State Formation in Italy and Greece: Questioning the Neoevolutionist Paradigm

State Formation in Italy and Greece offers an up-to-date and comprehensive sampler of the current discourse concerning state formation in the central Mediterranean. While comparative approaches to the emergence of political complexity have been applied since the 1950s to Mesopotamia, Mesoamerica, Peru, Egypt and many other contexts, Classical Archaeology as a whole has not played a particularly active role in this debate. Here, for the first time, state formation processes occurring in the Bronze Age Aegean as well as in Iron Age Greece and Italy are explicitly juxtaposed, revealing a complex interplay between similar dynamics and differing local factors. Building upon recent theoretical developments in the origins and functioning of early states, the papers in this volume experiment with a variety of new approaches to old problems. Dual-processual theory, heterarchy, agency theory and weak state theory figure very prominently in the book and offer innovative, context-sensitive comparative frameworks that match the richness of the archaeological and historical record in the Mediterranean. Contributors include scholars working in Etruscan and early Roman archaeology and history, in Aegean archaeology and on the emergence of the Greek polis. A full analytical index further facilitates the cross-referencing of common themes across the geographic scope of the book.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction (Nicola Terrenato and Donald C. Haggis)

Part 1: The Aegean
2. Measuring levels of integration and social change in Neolithic and Bronze Age Aegean societies: from chiefdoms to proto-States (Daniel J. Pullen)
3. “Society against the state?” Contextualizing inequality and power in Bronze Age Crete (Krysti Damilati and Giorgos Vavouranakis)
4. Centralisation and the political institution of Late Minoan IA Crete (Klaas Vansteenhuyse)
5. Monumental architecture and the construction of the Mycenaean state (Rodney D. Fitzsimons)
6. The early Greek Polis: regime building, and the emergence of the state (Edward Ch. L. van der Vliet)
7. Contexts, agency, and social change in Ancient Greece (David B. Small)

Part 2: Italy
8. Mapping Etruscan state formation ( D. I. Redhouse and Simon Stoddart)
9. State formation in Southern coastal Etruria: an application of the Kipp-Schortman model (J. Theodore Peña)
10. Constructions of authority through ritual: considering transformations in ritual space as reflecting society in Iron Age Etruria (Carrie Murray)
11. Citizenship and community: inventing the Roman Republic (Christopher Smith)
12. The versatile clans: Archaic Rome and the nature of early city-states in Central Italy (Nicola Terrenato)
13. Seeds and the city. Archaeobotany and state formation in early Rome (Laura Motta)
14. Relocating the center: a comparative study (Albert J. Ammerman)

...this book is an eclectic and thought-provoking volume that will greatly benefit students and researchers of state formation in the Mediterranean world and well beyond.' (Robert Schon, University of Arizona American Journal Of Archaeology)

"Its emphasis on heterarchy, human agency, and differing scales of analysis will be
regarded as a refreshing change from staid neo-evolutionary models, and provides a decent launch-point for further investigation, particularly of other parts of the Mediterranean. The range of material evidence presented is impressive, and the micro- and macro-scales of analysis employed are appropriate to the interpretive challenges posited." (Anthony Russell European Journal of Archaeology, 16 (2) 2013)