Migration and the Early Greek World

The project itself took a very specific form as an ERC-sponsored research project.

And we're very, very grateful, of course, to the European Research Council for funding the project.

But in a sense, it's kind of a culmination of a series of other projects which were bubbling under for a good decade before this one ever got started, really.

So for me, it came from two different directions simultaneously.

So one was a deep, intellectual dissatisfaction with questions and debates around the theme of Greek colonisation, or rather this debate that there was about the nature of what Greek colonisation fundamentally was.

So this question of how various Greek communities came into being, and in a sense explaining the map of the ancient Greek world.

This map which has Greek communities stretched out across the entire length and breadth of the Mediterranean and Black Sea from Spain to Cyprus and from the Crimea down to Cyrenaica.

And the explanations given for why this map looks the way it was were always explanations which were premised on migration and mobility and specifically kind of a diasporic movement of Greek people and Greek speakers with a Greek identity who start off in the Aegean and they move outwards.

So it's premised on diaspora.

And there have been decades of academic debate about the nature of this diasporic movement.

Is it all about... colonization as the traditional narrative frames it.

So it's kind of Greeks going out to conquer and settle and dominate new places.

Or discourse had it that it's got more to do with patterns of trade and exchange and entrepreneurialism and local communities integrating with and mixing with and mingling with migrant opportunistic Greek settlers.

And I found both of these interpretive frameworks being really deeply problematic.

I mean, the first being obviously kind of proto-imperialist and the second one being very very actually capitalist, coming out of a late 20th century capitalist utopian mindset where the ancient Mediterranean is almost characterised by freedom of economic movement.

There was very little violence in these narratives.

There was very little domination and resistance.

Everybody was very happily hybridising all over the Mediterranean.

I found this quite difficult.

And I found that it too wrote out the local voices and local histories.

So that was really the core of what prompted me to look into the subjects in more detail.

At the same time, from a very practical perspective, my first post-doctoral project kind of began way back in 2007. was I was excavating with one of my old professors in Cilicia, which is in the south of the southern part of modern-day Turkey.

We were looking at Iron Age to archaic levels within this inland settlement.

I actually spent then about the best part of 10 years working in this region.

Something that I really noticed was a shift in the settlement patterns in the region over time.

The project itself took a very specific form as an ERC-sponsored research project.

And we're very, very grateful, of course, to the European Research Council for funding the project.

But in a sense, it's kind of a culmination of a series of other projects which were bubbling under for a good decade before this one ever got started, really.

So for me, it came from two different directions simultaneously.

So one was a deep, intellectual dissatisfaction with questions and debates around the theme of Greek colonisation, or rather this debate that there was about the nature of what Greek colonisation fundamentally was.

So this question of how various Greek communities came into being, and in a sense explaining the map of the ancient Greek world.

This map which has Greek communities stretched out across the entire length and breadth of the Mediterranean and Black Sea from Spain to Cyprus and from the Crimea down to Cyrenaica.

And the explanations given for why this map looks the way it was were always explanations which were premised on migration and mobility and specifically kind of a diasporic movement of Greek people and Greek speakers with a Greek identity who start off in the Aegean and they move outwards.

So it's premised on diaspora.

And there have been decades of academic debate about the nature of this diasporic movement.

Is it all about... colonization as the traditional narrative frames it.

So it's kind of Greeks going out to conquer and settle and dominate new places.

Or discourse had it that it's got more to do with patterns of trade and exchange and entrepreneurialism and local communities integrating with and mixing with and mingling with migrant opportunistic Greek settlers.

And I found both of these interpretive frameworks being really deeply problematic.

I mean, the first being obviously kind of proto-imperialist and the second one being very very actually capitalist, coming out of a late 20th century capitalist utopian mindset where the ancient Mediterranean is almost characterised by freedom of economic movement.

There was very little violence in these narratives.

There was very little domination and resistance.

Everybody was very happily hybridising all over the Mediterranean.

I found this quite difficult.

And I found that it too wrote out the local voices and local histories.

So that was really the core of what prompted me to look into the subjects in more detail.

At the same time, from a very practical perspective, my first post-doctoral project kind of began way back in 2007. was I was excavating with one of my old professors in Cilicia, which is in the south of the southern part of modern-day Turkey.

We were looking at Iron Age to archaic levels within this inland settlement.

I actually spent then about the best part of 10 years working in this region.

Something that I really noticed was a shift in the settlement patterns in the region over time.