Social Networks and Regional Identity in Bronze Age Italy
Social Networks and Regional Identity in Bronze Age Italy

Author: Emma Blake

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2014-08-11

Total Pages: 341

ISBN-13: 1316062538

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This book takes an innovative approach to detecting regional groupings in peninsular Italy during the Late Bronze Age, a notoriously murky period of Italian prehistory. Applying social network analysis to the distributions of imports and other distinctive objects, Emma Blake reveals previously unrecognized exchange networks that are in some cases the precursors of the named peoples of the first millennium BC: the Etruscans, the Veneti, and others. In a series of regional case studies, she uses quantitative methods to both reconstruct and analyze the character of these early networks and posits that, through path dependence, the initial structure of the networks played a role in the success or failure of the groups occupying those same regions in later times. This book thus bridges the divide between Italian prehistory and the Classical period, and demonstrates that Italy's regionalism began far earlier than previously thought.

The Cambridge Prehistory of the Bronze and Iron Age Mediterranean
The Cambridge Prehistory of the Bronze and Iron Age Mediterranean

Author: A. Bernard Knapp

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2015-01-12

Total Pages: 1677

ISBN-13: 131619406X

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The Cambridge Prehistory of the Bronze and Iron Age Mediterranean offers new insights into the material and social practices of many different Mediterranean peoples during the Bronze and Iron Ages, presenting in particular those features that both connect and distinguish them. Contributors discuss in depth a range of topics that motivate and structure Mediterranean archaeology today, including insularity and connectivity; mobility, migration, and colonization; hybridization and cultural encounters; materiality, memory, and identity; community and household; life and death; and ritual and ideology. The volume's broad coverage of different approaches and contemporary archaeological practices will help practitioners of Mediterranean archaeology to move the subject forward in new and dynamic ways. Together, the essays in this volume shed new light on the people, ideas, and materials that make up the world of Mediterranean archaeology today, beyond the borders that separate Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.

A Companion to Ancient Agriculture
A Companion to Ancient Agriculture

Author: David Hollander

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2020-11-10

Total Pages: 736

ISBN-13: 1118970942

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The first book-length overview of agricultural development in the ancient world A Companion to Ancient Agriculture is an authoritative overview of the history and development of agriculture in the ancient world. Focusing primarily on the Near East and Mediterranean regions, this unique text explores the cultivation of the soil and rearing of animals through centuries of human civilization—from the Neolithic beginnings of agriculture to Late Antiquity. Chapters written by the leading scholars in their fields present a multidisciplinary examination of the agricultural methods and influences that have enabled humans to survive and prosper. Consisting of thirty-one chapters, the Companion presents essays on a range of topics that include economic-political, anthropological, zooarchaeological, ethnobotanical, and archaeobotanical investigation of ancient agriculture. Chronologically-organized chapters offer in-depth discussions of agriculture in Bronze Age Egypt and Mesopotamia, Hellenistic Greece and Imperial Rome, Iran and Central Asia, and other regions. Sections on comparative agricultural history discuss agriculture in the Indian subcontinent and prehistoric China while an insightful concluding section helps readers understand ancient agriculture from a modern perspective. Fills the need for a full-length biophysical and social overview of ancient agriculture Provides clear accounts of the current state of research written by experts in their respective areas Places ancient Mediterranean agriculture in conversation with contemporary practice in Eastern and Southern Asia Includes coverage of analysis of stable isotopes in ancient agricultural cultivation Offers plentiful illustrations, references, case studies, and further reading suggestions A Companion to Ancient Agriculture is a much-needed resource for advanced students, instructors, scholars, and researchers in fields such as agricultural history, ancient economics, and in broader disciplines including classics, archaeology, and ancient history.

The Iron Age Community of Osteria Dell'Osa
The Iron Age Community of Osteria Dell'Osa

Author: Anna Maria Bietti Sestieri

Publisher: CUP Archive

Published: 1992

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 9780521326285

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Anna Maria Bietti Sestieri deals in this monograph with a major archaeological site, the Iron Age cemetery of Osteria dell'Osa, near Rome.

