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2 Plans of typical Mediterranean monuments. The tholos tomb is the site of Moni Odigitria (after Myers and Cadogan 1992)
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IntroductionMaltaCreteSardinia and CorsicaThe Balearic IslandsComparisonsConclusions
References
Citations
... As the Nuragic period developed during the Middle to Recent Bronze Age, settlements increased in number, size, and elaboration, culminating in complex nuraghi (Depalmas, 2009a(Depalmas, ,2009b(Depalmas, ,2009cMelis, 2017), such as at Su-Nuraxi/Barumini. With an estimated 7000 nuraghi found across Sardinia (Klob, 2005), the Bronze Age in Sardinia is seen as a period of considerable population increase, similar to northern Italy. Although nowhere else hosts such elaborate sites in such high densities, parallel traditions to the nuraghi occur in other western Mediterranean islands, such as the Torre of southern Corsica (Peche-Quilichini & Cesari, 2017), Sesi in Pantelleria (Orsi, 1899) and Talayots on the Balearic Islands (Gili Suriñach et al., 2006). ...
Abstract
This paper reviews the evidence for long term trends in anthropogenic activity and population dynamics across the Holocene in the central Mediterranean and the chronology of cultural events. The evidence for this has been constituted in a database of 4608 radiocarbon dates (of which 4515 were retained for analysis following initial screening) from 1195 archaeological sites in southern France, Italy and Malta, spanning the Mesolithic to Early Iron Age periods, c. 8000 to 500 BC. We provide an overview of the settlement record for central Mediterranean prehistory and add to this an assessment of the available archaeological radiocarbon evidence in order to review the traditional narratives on the prehistory of the region. This new chronology has enabled us to identify the most significant points in time where activity levels, population dynamics and cultural change have together caused strong temporal patterning in the archaeological record. Some of these episodes were localized to one region, whereas others were part of pan-regional trends and cultural trajectories that took many centuries to play out fully, revealing prehistoric societies subject to collapse, recovery, and continuing instability over the long-term. Using the radiocarbon evidence, we model growth rates in the various regions so that the tempo of change at certain points in space and time can be identified, compared, and discussed in the context of demographic change. Using other published databases of radiocarbon data, we have drawn comparisons across the central Mediterranean to wider prehistoric Europe, and northern Africa. Finally, we include a brief response to the synchronously published but independently developed paper (Palmisano et al. in J World Prehist 34(3), 2021). While there are differences in our respective approaches, we share the general conclusions that large-scale trends can been identified through meta-analyses of the archaeological record, and these offer new perspectives on how society functioned.
Riassunto
Il presente contributo esamina la presenza di trends nei livelli di attività antropiche e nelle dinamiche popolazionistiche del Mediterraneo centrale durante l’Olocene. I dati consistono in un database di 4608 datazioni al radiocarbonio provenienti da 1195 siti archeologici dalla Francia meridionale, dall’Italia e da Malta, che coprono un arco cronologico che va dal Mesolitico all’Età del Ferro (8000–500 a.C. circa). A seguito di uno screening iniziale, 4515 datazioni al radiocarbonio sono state selezionate per l’analisi finale. Si fornisce una panoramica generale sulla preistoria del Mediterraneo centrale assieme a una valutazione delle datazioni archeologiche al radiocarbonio al fine di rivalutare le interpretazioni tradizionali sulla preistoria dell’area analizzata. Questo approccio ha consentito di identificare i momenti più significativi nei quali i livelli di attività antropica, le dinamiche popolazionistiche e i cambiamenti culturali hanno congiuntamente causato forti patterns temporali nel record archeologico. Alcuni di questi fenomeni sono circoscritti a una singola regione, mentre altri fanno parte di tendenze pan-regionali e traiettorie culturali che hanno richiesto molti secoli per essere pienamente realizzate, mostrando società preistoriche soggette a collasso, ripresa e continua instabilità nel lungo periodo. Utilizzando le datazioni al radiocarbonio, il presente contributo propone modelli sui tassi di crescita delle diverse regioni in modo da identificare nello spazio e nel tempo momenti di cambiamento, comparandoli e discutendoli alla luce della fluttuazione demografica. L’articolo propone inoltre un confronto tra il Mediterraneo centrale, l'Europa preistorica e l'Africa settentrionale attraverso l’utilizzo di altre datazioni al radiocarbonio disponibili in letteratura. Infine, si presenta una breve risposta all’articolo sviluppato contemporaneamente ma in maniera indipendente da Palmisano et al. (2021). Anche se i due contributi presentano evidenti differenze nei rispettivi approcci, questi condividono le conclusioni generali secondo cui la meta-analisi del record archeologico può identificare tendenze su larga scala e offrire nuove prospettive sulle società antiche.
... Some of these social implications have already been exposed by different authors (Bonanno et al., 1990;Kolb, 2005;Renfrew et al., 1974), who have developed theoretical models in Mediterranean islands with megalithic sites. Aspects such as social complexity, elites, specialized knowledge, and even common identity have been explained thanks to the study of these monumental remains in Malta and Corsica. ...
... Todo esto debió tener consecuencias en la organización social de las comunidades talayóticas. La extracción, transporte y colocación de grandes pilares y bloques revela la complejidad de las sociedades talayóticas, tema ya estudiado en otras islas del Mediterráneo(Bonanno et al., 1990;Kolb, 2005;Renfrew et al., 1974). Un estudio sistemático de este proceso revelaría importantes datos sobre las comunidades que vivieron en Menorca en el primer milenio a.C. ...
