Networking Women: Modeling Female Maritime Mobility Networks between Crete and Miletus (20 min)

Presenters

Lana J. Radloff, Bishop?s University

Abstract

While scholarship on ancient seafaring and maritime networks has grown substantially since the new millennium, the role of women in the creation and maintenance of these networks remains underexplored. Women were important contributors to the domestic economy and key agents of religion, nested within overlapping and multiscalar Mediterranean-wide networks. They were also, as commodities themselves, part and parcel of forced mobility through armed conflict and marriage and motherhood. In the following paper, I reconstruct the demographics of women from two mass migrations of Cretans to Miletus in the mid-3rd century B.C.E. The citizenship decrees (Milet 1.3, 34, and 38) list at least 255 men, some of whom were accompanied by their wives, children, and extended families, for an estimated total of 3,000–4,000 people. Although the texts are fragmentary, there are 102 complete or partial names and titles that can be identified as female, whose terminology allows distinctions in marital and motherhood status, family composition, and the number, age, and gender of children on the voyages from Crete to Miletus.

Observations from the data are placed within the environmental, technical, and religious aspects of seafaring during the Hellenistic period to estimate the number and type of ships and model the sea route and the conditions that women experienced in maritime contexts. Women were essential to ensuring a successful seafaring venture of the oikos and operated alongside men, as they traveled long distances in search of income and economic gain. My analysis centers women as active agents within academic discourse and maritime mobility networks by highlighting the visual and sensorial aspects of women’s lived experiences on the sea, allowing for a deeper understanding of the role of women, the resilience of women, and forgotten women in maritime history.