In this thesis, I characterise the Roman republican diaspora in the western Mediterranean, on the basis of the various activities which prompted the migration of individuals from Italy. The intention of my discussion is to examine the connection between republican imperialism and the generally obscure individuals who were the actual participants in empire. This is partly a response to Brunt's Italian Manpower, in so far as Brunt's minimalist calculation of the population of the diaspora discouraged subsequent research on the subject. To accomplish this, I have relied principally on the available literary references as the foundation of a thematic analysis of the diaspora, considering migration of those in the military or associated with it, as well as those involved in various categories of commercial activity. The settlement of former soldiers was frequently connected with the re-organisation of overseas communities by Roman generals. Commercial activity was examined with reference to a general model for trade in the late republic, which emphasises the role of agents acting on behalf of wealthier individuals in Italy. I also considered more general characteristics of the diaspora. Firstly, I have proposed a maximum population for the diaspora at the end of the republic of 170,000. Secondly, I have proposed that communities of the diaspora were organising themselves into conventus by the 70s BC. Finally, I have suggested that the social and economic networks of the diaspora can be modelled in terms of a network of bilateral connections between communities, though with particularly strong connections to Rome.

Abstract not available

The Mediterranean biocoenosis of infralittoral pebbles has been poorly studied and very little information is available on the physical characteristics of pebble beds, on the diversity of the associated assemblages, on the spatial and temporal variation in assemblage structure, or on interactions between the physical and biotic components. The present study was therefore carried out to characterise pebble-bed assemblages as a first step towards understanding the ecological dynamics of these habitats. Preliminary surveys were made along the low-lying coasts of the Maltese Islands to map the occurrence of pebble-bed habitats. Fifteen locations with pebble coverage >25 m² were chosen for study and benthic sampling was undertaken between July–September 2011; water samples were also collected on a monthly basis. Five shallow sites were sampled for biota again at six-month intervals until April 2013. The pebble beds were characterised in terms of environmental parameters and biotic composition. A total of 62,742 individuals belonging to 360 macrofaunal taxa were recorded (total sampling area: 16 m²). Polychaetes, crustaceans and molluscs were the most common faunal groups. The recorded species included the endemic gastropod Gibbula nivosa, and the first central Mediterranean records of three gobiid species. Three distinct pebble-bed types were characterised based on physical and biological features: shallow beds occurring in rocky coves, beds found within creeks or seagrass meadows, and beds located in harbour environments; amendments to internationally used benthic habitat classification schemes have been proposed, since only a single category of pebble-bed habitats is currently recognised in these. A significant seasonal reduction in species richness and abundance was recorded from shallow sites, related to the higher level of disturbance occurring during winter storms. Analysis of diversity patterns in harbour sites indicated that a high richness per site and between-site variation in species composition led to the observed high diversity. Site richness was associated with fine-scale structural complexity, while environmental characteristics were correlated with variation in assemblage structure over a broad range of spatial scales. These findings suggest that pebble beds have a higher conservation value than generally thought. The biologically derived habitat classification scheme and knowledge on assemblage-environment relationships derived from the present work will be useful to inform and guide management decisions concerning these pebble-bed habitats.

While the Latin version of William of Tyre’s chronicle of the Latin East, Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum, is a valuable tool for modern historians, it was not particularly well-known during the medieval period with only nine copies surviving. However, William’s history did become extremely popular through a translation of the original into Old French, the so-called L’Estoire de Eracles, with fifty-one surviving manuscripts. The Eracles text has been overlooked by scholars who have assumed that it is a simple translation of William’s text, and there has also been little work in to establishing a provenance for the translation or determining the translator’s motives. This thesis seeks to identify the extent to which the Eracles is a simple translation and assess its importance to historians. While, for the most part, the translator is faithful to William’s text, he made alterations throughout. Many are of a stylistic nature, and the translator did not simply abridge William’s text for a new audience. He made several additions that serve to identify him and his audience. In particular, he regularly added background material on French crusaders, and on events in France, including additional information not found in any other source. On occasion the translator alters William’s criticism of certain individuals and gives a very different version of events that may be more accurate. The major difficulty with studying the Eracles text is the fact that the nineteenth-century editions were reliant upon a limited number of manuscripts. There has been little work on these manuscripts and no clear understanding of the relationships between these manuscripts. This thesis also seeks to tackle this problem by presenting a critical edition of six sample chapters that takes into account all the surviving manuscripts and by establishing the relationships between these manuscripts.

