The Classical World in a Norwegian Workers' Encyclopedia: Arbeidernes Leksikon (1931–1936)

The Norwegian Arbeidernes leksikon, “Workers’ Encyclopedia,” was published in six volumes from 1931–1936. It was inspired by The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, explicitly aimed at working-class readers, and establishing an alternative to the hegemonic bourgeoise discourse. The editors and many of the contributors belonged to the Communist Party of Norway (NKP) and the independent communist intellectual organization Mot Dag (“Towards Dawn”). This article investigates the reception and representation of the ancient world in Arbeidernes leksikon based on selected articles through the lens of narrative theory. Classical education was traditionally the domain of the upper classes. It is argued that the Workers’ Encyclopedia demonstrates that reorienting the reception of ancient history was considered essential both to rewrite history according to Marxist doctrine and to establish workers’ culture as a full-fledged alternative to its bourgeoise counterpart. In the Workers’ Encyclopedia, the classical past is celebrated not for its empires and rulers but for the effort of the masses and their struggle for freedom.publishedVersio

Climate Change in Urban Biographies: Stage, Event, Agent

How do archaeologists understand the relationship between climate, climate change, and urban biographies? In this article, I argue that urban biographies should be approached as the life stories they claim to be, with events propelling the narrative between phases or periods in the history of a city. In order to integrate the wealth of palaeoclimatological data now available into such narratives, scholars need to be conscious about how the relationship between climate and urban change is modelled. Taking a bibliometric survey of urban archaeology as the point of departure, different narrative templates for using climate to explain urban trajectories are identified and briefly exemplified on the basis of scholarship on the Early/Middle Bronze Age transition in the Near East and the Maya Classical/post-Classical transition.publishedVersio

Spaces, Places and Things. The Spatial Dimension of Early Indian Ocean Exchange

Early exchange along the maritime Silk Road not only spanned immense distances, but was also subject to—among other things—seasonal weather systems, hazardous waters, arid and sparsely populated coastlines with few suitable harbours, and limits imposed by infrastructure and technology. Juxtaposing theoretical models for the spatial organisation of premodern exchange with the fragmentary record of experiences handed down in historical sources, and modern digital methods for the analysis of spatial relations, this chapter addresses how we can approach the space-placethings conundrum in the context of early Indian Ocean exchange.publishedVersio

Historie, historiebruk og motkultur i Arbeidernes Leksikon

Arbeidernes Leksikon ble gitt ut i 94 hefter og seks bind mellom 1931 og 1936 på Arbeidermagasinets Forlag. Verket var et uttalt forsøk på å skape et marxistisk alternativ til den rådende borgerlige samfunnsdiskursen. Leksikonet var det første i sitt slag utenfor Sovjetunionen og var inspirert av «Den store sovjetencyklopedien» (Bolsjaja sovetskaja entsiklopedija, første utgave 1926–1947) og «Den lille sovjetencyclopedien» (Malaja sovetskaja entsiklopedija, 1928–1931). Det inneholdt mye oversatt stoff fra disse, men mange artikler ble også skrevet eller tilrettelagt av norske sosialistiske akademikere. Redaktørene og mange av bidragsyterne var tilknyttet Norges Kommunistiske Parti og nettverket til den intellektuelle organisasjonen Mot Dag, men selve prosjektet var partipolitisk uavhengig, og med 10 000 solgte eksemplarer fikk verket bred utbredelse i arbeiderbevegelsen. I denne artikkelen ser jeg på hvordan tidlig historie blir representert i Arbeidernes Leksikon. Med utgangspunkt i et utvalg av representative artikler, argumenter jeg for at historie og historisk kunnskap spilte en viktig rolle, både for å etablere arbeiderkultur som en fullverdig motkultur til det borgerlige dannelsesidealet og for å vise gyldigheten av marxistisk samfunnsanalyse, og dermed at utviklingen mot revolusjon og det klasseløse samfunn var en historisk nødvendighet, men at det også var betydelige innslag av folkeopplysning og dannelse i prosjektet, etter mønster av tradisjonelle leksikon.publishedVersio

Death or taxes: Choosing itineraries between the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean in the mid-18th century

In the 18th century, the fastest passage between Europe and the Indian Ocean was by way of Syria and Iraq. Travellers were faced with the choice between a number of routes across the desert and along the rivers, each with advantages and disadvantages in terms of price, time and security. This article discusses the choices made by a selection of European mid-18th-century travellers utilising perspectives from New institutional economics, arguing that their decisions must be interpreted in light of the their status as outsiders and the socio-economic structure of the societies they moved through

The Paradox of Palmyra: An Ancient anomalopolis in the Desert

Palmyra, the UNESCO world heritage site that tragically made headlines following ISIS’s destruction of several of its key monuments in 2015, was once a thriving city in the heart of the Syrian Desert. Settled from Neolithic through modern times, the documented urban history of the site spans a millennium, from the late centuries bc until the late first millennium ad. Palmyra has often been cast as ‘the bride of the desert’, and the apparent paradox of a sizeable city 150-200 km from major areas of cultivation has spurred considerable scholarly interest. In this article, we discuss the roles of climate change, geopolitical changes, and nomad-settled interaction in the urban biography of Palmyra, drawing on published palaeoclimatological evidence and general evidence offered by urban development, epigraphy (inscriptions), and settlement size.publishedVersio

