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. Read more