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1.Just a few scattered and inconclusive thoughts on @bernard_prof 's super thread. https://twitter.com/bernard_prof/status/1266173106214834176
2. It seems very difficult to exclude the exogenous impact of increased Mediterranean connectivity and resource availability. But we know we cannot think of ‘orientalizing’ in the old sense, esp after Riva and Vella. (PS Naso et al edited vol on this due 2021).
3.But that raises the issue of continuity or transformation. @NTerrenato stresses long lived elite lineages. That model (whcih is currently the best on the block) entails essentially a dynamic acceleration of existing power structures to take advantage of new opportunities.
4.This has the advantage of recognizing the importance of the Late Bronze Age Early Iron Age transitions, which produce many of the settlements which then expand.
5. Lieve Donnellan's work on low density urban networks and state *trans*formation is helpful I think https://doi.org/10.3389/fdigh.2019.00015
6. An alternative account might lay more emphasis on rupture and revolution. The focus would then be more on what social transformations are being enabled and what are being blocked? So we get @NTerrenato 's factions, perhaps in a more fluid and socially constitutive way.
7. The evidence of elite tombs has always driven these models towards the elite as the dynamic factor. Leaders lead. Communities follow. (Here's one of the latest princely tombs, from Corinaldo, excav. @UniboMagazine , pub. @AntiquityJ by Federica Boschi et al)
8.But what if we look from the other side? Who is doing the manufacturing? Where do skills sit? Whose skills are being enhanced? What new knowledges are being created? And what are the consequences? (the weaving scene from the Verucchio throne, drawn by L. Raeder)
http://9.It ’s hugely important of course to factor in changes in other technologies, such as textiles (see Margarita Gleba's https://www.arch.cam.ac.uk/research/projects/past-projects/procon/contact) and agriculture (brilliant work by @dr_bone_lady )
10.Or: what kinds of communities are being formed and what do they expect of or impose upon their leaders? Duplouy’s model of performance in the Greek polis fits very well with the excess we see in Italy. Does that mean more powerful communities too? cf @Nakhthor on Greece..
11.Hence the politics is so important, and there are signs of attempts to consolidate power (recently the Gabii project @gabiiproject child burials are a major contribution), but I would still want to think about the process of conferring value on descent.
12.On a conceptual level then, I come back to community, precursors to citizenship, increasing distinctions between private and communal ownership, questions such as in what circumstances and for what purposes was permission given for inequality?
13.After all, c. 630, the burial displays significantly reduce… But one would not say that inequality goes away.
http://14.So is the idea of a political and cultural shift responding to the challenge of new intellectual frameworks, but generating responses at a local level which may look the same in material culture but be conceptually different over time and space attractive?
http://15.It ’s wonderful, lastly, that so much brilliant work is being done by so many on Italy for this period, and now genuinely across the world, from New Zealand to America. END.
