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Paper Information:
This paper may be of particular interest to:  Students
Type: Paper
Paper Title: POLITICAL ECONOMY AT THE EDGE OF EVERYWHERE: COMMERCE AND CONFLICT IN THE LATE MEDIEVAL ARMENIAN HIGHLANDS
Author: KATHRYN FRANKLIN (University of Chicago)   
Date/Time: Fri., 8:00 AM
Co-Author(s): KATHRYN FRANKLIN (University of Chicago) 
Abstract: Later medieval historical narratives are examined in the context of archaeological survey results in the Kasakh Valley, Armenia to discuss the mediatory role of the highlands trade landscape between long-distance exchange practices and the strategies of local political authority during that period (AD 600- 1400). Those strategic arrangements by which local authority articulated with long- distance trade manifested in treaties, taxation, intermarriages, sieges and brigandage. Through these and other means, local actors negotiated their ‘peripheral’ status in relation to a changing cast of great powers: Byzantium, Persia, the Islamic Caliphates, the Georgian crown, and the Seljuk, Ayyubid, and Mongol Empires. Historical accounts present discourses of tactical local participation within long-distance practices and large-scale political authority: the status conferred by such participation (as imperial subject, as adherent of a global faith), its durability or liquidity, was as context-dependent for those local actors as for the goods which were transported in long- distance trade. This paper focuses on the potential for disjuncture between the local context of political authority, and the large-scale trade systems within which that authority was articulated.

Program Number: 3-0220
Session Title: HOT TRADE: FRONTIERS AND FRICTION IN PAST ECONOMIES
Session Sponsor: Archaeology Division
Session Date/Time: Fri., 8:00 AM-11:45 AM
Organizer(s): KATHRYN FRANKLIN (University of Chicago) 
Chair(s): SHANNON DAWDY (University of Chicago)  
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