Obesity-related diseases account for the majority of morbidity and mortality in U.S. adults. An estimated 4 million women in the United States deliver an infant annually, of which approximately 34% are overweight/obese prior to pregnancy. More than 30% of these women gain weight that exceeds the IOM’s recommendations; increasing their risk of postpartum weight retention and possibly increasing their risk of greater weight gain and retention over time. This research sought to test the efficacy of a traditional MED diet for 4-months on weight loss/control and biomarkers of inflammation in breastfeeding women compared to women randomized to the USDA’s MyPyramid diet for Pregnancy and Breastfeeding (control diet). At baseline, the women (N=129) were 29.7±4.6 years, overweight (BMI: 27.2±4.9 kg/m2), and primarily non-Hispanic white (75.2%). The majority of women were exclusively breastfeeding (73.6%) and a mean 17.5 weeks postpartum. Adherence to the MED diet was evaluated via calculation of the MED diet score from validated FFQs administered pre- and post- the diet intervention. Anthropometric measurements (body weight, body fat, and waist and hip circumference) and biosamples (blood, urine, and breast milk) were collected at baseline and 4-months (diet completion). Biomarkers of inflammation (IL-6 and TNF-α) were assessed via standard ELISA kits. The MED diet score was increased by 0.68±2.74 and 0.27±1.57 for the MED and control group, respectively. Increases in fish and dairy intake and a decrease in meat/poultry intake were significantly different between diet groups (P<0.05). Participants in both diet groups demonstrated significant (P=0.002) reductions in all anthropometric measurements; no significant between group differences were shown. A significant decrease in TNF-α, but not IL-6, was demonstrated in both diet groups. There were no significant between group differences. Both the MED diet and the USDA’s MyPyramid diet were effective in reducing anthropometric measurements and inflammation in postpartum breastfeeding women.

The administration of initiation rites by an ecstatic specialist, now known to western scholarship by the general designation of ‘shaman’, has proven to be one of humanity’s oldest, most widespread, and continuous magico-religious traditions. At the heart of their initiatory rituals lay an ordeal – a metaphysical journey - almost ubiquitously brought on by the effects of a life-changing hallucinogenic drug experience. To guide their initiates, these shaman worked with a repertoire of locally acquired instruments, costumes, dances, and ecstasy-inducing substances. Among past Mediterranean cultures, Semitic and Indo-European, these sorts of initiation rites were vital to society’s spiritual well-being. It was, however, the mystery schools of antiquity – organizations founded upon conserving the secrets of plant-lore, astrology, theurgy and mystical philosophy – which satisfied the role of the shaman in Greco-Roman society. The rites they delivered to the common individual were a form of ritualized ecstasy and they provided an orderly context for religiously-oriented intoxication. In the eastern Mediterranean, these ecstatic cults were most often held in honour of a great mother goddess and her perennially dying-and-rising consort. The goddess’ religious dramas enacted in cultic ritual stressed the importance of fasting, drumming, trance-inducing music, self-mutilation, and a non-alcoholic ritual intoxication. Far and wide the dying consort worshiped by these cults was a god of vegetation, ecstasy, revelation, and salvation; by ingesting his body initiates underwent a profound mystical experience. From what limited information has survived from antiquity, it appears that the rites practiced in the eastern mystery cults were in essence traditional shamanic ordeals remodeled to suit the psychological needs of Mediterranean civilization’s marginalized people. This paper argues that the myths of this vegetable god, so-called ‘the Divine Bridegroom,’ particularly in manifestation of the Phrygian Attis and the Greek Dionysus, is deeply rooted in the life-cycle, cultivation, treatment, consumption of a tree-born hallucinogenic mushroom, Amanita muscaria. The use of this mushroom is alive and well today among Finno-Ugric shaman and this paper explores their practices as one branch of Eurasian shamanism running parallel to, albeit in a different time, the rites of the Phrygian goddess. Using extant literary and linguistic evidence, I compare the initiatory cults long-assimilated into post-agricultural Mediterranean civilization with the hallucinogen-wielding shaman of the Russian steppe, emphasizing them both as facets of a prehistoric and pan-human magico-religious archetype.

Turkey is widely accepted to have formed from a collage of microcontinents that rifted from the northern margin of Gondwana and assembled from the Mesozoic to Mid Cenozoic in response to the closure, collision and suturing of numerous oceanic strands in the Eastern Mediterranean. Sedimentary-tectonic basins, which formed during ocean basin closure, can yield important information about the evolution, timing and processes related to the closure of these oceanic strands. The Darende Basin and the adjacent Hekimhan Basin are two sedimentary-tectonic basins which developed during the collision and suturing of the Neotethys Ocean in the Eastern Mediterranean. The Darende and Hekimhan Basins developed as part of the northern margin of the Tauride microcontinent during the collision and suturing of Neotethys. Both basins exhibit a Jurassic to Cretaceous regional carbonate platform 'basement' overlain by a dismembered ophiolite, which was emplaced southwards during the Late Cretaceous. The basins then developed in two main phases: In the Darende Basin the first phase is characterised by non-marine clastic sediments, overlain by transgressive shallow-marine rocks. In the Hekimhan Basin, hemi-pelagic facies are deposited synchronously with the eruption of within plate-type alkaline basaltic-trachytic lavas and associated volcaniclastic sediments (later intruded by a syenitic pluton) under an extensional tectonic regime. A Paleocene-aged unconformity followed. A second phase of basin evolution during the Eocene is characterised in both basins by the deposition of variable sedimentary facies including conglomerate, sandstone, marl, shallow-marine nummulitic limestone and evaporites (and localised basaltic eruptions). These record successive deepening, shallowing and finally emergence of both basins during the Late Eocene. The Oligocene is represented by continental fluvial deposits that are only exposed in the Hekimhan Basin. The deposition of faunally diverse, shallow-marine, Miocene limestones, Pliocene subaerial basalts and Pliocene-Recent continental deposits in both basins completes the sequence. The following tectonically and eustatically controlled stages of basin development are inferred: 1) Late Cretaceous extension initiated basin development (after ophiolite emplacement), possibly related to immediate isostatic compensation and on-going slabpull during northward subduction of the remaining Neotethyan oceanic crust. The eruption of within-plate lavas and the intrusion of alkaline syenite bodies in the Hekimhan Basin reflect this extensional setting; 2) Emergence of the Darende and Hekimhan Basins in the latest Cretaceous was possibly controlled by regional flexural uplift as the down-going plate approached the subduction zone to the north (and was possibly also influenced by eustatic sea-level change); 3) Early Eocene flexural subsidence related to ‘soft collision’ of the Tauride microcontinent with Eurasia, coupled with a significant eustatic sea level rise, allowed sedimentation to resume; 4) Mid-Late Eocene ‘hard collision’ resulted in regional uplift, progressive isolation and subaerial exposure of the basins; 5) Suture tightening and compression, during the Late Eocene- Miocene, resulted in reactivation of pre-existing extensional faults and terminated marine sedimentation. Both basins were affected by predominantly sinistral strike-slip faulting during the Plio-Quaternary westward tectonic escape of Anatolia.

