From Trebizond to al-Andalus: Visualizing the late medieval Mediterranean

Abstract

No place can better represent the meeting of cultures in late medieval Europe than the Mediterranean. Intellectual, artistic, and societal interactions during this time have impacted material culture on many levels. These interactions are yet visible in coins, monuments, cityscapes, languages, music, ideas, knowledge, and technologies. Byzantine, medieval Islamic, Norman, Italian, and Crusader coins have been the dominant evidence of cultural interactions between opposing Mediterranean shores. This paper presents aspects of cultural encounters in the late medieval Mediterranean, visualized in storylines and accompanying digitized datasets, and supported by computer technologies and related digital applications.