Joseph Karst - Binsbergen, Wim M. J. van

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Résumé :
Throughout the second half of the years 2000, Fred Woudhuizen and Wim van Binsbergen struggled to complete their voluminous, jointly authored book Ethnicity in Mediterranean Protohistory. Its principal aim was to make a critical and original contribution to the study of the Sea Peoples. Destroying the ?atti / Hittite empire, and seriously damaging the Egyptian New Kingdom, the Sea Peoples dominated the scene of the Eastern Mediterranean by the end of the Bronze Age. That book appeared in 2011 as volume 2256 in the prestigious 'International Series' of British Archaeological Reports (BAR). To a greater extent and with more justification than could be argued then, Wim van Binsbergen's sections in that book were inspired by the (admittedly obscure, obsolete, and unsystematic) work of the French-German linguist / Armenologist Joseph Karst (1871-1962). Therefore, greatly expanded and reworked, with a new Introduction, a new Conclusion vindicating Karst's four-tiered model of Mediterranean linguistico-ethnic identity (as his sole lasting finding), an extensive Bibliography, and exhaustive Indexes of Proper Names and of Authors Cited, the present monograph offers such original chapters on Karst as were withdrawn from the proofs of Ethnicity in Mediterranean Protohistory. Painstakingly, and with the aid of many newly-drawn maps bringing out Karst's ideas however bizarre at times, this study reconstructs, and critically evaluates, Karst's general approach to ethnicity in the Ancient Mediterranean region. It particularly highlights Karst's significance for the study of the Sea Peoples and the Biblical Table of Nations (Genesis 10) - as two main puzzles in this field. As an exercise in the History of Ideas, this text is hoped to inspire, benefit, and amuse, Ancient Historians, Bible scholars, linguists, comparative mythologists, Mediterraneanists, classicists, students of ethnicity, and archaeologists. New edition, vindicating Karst's four-tiered model for the Bronze-Age Mediterranean

Biographie:
WIM VAN BINSBERGEN (*1947) was trained in sociology, anthropology, and general linguistics, at Amsterdam University (Municipal). He held professorships in the social sciences at Leiden, Manchester, Durban, Berlin, and Amsterdam (Free University). At the latter institution he took his cum laude doctorate (1979) and was the incumbent of the chair of ethnic studies (1990-1998), prior to acceding to the chair of Foundations of Intercul-tural Philosophy, Erasmus University Rotterdam. Simultaneously, he held senior appointments at the African Studies Centre, Leiden. Over the decades, he has established himself internationally as a specialist on African ethnicity, African religion, ethnohistory, globalisation, intercultural philosophy, comparative mythology, the Mediterranean Bronze Age, and transcontinental continuities between Africa and Asia in pre- and proto-history. He was President of the Netherlands Association of African Studies, 1990-1993, and one of the Founding Members / Directors of the International Association for Comparative Mythology, 2005-2020. From 2002 he has been the Editor of Quest: An African Journal of Philosophy / Revue Africaine de Philosophie. His many books include Religious Change in Zambia (1981), Tears of Rain (1992), Intercultural Encounters (2003), Ethnicity in Mediterranean Protohistory (with Fred Woudhuizen, 2011); Black Athena Comes of Age (2011), Before the Presocratics (2012), Vicarious Reflections (2015), Religion as a Social Construct (2017), Researching Power and Identity in African State Formation (with Martin Doornbos, 2017), Confronting the Sacred: Durkheim Vindicated (2018), Rethinking Africa's Transcontinental Continuities in Pre- and Proto-history (2019, ed.), and Sunda: Pre- and Proto-historical Contiinuities between Asia and Africa (2020). His published work is also freely available at http://www.quest-journal.net/shikanda . Wim van Binsbergen is married with the classical singer and breathing therapist Patricia Saegerman, and has five adult children. Besides his scholarly work, he is a published poet, the adopted son of a Zambian king, and a certified African traditional healer in the Southern African sangoma tradition.