This thesis explores the archaeology of late antique Sicily from the time of Theodosius I (347–95) to the reign of Constans II (630–68). Analysing published data from urban and rural contexts I aim to define three research subjects that are: 1 – The potential different phases of Sicilian Late Antiquity; 2 – The part played by the Church and the impact of Christianity in this transitional period, and, finally, 3 – The definition of a regional economic pattern. During the centuries here investigated, Sicily went through three main phases named: the fall of the Roman Empire, the Byzantine conquest of the 6th century and the process of Byzantinization of the Sicilian society and culture. The Church played a key role in all these three phases initially negotiating with local elite and cultural background its presence within the urban walls. But after the Byzantine conquest and until the Arab occupation of Sicily, the Church imposed its authority through the building of churches, monasteries and chapels transforming the urban and rural landscape. After the Vandal invasion of North Africa, Sicily became the only food supply for Italy and this deeply impacted the provincial economy increasing production and trade with Italy resulting in a period of economical prosperity and cultural liveliness.

This thesis discusses a number of issues related to the relationship between Gallo-Roman aristocrats and political power in Gaul during the fifth and sixth centuries. The first chapter opens with a discussion of classical literary culture and its role in defining and maintaining elite status in the later Roman empire while the second discusses epistolary literature specifically and the function of letter-writing in the period when Roman political power was fading and barbarian authority was only beginning to assert itself in Gaul. I show how individuals like Sidonius clung, in a world that was swiftly becoming entirely post-Roman, to a Roman cultural and political identity, while others, such as Syagrius, embraced the opportunities afforded by the barbarian regna. In my third chapter, I consider the growth of the ecclesiastical aristocracy and examine the ways in which those Gallo-Romans who entered the church redefined their position, creating, in the process, new criteria for the definition and expression of romanitas and nobilitas. I examine, in particular, the growth of aristocratic asceticism as a means for Roman nobles to gain new relevance and credibility in Gaul without having to enter barbarian service. I move on, in my fourth chapter, to examine the part played by aristocratic kinship in Episcopal elections in fifth and sixth century Gaul. In the fifth chapter I argue that Gallic bishops of the period were rarely interested in complex theology - or evangelism - and that modern expectations in this respect are at odds with the extant evidence. In this context, I look particularly at the famous monastery of Lérins, which is usually held to have been a great school of theology and centre of religious thought. Not only was Lérins not a theological centre, in fact very few bishops had any interest in theology. In each of the remaining four chapters, I examine some facet of the life and career of Caesarius of Arles whose career and attitudes not only represent an acute departure from the Episcopal aristocrat norm but also actually swept away much of the extant Episcopal culture and established the pattern for following bishops.

Nowadays, buildings are responsible for the 40% of energy consumption in the European Union, with energy up to 68% being coherent with thermal loads. Acknowledging the great potential of building sector, a substantial amount of the current building inventory must be refurbished, based on the trade-offs between energy and thermal comfort. To this effect, this study investigates the impact of retrofitting measures in residential envelope for areas experience Mediterranean climate. Seven detached houses, located in Cyprus, were modelled, investigating 253 parameters of envelope interventions and also, 7,056 combinations of these measures. In general, the findings revealed a seasonal performance variation of interventions with regards to the outdoor climate. The application of roof insulation determined as the most economic viable solution during retrofitting (single interventions), achieving a reduction up to 25% of annual energy consumption with enhancement of the indoor thermal environment. In the perspective of synergies between interventions, the application of roof and external walls thermal insulation with upgrade of glazing system with double Low-E demonstrated exemplary levels of performance decreasing on average energy consumption up to 38%.The findings of this research will contribute on the development of guidelines for designers and house builders for a perceptual retrofitting of existing residential envelopes in Cyprus and also, for countries experiencing the Mediterranean climate.