Session: #341

Theme & Session Format

Theme:
4. Polis, Empire, League and Beyond – Living in Interconnected Societies
Session format:
Regular session

Title & Content

Title:
Oversea and Inland – Culture Contact Dynamics in the Mediterranean during the 1st Millennium BCE
Content:
The 9th to 7th centuries BCE coincide with a period of increased circulation of objects and ideas (via trade, exchange and human mobility) throughout the Mediterranean. The arrival of Aegean and Phoenician settlers along the Mediterranean coasts was a further catalyst for the intensification of culture contact dynamics with local communities. This process had deep repercussions on the latter’s economic and political organization, likely also impacting their earlier interactions with neighbouring communities. This aspect in particular has been under-investigated, yet it is instrumental in understanding local communities’ economies and resilience at this turning point in Mediterranean history. Within this historical framework, the recent expansion of bioarchaeological (physical anthropological, isotopic, aDNA analyses etc.) studies has allowed archaeologists and bioarchaeologist to engage in multidisciplinary studies that have the potential to better reconstruct these interconnected processes of mobility, contact and social change. Specifically, material cultural analyses focused on shifts in production and consumption practices and domestic, funerary and ritual traditions can illuminate continuity and discontinuity in local organizations and constructed identities, while bioarchaeological analyses allow us to tackle the demographic changes underpinning these processes. Yet the integration of these two datasets is not devoid of problems, and requires active engagement by experts in both fields to resolve issues of scale, chronology, and theoretical and methodological mismatches.
We would like contributors to focus on how to integrate archaeological (material cultural) datasets with bioarchaeological analyses in order to illuminate (1) regional networks of contact and exchange and (2) interactions between non-local settlers and local populations. Starting point for our session is the early 1st Millennium BCE in southern Italy, but we also welcome presentations focusing on other contemporary Mediterranean regions by combining archaeological and bioarchaeological analyses.
Keywords:
Culture contact dynamics, Mediterranean, 1st Millennium BCE, Bioarchaeology, Archaeology
Session associated with MERC:
no
Session associated with CIfA:
no
Session associated with SAfA:
no
Session associated with CAA:
no
Session associated with DGUF:
no
Session associated with other:

Organisers

Main organiser:
Claudia Gerling (Switzerland) 1
Co-organisers:
Melania Gigante (Italy) 2
Marta Billo-Imbach (Switzerland) 1
Giulia Saltini Semerari (United States) 3
Affiliations:
1. University of Basel
2. University of Padua
3. University of Michigan