Connectivities in Prehistoric and Classical West/Central Mediterranean

DOCUMENT Citation Only Catherine Steidl.

In the early 1st millennium BCE, Greek communities sprang up around the Mediterranean, and the West was no exception. As the story goes, Ionian Greeks arrived in southern France and a legendary marriage to the local chieftan’s daughter ensured their acceptance as settlers. From their base at Massalia, they expanded their trading foothold to Emporion on the Catalonian coast, cementing a relationship that was long-attested by the presence of Greek goods on western shores. Whereas rapid...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jacob Deppen.

This presentation examines connectivity in the Late Iron Age on the island of Mallorca. While most case studies of connectivity in the western Mediterranean involve the movement of people and/or the construction of new settlements by non-local people, there is little evidence that this occurred in Mallorca. However, there is still abundant evidence that indigenous Iron Age Mallorcans were increasingly connected to the broader Mediterranean and that non-local goods were being consumed throughout...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anthony Russell.

The world in which native Sicilians and Sardinians exist in the second half of the 2nd millennium BC is an increasingly connected one. As we move beyond static, binary, and often uni-directional frameworks for assessing social and material change (e.g., ‘acculturation’), beyond the entrenched categories of 'Mycenaeans' or 'Cypriotes' vs 'natives', there is an opportunity to explore new analytical avenues to describe or explain the socio-cultural shifts that occur on these two islands. In this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Catalina Mas Florit. Miguel Ángel Cau Ontiveros.

The Balearic Islands lie in a strategic position within the Western part of the Mediterranean and played an important role in the trade routes crossing the Mare Nostrum. Therefore, connectivity of the island by sea has always been considered. However, inland connectivity has not been addressed in detail probably due to the lack of information on communication routes. The paper explores the inland connectivity of sites in the late antique landscape based in a combination of spatial analysis and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Nowlin.

Greater trade and connectivity has often been associated with changes in cultural practice. This is particularly the case for the Orientalizing period for which the traditional view holds that objects, ideas and practices from the eastern Mediterranean exerted tremendous influence on local Italian communities during the 8th and 7th centuries BCE. This paper articulates the subtle differences between the presence of imported objects, changes in material culture, and alterations in cultural...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Beatriz Marin-Aguilera.

The role of textile production and consumption in the formation of Early Iron Age states in Mediterranean Europe has been often neglected in favour of other economic activities such as pottery making and distribution, as well as metallurgy. In the Western Mediterranean, connectivity has been mainly addressed through the study of Phoenician and/or Greek pottery in local settlements and viceversa. However, intensive production and consumption of textiles was at the heart of urbanisation throughout...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lela Urquhart.

Studies of ancient colonization in the Mediterranean have principally been concerned with assessing the "impact" of colonization: did the colonization processes of groups like the Greeks and Phoenicians make a significant impact on local native societies among whom they settled, and if so, in what ways? Important as such questions are, they have sometimes overlooked a more basic step: how do we actually measure the "impact of colonization" in the first place? This paper offers a response to that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Linda Gosner.

The Iberian Peninsula was a rich source of metals in antiquity, and indigenous people practiced mining in many areas from at least 4000 BCE. Following Roman conquest of the region in the late 3rd century BCE, the scale of mining increased dramatically to accommodate the growing needs of the Roman Empire from the production of coins to the creation of urban water infrastructure. This growth catalyzed episodes of migration of people and movement of materials in ways that stimulated both regional...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeremy Hayne.

The late Bronze and early Iron Age were periods of population movement and change and recent scholarship has highlighted the multi-directional interactions and networks involving the various communities across the whole of the west Mediterranean, as opposed to more static core-periphery models. In Sardinia, for example, this has emphasised the binary relationships between Phoenicians and the local Nuragic communities. With a greater awareness of local networks and connections the regional...