Italy and Italies: abstract

2017

Internet Archaeology, 2015

Exemplaria, 2014

Petrarch stands at the top of Mount Ventoux and proclaims his longing to return home. His soul turns toward Italy. Yet Petrarch has no “home” as such, and Italy does not exist at this time except as a post-imperial territorial designation. There certainly is no Italian nation. How can we understand these paradoxes? How does Petrarch’s passion relate to the question of nation formation? Through an exploration of Petrarch’s emotional responses to Italy, and by tracking his variable senses of space and time, this essay explores the tensions expressed by a deracinated intellectual caught between two different but contemporaneous ontological formations: the traditional and the modern. Here, the concept of “the traditional” is not treated as being the same as “the pre-modern.” Rather the essay works with a post-binary method of ontological valences or orientations. The colliding valences of Petrarch’s evocations are used to illustrate the ways we can open up alternative lines of inquiry into a crucial period in the life of Italy. The essay seeks an alternative to the mainstream tendency to either to make contentious overstatements or to slide into overcautious interpretative ambiguity.

TAPA, 2020

Upon the Trojans' landing in Latium, the many distinct peoples inhabiting the Aeneid's fictionalized Italy show little evidence of national solidarity as "Italians"; rather, they identify primarily with their local communities. But Aeneas's enemies, mobilizing resistance to an alleged foreign invasion, promote an amplified-and largely invented-claim of shared Italian identity constructed in militant contrast to the Trojan Other. This rhetorical strategy echoes Octavian's historical appeals to Italian unanimity in 32 b.c.e. against Cleopatra, which also promoted a sense of national solidarity that was, in reality , only emergent among communities characterized by strong and diverse local identities.

Vegetation History and Archaeobotany, 2004

in Ma Dolores Dopico Cainzos (ed), Aut oppressi serviunt aut recepti beneficio se obligatos putant: la intervencion de Roma en las comunidades indigenas (s. II aC- s. I dC), Philtate, 5, Acta et fundamenta antiquae Callaeciae, p. 377-411, 2021

The story of the conquest of the Cisalpine by Rome rests above all on Livy. Yet other sources give a very different description of Western Lombardy. Cato, who lived at the time of this conquest, delivers an image almost opposite to that of Livy. In particular, we note that he distinguishes fairly numerous groups of communities and that he attributes to several of them urban foundations of the Mediterranean type.

This paper aims to introduce the «Archaeology of Architecture and Household Archaeology in Early Medieval Europe» dossier, the object of which is to explore the different approaches, methodologies and themes analysed in the study of early medieval architecture in western Europe. More specifically, in what follows, analysis is undertaken of the contexts which explain the recent development of studies on this topic, as well as the main contributions of the seven papers which form this dossier. In addition, the main historical and archaeological problems raised by the analysis of this material record are also discussed.

2017

How have instances of ehtnogenesis and cultural change been influenced by migrations and the meetings of disparate groups in new lands? By examining the historical and archaeological evidence, I sought to examine the processes that drive ethnogenesis and specifically, how the Longobards of southern Italy developed out of a culturally complex and dynamic time such as the early middle ages. Based primarily on the archaeological assemblages found within the VII century necropoles of Campochiaro, I have brought together a variety of different sources to paint a picture of whom the early Longobards of southern Italy were, and how disparate barbarian groups across Europe in the early middle ages made sense of their present and how they created ideas of identity and belonging. This work refers primarily to the Italo-Lombard sphere of the VI to VIII centuries, but is also applicable to Avar studies questions regarding identity in the migration age and beyond. Many sources used for this work have never been translated into english, and this serves as a primary source of information in the english language for southern Italian early medieval necropoles