ICAEM 2025: Mobility in the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean: Movements of People, Objects and Ideas

13–15 June 2025

Tartu, Estonia
Lossi 3-328

The conference is organized as an onsite event in Tartu, Estonia, but sessions will also be streamed via Zoom, to give access to a wider audience. There is no conference fee.

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Ian Rutherford (University of Reading)
Raz Kletter (University of Helsinki)

 

PROGRAMME

Note that all times are according to EEST (Eastern European Summer Time)
See https://www.thetimezoneconverter.com/ to check your local times.

FRIDAY, 13 JUNE

9.00 Introduction

9.10 KEYNOTE: Ian Rutherford (University of Reading), Phoenician pilgrimage

10.00 Vladimir Sazonov (University of Tartu), A comparative analysis of deportation and migration narratives in Middle Assyrian and Hittite texts

10.30 Coffee break

10.50 Wolfgang Zwickel (University of Mainz), Trade of Gaza

11.20 Eduardo Torrecilla (University of Castilla-La Mancha), Addressing the role of semi-nomad Suteans in the Middle Euphrates during the LBA crisis

11.50 POSTER PRESENTATIONS

– Emma Stone (University of Glasgow), From the Baltics to the Nile – Amber in Tomb KV62 (tomb of Tutankhamun)

– Lambros Tapinos (University of Melbourne), Heterotopia and liminal frames: Comparative analysis of the running spiral in the Bronze Age Aegean, Egypt and Mari

– Beatriz Freitas (University of Lisbon), Images as living organisms: the impact of circulation in their meaning

12.20 Lunch

14.00 KEYNOTE: Raz Kletter (University of Helsinki), Deals with Danites: the Biblical migration story of Judges 17-18

14.50 Ikuko Sato (Japan Women’s University) and Sota Maruono (Tokiwa University High School), Networks of the Phoenician Diaspora: Bridging between the Ancient Near East and the Far Western Mediterranean

15.20 Agne Pilvisto (University of Tartu), The ways of water. The transitions and transformations of the Syrian Goddess Atargatis

15.50 Coffee break

16.10 POSTER PRESENTATIONS

– Andres Nõmmik (University of Helsinki), The connections between the cult in Cyprus and Philistia

– Alexandros Drosinakis (University of Tartu), Neleidae, Heraclidae, Aloadae: Approaching migration and human mobility in the Post-palatial Aegean from the tradition to archaeology

– Priit-Hendrik Kaldma (University of Tallinn), Legendary migrations and political struggles in Archaic Athens

16.50 Mait Kõiv (University of Tartu), Movements of people and polis formation in Archaic Peloponnese

19.00 Banquet

 

SATURDAY, 14 JUNE

9.00 Antoine Attout (Centre de Recherches en Archéologie et Patrimoine, Bruxelles), Commercial Mobilities and Targeted Inspirations on Greek Pottery (6th Century BCE)

9.30 Matt Thompson (University of Nottingham), Beyond Thermopylai – Diplomatic and Cultural Interaction between Sparta and Persia

10.00 Dylan James (University of Reading), Mobile Armies and Local Guides (hegemones) in Classical Greek Historiography

10.30 Coffee break

10.50 Antiopi Argyriou (University of Athens), Human travellers and problems of mobility

11.20 Kadri Novikov (University of Tartu), Travel routes and travelling in Ancient Greek Novels

11.50 POSTER PRESENTATIONS

– Siim Sõkkal (University of Tartu), Epicureanism: a synthesis of Greek and Indian philosophical teachings

– Laura Muncaciu (National Academy of Music Gh. Dima / Sigismund Toduta Doctoral School Cluj-Napoca, Romania), The rite progress: The journey of performative traditions from Hittite rituals to Greek tragedy and Dramma per Musica

– Mieszek Jagiello (University Poznań), Odysseus’ travel across the Babylonian World Map: Entanglements of the Mesopotamian Gilgamesh tradition with Homer’s Odyssey

– Ana Odochiciuc (Univerity of Iași), Mobility beyond the Roman Empire. The study of Roman bronze artifacts in nowadays north-eastern Romania (Iași county)

12.20 Lunch

14.00 Marko Vitas (École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris) „Aeneas the Flood Hero“

14.30 Anna Tsanava (Tbilisi State University), Narrating the map: Mobility and spatial orientation in Io’s scene from “Prometheus Bound”

15.00 Neeme Näripä (University of Tartu), From Mt. Ida to the House of the Atreidae: The beacons in Aeschylus’ „Agamemnon”

15.30 Coffee break

15.50 Owain Morris (Catalan Institute of Classical Archaeology), Across the Adriatic: Female mobility between Italy and the Balkans in EIA

16.20 Elo-Mall Toomet (University of Tartu), The arrivals of Ariadne: an attempt to place an elusive goddess

16.50 Iulian Moga (University of Iași), Intra-Oriental Migrations and the Spread of Aretalogies

 

SUNDAY, 15 JUNE

9.00 Jinyu Liu (Emory University, Atlanta), (Im)migrants in the Occupational World in the Roman Empire: Exclusion versus Integration

9.30 Lucretiu Birliba (Univerity of Iași), Mobility of soldiers in the Imperum Romanum. Two case studies in a small settlement at the periphery of the Empire: Ibida (Moesia Inferior)

10.00 Coffee break

10.20 Marsha McCoy (Southern Methodist University Dallas), Mobility and Change: Cistophori and Identity in Roman Asia Minor

10.50 Leonardo Gregoratti (Udine University), The “Arsacid blockade” how did it work?

11.20 Barbara Mander (Università degli Studi di Urbino Carlo Bo), Bearing letters: travelling through Late antiquity

11.50 Final words

12.00 Lunch

13.30 Bus to Tallinn

 

CONFERENCE DESCRIPTION

The Ancient Near East and Mediterranean was a vast area of constant movement and communication between different groups of people, both those close to each other geographically, ethnically, linguistically and those separated by greater distances. The crossing of such distances might have meant either sea voyages, navigating or crossing rivers or travelling on difficult mountain or desert routes and sometimes all of them. The travels might have served different purposes: commerce, piracy, adventure, diplomacy, military campaigns, maintaining aristocratic connections, creating colonies, visiting religious sites, competitions and festivals, escaping situations of crises etc. Moving around in the ancient world could be undertaken by large groups, by individuals and it could be either voluntary or involuntary, refugees, forcibly deported populations and slaves belonging to the latter category of travellers.

All these different movements of people brought with them movements of material objects, for sale, as gifts, for personal use. Contacts between people also initiated contacts between ideas, songs and stories, thus both ideas and objects were travelling on in new directions, further from the first point of contact, and changing on their way. Skills and technologies were also moving with people, in many directions and sometimes dominantly from one culture to the other.

This conference aims to explore these different types of movement – that of individual travellers, larger groups, material objects, songs, stories, skills and ideas – in the Ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean world, from Iran, Mesopotamia and Egypt to the western Mediterranean, from the emergence of civilisations to late antiquity. We are interested in papers with different approaches, focusing on different aspects of the theme of mobility: from the distribution of pottery types to the spreading of languages and writing systems; from the motif of travel in mythology, epic and specific works of literature to the travelling of myths and stories between different cultures; from religious pilgrimages by individuals to the movements of armies, of the displaced and the enslaved; from the mythical travels of gods and heroes to the practical problems faced by human travellers; from travelling to the neighbouring city to journeys to the end of the known world.