24th Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists. Reflecting Future. Barcelona 5-8 September 2018

The session will focus on a particular area, the region south of the Taurus range (Cilicia, Pamphylia and the neighbouring regions) facing the Mediterranean and being, throughout its history, in contact with the island of Cyprus to the south and with the coast of northern Syria to the east. South-eastern Anatolia was actually a key crossroads of people and cultures, in a crucial point between East and West. Due to its strategic geographic position connecting (by maritime and terrestrial routes) Anatolia and Syria and to the facility of contacts with the eastern Mediterranean, the region lived many processes of mobility, migrations, cultural interchanges. The analysis will cover the period from the Hellenization to the advent of the Arabs, concentrating on how various cultural identities (Persian, Luwian, Anatolian, Syrian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine) interacted, contributing to the formation of a peculiar Mediterranean identity. Reciprocal contacts with Syria and Cyprus will be also considered, so as to examine the process of interchanges from both directions. This region will be studied upon a multidisciplinary perspective and theoretical analysis will be carried out on the following topics: - Local identities, foreign inputs and mobility of people - Societies, languages and interconnected traditions - Religion, rituals and cult places: an evidence of cultural identity and cultural transfers - Coastal settlements and urban layout: communication, trade and subsistence - Transfer of concepts and mutual influences in building and architecture - Artistic manifestations as indicators of interacting traditions - Material culture as mirror of local and transmediterranean contacts