| RZ-51699-14 | Research Programs: Collaborative Research | University of Notre Dame | The Political Logic of a Mediterranean Landscape: Southernmost Calabria from 6000 BC to the Present | 10/1/2014 - 9/30/2018 | $222,273.00 | Meredith | Slater | Chesson | John | E. | Robb | University of Notre Dame | Notre Dame | IN | 46556-4635 | USA | 2014 | Anthropology | Collaborative Research | Research Programs | 222273 | 0 | 222272.81 | 0 | Anthropological and archaeological fieldwork at Bova Marina in Calabria (Italy), analysis of samples, and preparation of a multi-author monograph. (36 months)
How have the human landscapes of the Mediterranean changed through the millenia? What is the historical fact behind the stereotypical images of the "traditional" Italian countryside? This project traces dramatic historical changes over the last 8,000 years in how humans have settled the landscape of rural Calabria, a rugged territory at the tip of the Italian peninsula. Inaccessible hilltop towns, isolated farmsteads, coastal villas, brigand camps, shifting hamlets: Neolithic and Bronze Age people, Greeks, Romans, and medieval people all chose very different, and sometimes to us completely counter-intuitive ways of occupying this challenging and marginal landscape. In bringing to publication almost twenty years of achaeological and historical research, this project shows how historical landscapes integrate ecologies, political order, and the everyday strategies people use to get by, create self-sufficiency and resilience, and protect their political autonomy. |