The Archaeological Institute of America awards its Wiseman Book Award to the best archaeological book of the year. Thomas Tartaron will receive the award for Maritime Networks in the Mycenaean World (Cambridge University Press, 2013).
In his book, Professor Tartaron presents a new and original reassessment of the maritime world of the Mycenaean Greeks of the Late Bronze Age. By all accounts a seafaring people, they enjoyed maritime connections with peoples as distant as Egypt and Sicily. These long-distance relations have been celebrated and much studied; by contrast, the vibrant worlds of local maritime interaction and exploitation of the sea have been virtually ignored. Dr. Tartaron argues that local maritime networks, in the form of “coastscapes” and “small worlds,” are far more representative of the true fabric of Mycenaean life. He offers a complete template of conceptual and methodological tools for recovering small worlds and the communities that inhabited them. Combining archaeological, geoarchaeological, and anthropological approaches with ancient texts and network theory, he demonstrates the application of this scheme in several case studies.
Professor Tartaron will receive his award in January at the next joint annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America and the Society for Classical Studies in San Francisco.
For more information on Professor Tartaron's award, go to: https://www.sas.upenn.edu/news/tartaron-wins-archaeological-book-year-award