Textile Production in Pre-Roman Italy
Textile Production in Pre-Roman Italy

Author: Margarita Gleba

Publisher: Oxbow Books

Published: 2008-11-05

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 1782976035

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Older than both ceramics and metallurgy, textile production is a technology which reveals much about prehistoric social and economic development. This book examines the archaeological evidence for textile production in Italy from the transition between the Bronze Age and Early Iron Ages until the Roman expansion (1000-400 BCE), and sheds light on both the process of technological development and the emergence of large urban centres with specialised crafts. Margarita Gleba begins with an overview of the prehistoric Appennine peninsula, which featured cultures such as the Villanovans and the Etruscans, and was connected through colonisation and trade with the other parts of the Mediterranean. She then focuses on the textiles themselves: their appearance in written and iconographic sources, the fibres and dyes employed, how they were produced and what they were used for: we learn, for instance, of the linen used in sails and rigging on Etruscan ships, and of the complex looms needed to produce twill. Featuring a comprehensive analysis of textiles remains and textile tools from the period, the book recovers information about funerary ritual, the sexual differentiation of labour (the spinners and weavers were usually women) and the important role the exchange of luxury textiles played in the emergence of an elite. Textile production played a part in ancient Italian society's change from an egalitarian to an aristocratic social structure, and in the emergence of complex urban communities.

Crossing the Alps
Crossing the Alps

Author: Lorenzo Zamboni

Publisher:

Published: 2020-12-18

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 9789088909610

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This is the first comprehensive overview on Iron Age urbanism south and north of the Alps.

The Rise of Rome
The Rise of Rome

Author: Kathryn Lomas

Publisher: Belknap Press

Published: 2018-02-26

Total Pages: 444

ISBN-13: 0674659651

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By the third century BC, the once-modest settlement of Rome had conquered most of Italy and was poised to build an empire throughout the Mediterranean basin. What transformed a humble city into the preeminent power of the region? In The Rise of Rome, the historian and archaeologist Kathryn Lomas reconstructs the diplomatic ploys, political stratagems, and cultural exchanges whereby Rome established itself as a dominant player in a region already brimming with competitors. The Latin world, she argues, was not so much subjugated by Rome as unified by it. This new type of society that emerged from Rome’s conquest and unification of Italy would serve as a political model for centuries to come. Archaic Italy was home to a vast range of ethnic communities, each with its own language and customs. Some such as the Etruscans, and later the Samnites, were major rivals of Rome. From the late Iron Age onward, these groups interacted in increasingly dynamic ways within Italy and beyond, expanding trade and influencing religion, dress, architecture, weaponry, and government throughout the region. Rome manipulated preexisting social and political structures in the conquered territories with great care, extending strategic invitations to citizenship and thereby allowing a degree of local independence while also fostering a sense of imperial belonging. In the story of Rome’s rise, Lomas identifies nascent political structures that unified the empire’s diverse populations, and finds the beginnings of Italian peoplehood.

The Beginnings of Rome
The Beginnings of Rome

Author: Tim Cornell

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 527

ISBN-13: 1136754962

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Using the results of archaeological techniques, and examining methodological debates, Tim Cornell provides a lucid and authoritative account of the rise of Rome. The Beginnings of Rome offers insight on major issues such as: Rome’s relations with the Etruscans the conflict between patricians and plebeians the causes of Roman imperialism the growth of slave-based economy. Answering the need for raising acute questions and providing an analysis of the many different kinds of archaeological evidence with literary sources, this is the most comprehensive study of the subject available, and is essential reading for students of Roman history.

Sicily Before History
Sicily Before History

Author: Robert Leighton

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 9780801485855

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Sicily is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, one of the most varied in appearance, and least insular in terms of cultural development. It has often been described as a meeting place of cultures, where East meets West.

Communicating Identity in Italic Iron Age Communities
Communicating Identity in Italic Iron Age Communities

Author: Helle W. Horsnaes

Publisher: Oxbow Books Limited

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781842179918

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Recent archaeological work has shown that South Italy was densely occupied at least from the Late Bronze Age, with a marked process of the development of proto-urban centers, accompanied by important technological transformations. The archaeological exploration of indigenous South Italy is a relatively recent phenomenon, thanks to the bias towards the study of Greek colonies. Therefore an assessment of processes taking place in Italic Iron Age communities is well overdue. Communicating Identity explores the many and much varied identities of the Italic peoples of the Iron Age, and how specific objects, places and ideas might have been involved in generating, mediating and communicating these identities. The term identity here covers both the personal identities of the individuals as well and the identities of groups on various levels (political, social, gender, ethnic or religious). A wide range of evidence is discussed including funerary iconography, grave offerings, pottery, vase-painting, coins, spindles and distaffs and the excavation of settlements. The methodologies used here have wider implications. The situation in the northern Black Sea region in particular has often been compared to that of southern Italy and several of the contributions compare and contrast the archaeological evidence of the two regions.