... Some of these social implications have already been exposed by different authors (Bonanno et al., 1990;Kolb, 2005;Renfrew et al., 1974), who have developed theoretical models in Mediterranean islands with megalithic sites. Aspects such as social complexity, elites, specialized knowledge, and even common identity have been explained thanks to the study of these monumental remains in Malta and Corsica. ...
... Todo esto debió tener consecuencias en la organización social de las comunidades talayóticas. La extracción, transporte y colocación de grandes pilares y bloques revela la complejidad de las sociedades talayóticas, tema ya estudiado en otras islas del Mediterráneo(Bonanno et al., 1990;Kolb, 2005;Renfrew et al., 1974). Un estudio sistemático de este proceso revelaría importantes datos sobre las comunidades que vivieron en Menorca en el primer milenio a.C. ...
The island of Menorca (Balearic Islands, Spain) contains numerous megalithic structures (e.g., watchtowers, sanctuaries) and private buildings (e.g., domestic spaces, storage areas). Until recently, archaeological research has concentrated on architecture (and associated material remains), but research on the raw materials (source, method of quarrying and their social implications) in constructing these monuments has been very sparse. This paper summarizes some initial results of our recent excavations at Torre d’en Galmés, which show that the quarrying of limestone was widespread: within buildings, in open spaces between buildings, and beyond the limits of the main occupation of the site. Inhabitants exploited joints and bedding planes in the Miocene limestone that covers the southern half of the island, ignoring softer marls, which have been quarried for construction only since the Roman conquest. The sizes and shapes of the quarried blocks can be used to reflect on social aspects, since quarrying of small blocks within buildings could have been whereas the extraction, transport, and construction of large standing uprights from outside the limits of the site would have required a greater communal effort. © 2018, Instituto Geologico y Minero de Espana. All rights reserved.
... This building occurred in a context of increasing societal focus on creating a well-defined collective identity centred on history and memory. This activity is often included in narratives of megalithism (Cilia 2004;Kolb 2005;Tilley 1994), but the idea of size is OXFORD JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGY 35(4) 329-344 2016 never explicitly conceptualized. The Late Neolithic of the Maltese Islands is examined in this paper from the perspective of scale in a sensory landscape. ...
At first glance, the Late Neolithic (3600–2500 BC) of the Maltese Island archipelago in the central Mediterranean is a landscape of immensity dominated by megalithic stone structures. To the modern viewer, the Neolithic is materialized as magnitude across time and space. Archaeologically, it is denoted as the Temple Period, after the numerous megalithic structures found across the islands of Malta, Gozo and Comino. Although these structures elicit notions of dominance, they also obscure multiple scales of materiality within and between their assemblages, particularly the not insignificant corpus of figurines and models. This paper looks at the two extreme ends of scale, immensity and miniaturism, and their role in shaping sensory experience and social relations.
... Yet this continued focus on the earliest stages of island prehistory came at the expense of a lack of attention to many aspects of subsequent insular dynamics (Patton 1996 ;Broodbank 1999 : 237) -human impacts on island ecosystems, dif ering trajectories of sociocultural and political development, the signii cance of networks of inter-island and island-mainland interactions, and the emergence of distinctive island identities and materialities. There was also a continued interest in the esoteric and the introverted in island contexts (e.g., Stoddart et al. 1993 ;Malone and Stoddart 2004 ;Kolb 2005 ), despite reminders that this is not an exclusive outcome of island living (Rainbird 1999 : 227). ...
Before the mid-1970s, a distinctive subi eld of 'Mediterranean island archaeology ' cannot be said to have existed; there were only archaeologies of individual islands or island groups. So far as the Mediterranean is concerned, an interest in studying islands in a collective and comparative framework, and trying to understand what impact the quality of insularity may have on material culture and human behaviors, can be traced directly to two inl uential articles by J.D. Evans in the 1970s. This chapter addresses the development of Mediterranean island prehistory from Childe to Evans's watershed papers, and charts the emergence of a comparative and explicitly quantitative island archaeology, heavily informed by biogeography, in the 1980s and 1990s. It then moves on to the critique of the 'new' Mediterranean island archaeology that emerged in the early twenty-i rst century, and highlights how it has opened up new avenues of inquiry in insular prehistory, not least by emphasizing connectivity, island identities, and the formation of distinct island communities. Using data from the period between the later Upper Palaeolithic and the Late Bronze Age, it seeks to draw out the practical and heuristic consequences of dif er-ent paradigms, and to sug est future areas of development in Mediterranean island prehistory.
Stonehenge, Machu Picchu, Confederate statues, Egyptian pyramids, and medieval cathedrals: these are some of the places that are the subject of Making Sense of Monuments, an analysis of how the built environment molds human experiences and perceptions via bodily comparison. Drawing from recent research in cognitive neuroscience, psychology, and semiotics, Michael J. Kolb explores the mechanics of the mind, the material world, and the spatialization process of monumental architecture. Three distinct spatial-cognitive metaphors—time, movement, and scale—comprise strands of knowledge that, when interwoven, create embodied contours of meaning around how humans interact with monumental spaces. Comprehensive, lucidly written, and thoroughly illustrated, Making Sense of Monuments is a vibrant, extraordinary journey of the monuments we have constructed and inhabited.
The Mediterranean islands are home to some of the world’s most impressive monuments. These include the colossal tombs, temples, and palaces present on Menorca, Sardinia, Pantelleria, Malta/Gozo, Crete, and Cyprus. Although substantial differences exist in their chronology, construction style, and function, these monuments also share a number of key similarities. First, the origins of these monuments may be traced to two specific social fabrics of “place.” Second, those who built and used them made logical choices for negotiating social competition and consensus. Finally, environmental productive circumscription may also have served to stimulate a divergence in the way these monuments were utilized in the east versus the west.
