office directly for admission to this course ** |
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2026/27, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: 0 |
| Course Start |
Semester 2 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 22,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
174 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
Coursework:
1,000 word book review (30%)
4,000 word essay (70%) |
| Feedback |
Students are expected to discuss their coursework with the Course Organiser at least once prior to submission, and are encouraged to do so more often. Meetings can take place with the Course Organiser during their published office hours or by appointment. Students will also receive feedback on their coursework, and will have the opportunity to discuss that feedback further with the Course Organiser. |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Develop a robust methodology to engage in the study of Ancient History in a variety of contexts and time periods. Assessed via coursework.
- Analyse and evaluate a variety of methodologies, approaches, and theories adopted by scholars in the field in recent and less recent times. Assessed via coursework.
- Independently form an opinion on debated historical issues. Assessed via coursework.
- Navigate complex or ambiguous evidence with the aid of theoretical tools and analytical models. Assessed via coursework.
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Reading List
Arnason, J.P., Eisenstadt, S.N., and Wittrock, B. (eds) (2005). Axial Civilizations and World History. Leiden; Boston.
Broodbank, C. (2013). The Making of the Middle Sea. A History of the Mediterranean from the Beginning to the Emergence of the Classical World. London.
Hansen, M.H. (ed.) (2000). A Comparative Study of Thirty City-State Cultures. An Investigation Conducted by the Copenhagen Polis Centre. Copenhagen.
Harris, W.V. (ed.) (2005). Rethinking the Mediterranean. Oxford; New York.
Hodos, T. (2020). The Archaeology of the Mediterranean Iron Age: A Globalising World, c. 1100-600 BCE. Cambridge.
Hall, J.M. (1997). Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity. Cambridge (MA); New York.
Horden, P. and Purcell, N. (2000). The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History. Oxford; Malden.
Kosmin, P.J. (2024). The Ancient Shore. Cambridge (MA).
Kristiansen, K., Kroonen, G., and Willerslev, E. (eds) (2023). The Indo-European Puzzle Revisited: Integrating Archaeology, Genetics, and Linguistics. Cambridge.
Momigliano, A. (1974). 'Le regole del giuoco nello studio della storia antica', ASNP Serie III, 4.4:1183-1192 [English translation by Kenneth W. Yu, 'The Rules of the Game in the Study of Ancient History', History and Theory 55.1, 2016, 39-45].
Scheidel, W. (2025). What Is Ancient History? Princeton.
Szuchman, J. (ed.) (2009). Nomads, Tribes, and the State in the Ancient Near East: Cross=Disciplinary Perspectives. Chicago. |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Ability to collect, evaluate, and use the best available evidence in order to take a stance on debated historical issues.
Ability to summarise, interpret, and critique the work of other scholars in oral and written form.
Ability effectively to communicate personal views on a given topic in an academic context.
Ability to develop a robust methodology to engage in the study of Ancient History at large. |
| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Marco Santini
Tel:
Email: Marco.Santini@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | |
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