Societies in transition in early Greece: an archaeological history

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Notes

1. A similar characterization can be found in the recent Companion to the archaeology of early Greece and the Mediterranean, edited by I.S. Lemos and A. Kotsonas (Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell, 2020).

2. The author does refer to early Iron Age engagements with older burials (167, 213), but argues that “[w]hat we see intensifying in this period is not necessarily interest in the past but material engagement with it” (213, original emphasis). This distinction seems unconvincing to me: is “material engagement” with the past just a mechanical process, or is it always so?

3. Cf. N. Luraghi (ed.), The historian’s craft in the age of Herodotus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); L. Foxhall, H.-J. Gehrke, and N. Luraghi (eds.), Intentional history: spinning time in Ancient Greece (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2010).

4. A classic for Greek historical thinking is S. Mazzarino, Il pensiero storico classico, vol. 1 (Rome and Bari: Laterza, 1973).

5. See for example J. Maran, “Coming to Terms with the Past: Ideology and Power in Late Helladic IIIC,” in S. Deger-Jalkotzy and I.S. Lemos (eds.), Ancient Greece: from the Mycenaean palaces to the age of Homer (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006), 123–150.

6. Cf. C. Morgan, Early Greek states beyond the polis (London and New York: Routledge, 2003). The question of ethne is hinted at elsewhere in the book (e.g. pp. 29, 193, 242), but the author’s gaze in chapter 6 is projected to the polis only (232–235).

7. See for example B.C. Benz, The land before the Kingdom of Israel: a history of the southern Levant and the people who populated it (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2016). Cf. M. Liverani, “Nelle pieghe del despotismo: organismi rappresentativi nell’antico Oriente,” Studi Storici 34, no. 1 (1993): 7–33.

8. J. Driessen, “Centre and Periphery: Some Observations on the Administration of the Kingdom of Knossos,” in S. Voutsaki and J. Killen (eds.), Economy and Politics in the Mycenaean Palace States (Cambridge: Cambridge Philological Society, 2001), 96–112.

9. J. Casana, “Settlement, Territory, and the Political Landscape of Late Bronze Age Polities in the Northern Levant,” Archeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association 22, no. 1 (2012): 107–125. Similar considerations apply for the Iron Age: see O. Sergi, “Israelite Identity and the Formation of the Israelite Polities in the Iron I–IIA Central Canaanite Highlands,” Die Welt des Orients 49, no. 2 (2019): 206–235. Cf. also L. d’Alfonso and K.S. Rubinson (eds.), Borders in archaeology: Anatolia and the South Caucasus ca. 3500–500 BCE (Louvain: Peeters, 2021).

10. S. Sherratt, “Potemkin Palaces and Route-Based Economies,” in S. Voutsaki and J. Killen (eds.), Economy and Politics in the Mycenaean Palace States (Cambridge: Cambridge Philological Society, 2001), 214–238.

11. For perspectives on “collapse” and its outcomes in the wider Mediterranean area, compare for example M. Liverani, “The Collapse of the Near Eastern Regional System at the End of the Bronze Age: the Case of Syria,” in M.J. Rowlands, M.T. Larsen, and K. Kristiansen (eds.), Centre and periphery in the ancient world (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 66–73; L. d’Alfonso, “An Age of Experimentation: New Thoughts on the Multiple Outcomes following the Fall of the Hittite Empire after the Results of the Excavations at Niğde-Kınık Höyük (South Cappadocia),” in S. De Martino and E. Devecchi (eds.), Anatolia between the 13th and the 12th century BCE (Florence: LoGisma, 2020), 95–116.

12. B.W. Porter, Complex communities: the archaeology of early iron age west-central Jordan (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2013).

13. See for example M. Liverani, “Nelle pieghe del despotismo” (cited at note 7); id., “Stati etnici e città-stato: una tipologia storica per la prima età del Ferro,” in M. Molinos and A. Zifferero, Primi popoli d’Europa: proposte e riflessioni sulle origini della civiltà nell'Europa mediterranea (Firenze: All’insegna del Giglio, 2002), 33–47; K.A. Raaflaub, “The ‘Great Leap’ in Early Greek Politics and Political Thought: A Comparative Perspective,” in D.S. Allen, P. Christesen, and P. Millett (eds.), How to do things with history: new approaches to ancient Greece (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 21–54, with extensive literature. Cf. now M. Liverani, “Orienti e Occidenti,” Studi Storici 62, no. 2 (2021): 361–377, and id., Oriente Occidente (Rome and Bari: Laterza, 2021).