The course concentrates on the role of the Mediterranean from the inception of World Prehistory to the ensuing cultural episodes reaching the threshold of Modern History. The aim is to address sea route contacts as a significant component in the formation of Old World Archaeology and beyond. Different focal areas around the Mediterranean periphery preserve the earliest evidence of Man from the Palaeolithic to the Neolithic, followed by the major palatial regimes, such as the Minoan and the Mycenaean in the Aegean Bronze Age. Its configuration facilitated the consolidation of colonies established from East to West in the Early Historical Era, witnessing major sea-battles as an aftermath (as in the defence of Ionia). The Mediterranean offered ample space for composing the various «Periploes», the Maritime Customary Law and the Rhodian Sea Law. The theatre of the Sea witnessed the rise and fall of the Eastern Roman Empire, following the spread and deterioration of its great nautical powers. The Mediterranean thus set the preface for the rise of the kingdoms of the Medieval West. Navigation, being a composite and ancient techne, persists to this day and age as the latent wisdom in traditional ship-building and sea-faring.
- La longue durée of the Mediterranean and the Annales School of History: Viewing Continental History from the Sea.
- Mediterranean Prehistory and the Emergence of the Old World. From Africa, Olduvai Gorge Phase I, to the Epigravettian of Mediterranean Europe. The Holocene and the spread of the Neolithic.
- Local networks in the Aegean Bronze Age. The Minoan and the Mycenaean routes of sea contacts in the East and the West. In the footsteps of the great colonizations: Ionia and Magna Graecia. Navigation in the Eastern Mediterranean: Cyprus and Africa.
- Ship imagery and iconography, ship wrecks and cargos, naval power and the rise and fall of cultures, traditional ship-building today.