Balkan Dialogues: Negotiating Identity between Prehistory and the Present

by Maja Gori (Editor), Maria Ivanova (Editor)

Overview

This timely volume fulfils the need for an up-to-date and theoretically informed dialogue on group identity in Balkan prehistory. Written by archaeologists conducting fieldwork in the region, as well as by ethnologists with a research focus on material culture and identity, the thirteen case studies cover the beginning of the Neolithic to the Middle Bronze Age, bringing together the latest research and providing a robust foundation for exploring these issues. With an intentional focus on the central and western Balkans, this collection offers original perspectives on Balkan prehistory with relevance to the neighbouring regions of Eastern and Central Europe, the Mediterranean and Anatolia.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781138941137
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	02/20/2017
Series:	Routledge Studies in Archaeology
Pages:	294
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Maja Gori works as postdoctoral researcher at the National Research Council of Italy (IRISS-CNR). Before this appointment she worked as adjunct faculty member at the University of Heidelberg. Her research interests comprise uses of past in identity building, ceramic technology, mobility, and connectivity in the Mediterranean.

Maria Ivanova is lecturer in Prehistoric Archaeology at the University of Heidelberg, Germany, where she studies the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age of Eastern and Central Europe, with a particular focus on ancient technology, spheres of exchange, the transmission of technology across Eurasia, and prehistoric warfare and violence.

Table of Contents

Balkan Dialogues. Negotiating Identity between Prehistory and The Present
Maja Gori and Maria Ivanova

I. Rethinking Groups and Cultures

1. Later Balkan Prehistory: A Transcultural Perspective
Joseph Maran

2. Ethnicity as a Form of Social Organization. Notes on the multiplicity of understandings of a contested concept
Hans Peter Hahn

3. The transitions between Neolithic and Early Bronze Age in Greece, and the “Indo-European problem”
Jean-Paul Demoule

4. Let’s stop speaking “cultures”! Alternative means to assess historical developments in the prehistoric Balkans
Zoï Tsirtsoni

5. A tradition in nine maps. Un-layering Niger River polychrome water jars
Olivier P. Gosselain

II. Identities in Transition

6. Socio-spatial organisation and early Neolithic expansion in Western Anatolia and Greece
Martin Furholt

7. Negotiating identities and exchanging values: Neolithic pottery production and circulation in Thessaly
Areti Pentedeka

8. Inheritance, population development and social identities: Southeast Europe 5200–4300 BCE
Johannes Müller

9. Culinary landscapes and identity in prehistoric Greece: an archaeobotanical exploration
Soultana Valamoti

III. Frontiers and Boundaries

10. Neolithic Assemblages and Spatial Boundaries As Exemplified through the Neolithic of Northwestern Turkey
Mehmet Özdoğan

11. Cultivating Identities: Landscape Production among Early Farmers in the Southern Balkans
Susan E. Allen

12. Erasing Boundaries or Changing Identities? The Transition from Early/Middle to Late Neolithic, New Evidence from Southern