Islands and Communities

Perspectives on Insularity, Connectivity, and Belonging

Anastasia Christophilopoulou

• Publisher: Oxbow Books
• Year: 2024
• Edition: 0
• eBook ISBN:
  9798888571521
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: History of Art
• Index: Social Sciences

Major re-examination of issues of island identity and interaction with case studies from Crete, Cyprus and Sardinia covering a long time span and key cultural periods. Water may separate islands and the mainland, but the sea also offers a vital link. This volume is one of three major outputs of the research and public engagement project 'Being an Islander': Art and Identity of the Large Mediterranean Islands, implemented between 2019 and 2024 at the University of Cambridge. This project aimed to elucidate what defines island identity in the Mediterranean. It explored how insularity affects and shapes cultural identity by integrating transdisciplinary research methodologies, for example, by producing an awarded documentary on insularity and island identity, drawing on the principles of visual anthropology, social anthropology and environment studies. This volume is the culmination of the project's research strands, undertaken by our key research teams in Cambridge, Cyprus, Greece and Italy. It disseminates our research across our main project themes: insularity, connectivity, mobility, migration, island art and material culture production, hybridity and diachronicity, and provides cross-disciplinary arguments and suggestions on the future of island archaeology and associated disciplines. Contributions included suggest that the relationship between people, place and material culture is what reveals important aspects of island identity and reframe the concept of the islands as a dynamic interplay shaped by social and historical episodes, connectivity and mobility, rather than geography or political boundaries. The volume advocates that the complex histories of the Mediterranean islands can also be a story of connections.

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Summary
• 1. Understanding islands in the longue durée: Stories of insularity, community, and maritime heritage from the Mediterranean
• 2. Big and small islands: Rethinking insularity in the ancient Greek world
• 3. Roll up for the Mystery Tour: Islands of the transition and their contribution to ‘western’ civilisation
• 4. Contextualising Cypriot writing overseas: Cypro-Minoan and Cypro-Syllabic inscriptions found in Greece
• 5. A Late Iron Age sword from Tamassos: Biography of an exceptional object
• 6. Island metallurgy: A case study of two Early Bronze Age toggle pins from the Cypriot Collection of the Fitzwilliam Museum
• 7. Insularity and Mediterranean networks in the collections of the National Museums of Cagliari from prehistory to the contemporary age
• 8. Being an Islander in the 3rd millennium BC Small Cyclades in the central Aegean: Connectivity, food networks, and sustainability of resources
• 9. When our world became Christian: Crete and Cyprus during Late Antiquity
• 10. Conclusions: Mediterranean rhapsody: Of island histories and identities