The project revolves around a series of workshops focusing on globalisation, urbanisation and urban religions in the eastern Mediterranean from the Roman to the early Islamic Period. The workshops brings together classicists, classical archaeologists, biblical scholars, theologians, historians and scholars of Islam who integrate the most recent archaeological material into the study of relevant literary sources. In this way, it is possible to balance one-sided historical reconstructions and syntheses based only on the writings by members of various intellectual elites. Religious authors in particular often encourage their readers to separate from the outside world, but the study of material culture provide evidence for social and cultural mobility and mutual exchange of artistic, architectural and intellectual themes and patterns. While the Roman, Late Roman, Byzantine and early Islamic periods are usually studied in isolation from each other, the wide temporal framework of the workshops enables the participants to recognize various forms of continuity and change across different historical periods.