P. Guldager Bilde, and J. H. Petersen (eds.), Meetings of Cultures in the Black Sea Region: Between Conflicts and Coexistence: [Review]

The volume edited by Pia Guldager Bilde and Jane Hjarl Petersen includes mostly papers presented at the seventh international conference on meetings of cultures in the Black Sea region, organized by the Danish National Research Foundation’s Centre for Black Sea Studies. The articles in the collection treat a wide range of subjects, from archaeology of Greek and indigenous settlements through history and its periodization to religious and cultural ideas. In terms of geography, the majority of papers deals with the Black Sea area, but some reach as far away from Pontus Euxeinos as Magna Graecia. The collection is divided into sections, each consisting of rather loosely connected papers united under the titles ‘Setting the Scene’, ‘Spaces of Identity,’ ‘Claiming the Land’, ‘The Dynamics of Cultural Exchange,’ and ‘Mind the Gap.’