Debating Orientalization: Multidisciplinary Approaches to Processes of Change in the Ancient Mediterranean: 10 (Monographs in Mediterranean Archaeology S.)

Initially coined by art historians in the second half of the nineteenth century to denote an ambivalent artistic style and period, 'Orientalizing' has been invariably used to describe a phenomenon, a revolution, or a movement. Regional developments and innovations in the ancient Mediterranean have been explained by reference to an Orient, the metaphorical bazaar containing the artistic opulence and social sophistication that spread to the West and changed it. Debating Orietalization brings together papers presented at a symposium held in Oxford in 2002 to debate the theme of ancient Orientalization. The volume reassesses the concept of Orientalizing, questioning whether it is valid to interpret Mediterranean-wide processes of change in the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages by the term Orientalization. Like the ancient Mediterranean itself, the list of contributors is multicultural, and their contributions multidisciplinary, combining various strands of archaeological and textual evidence with different methodological approaches.

Corinna Riva is Lecturer in Mediterranean Archaeology at University College London. Her research interests cover Iron Age Italy and the 1st millennium BC in the Central Mediterranean. Since 2002, she has been co-director of the Upper Esino Valley Survey (Marche, Italy). She has published articles on Etruria, Adriatic central Italy and co-edited (with G. Bradley and E. Isayev) Ancient Italy: Regions without Boundaries (Exeter University Press, 2008). Her own book The Urbanization of Etruria (Cambridge University Press) was published in 2010. Nicholas C. Vella is Senior Lecturer in Department of Classics and Archaeology at the University of Malta. His current research interests focus on the study of connectivity in the central Mediterranean at the end of the 2nd millennium BC, and on the development of archaeological traditions in the Mediterranean in the inter-war period. He co-directs two excavation projects in Malta and is co-director of the Belgo-Maltese Malta Survey Project. He is the co-editor (with Josephine Crawley Quinn) of Identifying the Punic Mediterranean (British School at Rome, forthcoming).