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328 Alphabet Soup
What particularly distinguishes the journal, however, is its
constant emphasis on interaction: on ‘contacts, relations, and
influences within the Mediterranean context . . . ’; it seeks to be
‘a forum for those dealing with the mutual influences between
the region and the outside world’. 13 Issues of ethnic and cultural
contact are returned to repeatedly and fruitfully (for example
in volume 4.1: ‘Latins and Greeks in the Eastern
Mediterranean after 1204’; or volume 11.2: ‘Intercultural Contacts
in the Medieval Mediterranean’; or volume 15.1: ‘Seafaring
and the Jews’). These topics echo not only the breadth of
Braudel, but the research of Goitein on Jewish-Arab contact,
and on medieval trade and exchange. Such an orientation—
towards the problems and potential of cross-cultural contact
and the shared existence of diverse peoples—may also reflect
debates at work in the home base of the chief editorial panel, all
of whom are located either at Tel Aviv University, Haifa University,
or Hebrew University in Israel.
The impact of the present day, and of a political agenda,
announces itself more overtly when one turns to the Sydneybased
Mediterranean Archaeology. Its official statement of purpose
(published in the first issue on the page listing the journal’s
various editorial, advisory, and managerial committees) reads
thus:
Mediterranean Archaeology (abbreviated Meditarch) is published annually.
One of its main objectives is to provide a forum for archaeologists
in Australia and New Zealand whose research and fieldwork
focus on the Mediterranean region. At the same time it responds to
the need for an international journal that treats the Mediterranean
region as an entity.
If one reviews the journal’s contents, it could be argued that the
first of these goals is more clearly achieved than the second.
Antipodean scholarship dominates its pages, as do pieces engaged
with museum collections in Australia or New Zealand,
together with work carried out in the Mediterranean under the
aegis of Australian teams. A local ‘angle’ to the journal is also
revealed in its frequent dedications to major figures in the field,
with volume 1 dedicated to A. W. McNicoll, volume 2 (and
13
S. Ben-Ami, ‘Foreword’, Mediterranean Historical Review 1 (1986), 6,
and see the journal’s website.