Water, Communication, Sight, and the Location of Fortifications on the Strata Diocletiana (Syria) in Late Antiquity

The Strata Diocletiana was a military road in Late Roman Period Syria. It ran from Damascus to the Euphrates by way of Palmyra. The road was fortified and received its name during the reign of Diocletian (284–305 CE), following the Roman sack and subsequent garrisoning of Palmyra after the city’s failed revolt 272–273 CE. The Strata Diocletiana is only one of several attested routes between Palmyra and western Syria and one of two between Palmyra and Damascus. In this study, we seek to understand why this route was chosen for the new fortified road. We compare the location of Late Roman fortifications along the Strata Diocletiana to the modern distribution of water in the Syrian Desert and the theoretical least-cost paths between Palmyra and Damascus, and Palmyra and the fortress of Sura on the Euphrates. The argument is made that some parts of the Roman road network in the Syrian Desert were planned in order to control major water sources along the desert rim, but that the new military road between Damascus and Palmyra in the late third century CE was constructed with the aim of monitoring and controlling access to settled regions from the desert, in addition to ease and speed of communication. The conclusions have bearings not only on our understanding of the Late Roman defence and communication system, but also on nomad-settled interaction in Late Antiquity and the use of GIS methodologies in the reconstruction of ancient communication networks.publishedVersio

Food security in Roman Palmyra (Syria) in light of paleoclimatological evidence and its historical implications

Food security in ancient urban centers is often discussed but rarely formally modelled. Despite its location in an inhospitable desert where food production is a constant challenge ancient Palmyra grew from a small oasis settlement in to a major geopolitical player. Here, we present a spatially explicit reconstruction of the land use and agricultural yield expectations of its hinterland determining the maximum feasible population of the city. Coupling the hinterland carrying capacity model with palaeoclimatic data allowed us to track changes in the food security of the city in the face of changing climate. While initially the hinterland could provide ample food resources for the small settlement with time the deteriorating climate conditions after the Roman Optimum (100 BCE-200 CE) collided with rapidly growing population of the city. The nexus of these two processes fall at mid third century–a period of profound changes in the structure of Palmyrene society, its geopolitical situation and its historical trajectory. The results point to increasingly precarious subsistence levels as a likely factor behind rapid militarization, shift towards an autocratic regime and military expansion of the city in the late third century CE. As a well-established causal mechanism in many modern conflicts and crises, food security is also a potential causal factor behind historical events, if a hard one to prove due to the difficulty of identifying relevant data patterns. The methods presented establishes a robust research pipeline that can be used on other ancient urban centers, contributing to the construction of an empirically supported model of how food security shaped human history, past and present.publishedVersio

Scaling up and zooming in: Global history and high-definition archaeology perspectives on the longue dureé of urban-environmental relations in Gerasa (Jerash, Jordan)

Combining global perspectives with localized case studies and integrating scientific and material evidence of environmental change in historical narratives are amongst the main challenges for the field of global history in addressing the dawn of the Anthropocene. In this article, we trace the relationship of the city of Gerasa (Jerash, Jordan) with its riverine hinterland, from the first millennium BCE until the nineteenth century CE. We argue that the study of long-term historical trajectories of microregions not only depends on context from regional and global history timelines, but also has the potential to provide insights relevant to those scales in return. Zooming in and scaling up must go hand in hand in order for global history perspectives to be properly informed, and archaeology and natural sciences have crucial insights to offer – although importantly only when evidence comes from well-contextualized frameworks

Urban-riverine hinterland synergies in semi-arid environments : millennial-scale change, adaptations, and environmental responses at Gerasa/Jerash

This work was supported by the Carlsberg Foundation; the Danish National Research Foundation under Grant DNRF119 – Centre of Excellence for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet); Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Deutscher Palästina-Verein; the EliteForsk initiative of the Danish Ministry of Higher Education and Science; and H. P. Hjerl Hansens Mindefondet for Dansk Palæstinaforskning.This interdisciplinary study addresses issues of urban-riverine hinterland relationships in semi-arid environments over millennia at Gerasa/Jerash in Jordan, presenting research that stimulates new lines of enquiry with much broader implications than those relating to this single site. Through the presentation of new data on wadi-sediment responses to social and environmental change, we assess ways in which urban settlements, their hinterlands, and rivers interact over long time periods and how such changes may be read together with historical sources and shed new light on urban-hinterland dynamics. We explore the hypothesis that synergistic relationships between an urban core and its hinterland are essential to the long-term sustainability of both. Our integrated approach gives new insight into settlement dynamics and resource use and carries implications for our understanding of the present through the past.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe