New Approaches to Slaving and Slave-Trading In The Ancient and Medieval Mediterranean (Day 1)

Slavery was a ubiquitous feature of the premodern Mediterranean world, and its impacts were equally extensive, affecting not only slave societies, but also shaping peripheral communities from which people were taken, traded, and transformed into property. “New Approaches to Slaving and Slave-Trading in the Roman World” attempts to grapple with this wide history of premodern Mediterranean slavery. The conference assembles a group of historians, archaeologists, and paleogeneticists to think about how to view and understand the fuller impacts of Mediterranean slaving prior to the opening of the Transatlantic world. Papers move from the Bronze and Iron Age through the Roman Empire and the Medieval period, and concentrate on both the core and peripheral areas, from Italy to the Viking North, Syria to Spain, and beyond. Recently developed methodologies, especially paleogenetics, are now present exciting new ways of thinking about human movement, and when placed in dialogue with historical and archaeological approaches can yield new insights on the routes and impacts of premodern slave-trading. Thus, the conference hopes to deepen understanding of slavery’s full impacts on the premodern Mediterranean region and development a new, multi-disciplinary approach to its study. 

This conference is supported by the JHI's Program for the Arts.

APRIL 15
4:00 – 6:00 Remarks followed by opening reception

APRIL 16

Historical and Archaeological Approaches

9:00-9:30 Conference Introduction: Elizabeth Fentress, “How do we know they were slaves?”
9:30-10:00 Sarah C. Murray, “People as Property in Prehistoric Greece”
10:00-10:30 Bettina Arnold and Manuel Fernandez-Götz, “Slavery in Iron Age temperate Europe”
10:30-10:45 Discussion
10:45 - 11:00 Coffee break
11:00-11:30 David Lewis, “Syria and the Hellenistic Slave Trade”
11:30-12:00 Adam Rabinowitz, “The elusive Black Sea slave in the Greek world: a portage around the historiographical rapids”
12:00-12:30 Seth Bernard, “Complexity Science and the Origins of Roman Slavery”
12:30-1:00 Discussion
1:00 – 2:30 Lunch
2:30-3:00 Christer Bruun, “New insights on slaving in the Roman Empire from Epigraphy”
3:00-3:30 Rebecca Redfern, “Bioarchaeological perspectives on captive taking and enslavement in the Roman empire”
3:30-3:45 Discussion
3:45-4:15 Eduardo Manzano, “To what extent were early Islamic societies based on slavery?”
4:15-4:45 Craig Perry, “Slaving, State Formation, and Political Economy in Northeast Africa and the Islamic Middle East”
4:45-5:30 Discussion

APRIL 17

The Role of Archeogenetics

9:00-9:30 Ben Raffield, “Slavers from the North: The Dynamics of Raiding, Slaving, and Trading in the Viking World”
9:30-10:00 Hannah Moots, “Slavery in the Roman, Late Antique, and Medieval Mediterranean: Insights from Interdisciplinary Ancient DNA Research”
10:00-10:15 Discussion
10:15-10:45 Coffee break
10:45-11:15 Eugenia D’Atanasio, Ileana Micarelli, Beniamino Trombetta, "What ancient DNA can and cannot tell us about past mobility and slavery: examples from Medieval Italy”
11:15-11:45 Samantha Cox, Margaret Andrews, Francesca Candillio, Elizabeth Fentress, and David Reich, “The genetic background of infant burials from the slave barracks on the Imperial estate of Villa Magna (Italy)”
11:45-12:00 Discussion
12:00-12:30 Zuzanna Hofmanova, “Ancient DNA and Mobility in Early Medieval Europe: Implications for the Study of Slave Trading”
12:30-1:00 Michael McCormick, Response on Archaeogenetics and Ancient Slavery: “Thinking about the enslaved in a time of discovery”
1:00-1:15 Discussion
1:15-3:00 Lunch
3:00-5:30 Roundtable, Closing Discussion:
Michael Dietler
Kyle Harper
Alice Rio
Paul Lovejoy