NADAW 33 – Miguel John Versluys (Leiden University)

How to write a history of becoming in Antiquity?


This is the fundamental question that Miguel John Versluys,
Professor of Classical & Mediterranean Archaeology at Leiden
University in the Netherlands, has since over a decade taken as a
basis to thought-provokingly scrutinise the notion of 'cultural
containers' which has for long dominated academic outlooks on
intercultural encounters not only in Classics.


In this episode, Timo and Felix join Miguel John Versluys on an
intellectual journey that ultimately concerns everything, but
more specifically takes them from the heart of the Roman Empire,
the city of Rome and the region of Latium themselves, via its
fringes, like Commagene and Nemrut Dağı in modern-day Turkey, to
the whole wide world beyond. Following in the footsteps of Miguel
John Versluys' own intellectual biography, we explore the
importance of 'Egypt' for Roman material culture and the
'in-betweenness' of the late Hellenistic Kingdom of Commagene to
then discuss the academic prospects of material culture studies
and the concept of interconnectivity, which form the two
cornerstones of Miguel John Versluys' own research.


What emerges is the picture of a circum-Mediterranean world in
Antiquity that became increasingly tied to other societies in
Afro-Eurasia from 500 BCE onwards, not unlike our own
contemporaneous globalised world, and which witnessed an
explosion of the sheer number of 'things' people used. Speaking
of 'global dynamics' in Antiquity thus concerns a very integral
part of human history and human society. But how does one
integrate these ideas into archaeological practice, and what is
meant by 'deep history'?


Tune in on this episode to find answers to these questions and
many more!