Tamar Hodos - The Archaeology of the Mediterranean Iron Age: A Globalising World c.1100–600 BCE

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For JPL

This book is about the interconnections between populations and communities living around the Mediterranean during the early first millennium BCE. This is not the first period in which people across the sea were connected with one another, exchanging goods, ideas, values, customs, practices and technologies. The difference is the scale to which these exchanges occurred at this time. A connected Mediterranean was evident during the second millennium BCE through, for example, the exchange of copper and metalworking techniques, sailing technology, and convergence in some forms and styles of ceramics and other media. The rapid decline in archaeological visibility of such exchanges, and their corresponding political systems, from the thirteenth and twelfth centuries BCE mark the end of this connected phase. The geographical, material and ideological scope witnessed in the resurgence of contact, communication and exchange from the eleventh and tenth century onwards eclipsed the previous interactions. The long-term impact was the creation of what may be regarded as a globally connected Mediterranean.

Recognising this as an era of globalisation is important for our understanding of both the past and the present. Study of the ancient Mediterranean has often been divided into regional studies, and sometimes separated by archaeological sub-disciplines, each of which has its own origin of development. As a result, scholarly silos have emerged, rendering it challenging to discuss a Mediterranean archaeology, even though cross-cultural interaction is a feature of every period of the Mediterranean past.

Furthermore, our interpretations of the forms and natures of interactions between past cultural groups in the Mediterranean have evolved, particularly over the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In the case of the early first millennium BCE Mediterranean, our understandings of the settlement of populations in foreign locales and the emergence of far-reaching trade have swung from colonialist perspectives of imitating indigenes to postmodern recognition of local agency and the development of hybrid practices. Yet one critique of the latter has been rejection of evidence that gave rise to the former. An interpretative framework such as globalisation encompasses both the widespread use of shared goods and practices and a resurgence of localised identity through considered adaptation of new and traditional things and ways in reaction to increasing connectivities. Therefore, the adoption of globalisation as a way of thinking about the past enables us to rehabilitate previously polarised and seemingly contradicting interpretations into a shared narrative and to reconsider them in a new light. The result is an understanding of the intensely complex and multiple modes of cultural interaction and impact around the ancient Mediterranean during the early first millennium BCE in ways we have not been able to recognise previously.

This perspective is drawn from continued complex connectivity across the Mediterranean. The movement of goods and people across the Mediterranean today forces the countries of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East to engage with one another in a variety of political, economic and social arenas. Knowledge and understanding of both the similarities and differences between the interacting communities are what enable modern political entities to interact with one another socially, economically and, increasingly, environmentally. This is the essence of modern globalisation. The benefit of comparing and contrasting the past with the present is that the long-term trajectory provided by study of the past enables us to assess the outcomes of previous actions in comparison with todays circumstances. While exploring this lies beyond the scope of the present study, this work lays the foundation for such a consideration.