The study of the Mediterranean Iron Age has become much more expansive over the course of the past 50 years. It is no longer Eurocentric, whether by geography or ethnicity, and scholars in recent decades have also produced more studies and more thorough considerations of Phoenicians and Etruscans, in particular, as well as other groups surrounding the Mediterranean. This more “global” approach—if we use this term in a regional context—has produced not only a broader understanding of an interconnected “world,” its common traits, and the consequences of those interconnections and traits but also the choices and habits unique to individual areas and peoples. The desire to not only record data but also comprehend and interpret that data has led to greater significance placed on theory. This has not been misplaced effort. The value of survey and excavation has not been diminished but rather complemented. It is in this realm of theory where Tamar Hodos is most interested and engaged, and it is also the perspective from which she addresses the topics and themes of this book.
The book encompasses seven chapters. The first, “Interpreting the Mediterranean,” acts as introduction, providing a very helpful primer of the history of Mediterranean archaeology and considerations of postmodern and contemporary theory. Most importantly, here she provides something of a roadmap for her analyses in the form of eight “hallmarks” of a global culture: (1) accelerating economic and social processes leading to a sense of time-space compression; (2) deterritorialization “in which a culture becomes increasingly abstracted from a geographically fixed, local context” (p. 29); (3) “standardization or a common idiom to facilitate interaction and make each group's action comprehensible to the other” (p. 29); (4) unevenness (i.e., “not everyone is globally engaged to the same extent” [p. 29]) or benefit; (5) cultural homogenization; (6) cultural heterogeneity “or the variation in global flows from one region to another, to be regarded comparatively across the global spectrum” (p. 30); (7) reembedding of local culture, “a key parado(x) of globalization” (p. 30); and (8) vulnerability, created “when the interconnections forged by globalization make places increasingly dependent on actions that are occurring in other places around the world” (p. 30). As important as this construct may be in analyzing and understanding globalization and global culture, it also reveals how Hodos approaches and comprehends the issues of globalism and globalization. Chapter 2, “Chronologies and Histories,” defines the Iron Age, cites historical sources, and provides summaries of the populations under consideration. Chapter 3, “The Movement of People,” discusses migrations and colonizations, with Phoenicians and Greeks emphasized.
It is in Chapter 4, “Contacts and Exchanges,” where Hodos moves beyond foundational issues and begins analysis. All the previous discussion has been necessary, but it is here where she hits her stride. She begins with ancient economies, including a diachronic look at exchanges and then practices of consumption, before turning to the transporters of goods—that is, Phoenicians, Greeks, Etruscans, and Egyptians. This is followed by a discussion of sea trade across the Mediterranean and the rise of the production of transport vessels. In the subsection “Exchanging Ideas,” wine consumption and wine wares as social communicators are presented as prime examples of how the trade of a particular set of objects and where those objects are found suggest a koine of use, purpose, and experience. Drinking wares in general, but Greek and Greek-influenced local wares in particular, are found across the Mediterranean in funerary, religious, and feasting contexts. It is not unusual for a single context to demonstrate aspects of two or all three. Greeks did not invent these usages but their drinking wares—that is, their shape and decoration—were influential. Communities could and did, however, demonstrate both koine and local traits. This is demonstrated visually with Nikosthenic bucchero (Figure 4.5) and a Sabucina krater (Figure 4.8). Although not as fully, the trade of olive oil, grain, textiles, slaves, and precious metals are also discussed.
Chapter 5, “Urbanization,” addresses the development of cities. After stating a general failure of modern scholarship to come to a consensus as to typologies of urbanism, Hodos turns to an alternative approach, considering a site's social role. She views this as a holistic approach that engenders the recognition of an urban site's character and concludes that the development of sites is “neither linear nor universal. Rather, they are formed by local conditions” (p. 148). Well, yes and no. For example, one cannot dismiss the influence topography may have on a site, particularly one that develops in an agglutinative or organic way. But, on the other hand, orthogonal planning can require topography and topographical features to be ignored or removed. Hodos sees urbanization as an evolving process with no “predetermined universal sets of criteria” but a process with “shared practices and localized diversities” (p. 149). There are, however, traits and features present in any urban area, such as a reliable water source and the transportation of the water from that source to point of use. This could have been digging wells to tap groundwater, installing public fountains, or channeling or installing a conduit from a source within or beyond the boundaries of the urban center. Drainage was also required. This could have been as basic as running down streets or in the form of subterranean drainage systems requiring urban planning. In the Early Iron Age, the dominant shared characteristic of architecture and construction was the reliance on local building materials. Sun-dried mud brick in one area, and stacked friable stone in another. A thatched, steeply pitched roof here, and a low-pitched shist roof there. Once long-distance trade and travel returned, large-scale architecture and shared technologies returned as well. That is not to say vernacular architecture disappeared, but increased interaction and wealth led to adoption and adaptation—for example, the similarities of early Etruscan and Greek architecture. Hodos sees such similarities as “reflections of the development of shared expressions of settlement structures across the Mediterranean” (p. 170). As she rightly points out, the penchant for curvilinear structures employed in Sardinia is a noteworthy exception.
The focus of Chapter 6 is writing, including its advent and dissemination. From the relationship between Proto-Canaanite and its descendants—Phoenician, Paleo-Hebrew, and Early Aramaic—she quickly moves to the Phoenician alphabet and its influence on Cypriot scripts and then Greek. The significance of Greek and its alphabetic forms employed in Etruria, Sicily, and North Africa (or in the latter, its general absence) is emphasized by the number of pages devoted to them. After then identifying Phoenicians, Greeks, Etruscans, Iberians, and Sicilians as the most prolific users of written language, Hodos states that the development of each was diverse and dependent on local circumstances. She also points out that what seemed to unify these groups was extensive “sea-faring, long-distance exchange, and intensive commercial actions” (p. 205). She then turns to two case studies, both of which are ceramic vessels. What she deduces from these is not wrong and is in fact quite reasonable, but relying solely on similar artifacts is a risk. I would suggest that given the recognized importance of sea-borne commerce, the most common writing is for the most part missing from the extant record—namely, ship manifests recorded on far more transitory media. It is likely that the advent of writing had a very practical purpose and that was the documentation of goods in transit and inventories at home. Although much earlier but similar in content, the Pylos tablets in Linear B are largely an accounting of goods and properties in various locations across greater Pylos.
The conclusions to this study appear in Chapter 7. She begins with walking through the eight hallmarks of global culture and how the material presented in the book relate to them. This leads to a discussion of the transformative nature of complex connections, here globalization. Hodos sums up globalization as (1) evolving over a long period of time, (2) a way to characterize extensive and diverse connections, and (3) not necessarily equitable but enabling of inequality to develop.
In what is overall a fine contribution to Iron Age studies, there are a handful of things that could have been done better. This may have been an editorial decision, but more images would have been helpful. It would be good to have some illustrations of some of the sites and artifacts discussed in the text, such as the Syro-Phoenician dipper juglet and faience bead necklace from Lefkandi (p. 98), which is noted as among the earliest examples of international exchange; or on page 161, where Hodos notes that new sites were founded in Sardinia to facilitate contacts with the interior, but none of those sites appear on the map on the same page. In the chapter on writing, figures of some key examples noted in the text are present, but the transcribed text is not; and there is a reference on page 203 to an inscribed cup from Morgantina instructing the holder of the cup to drink, but there is neither an illustration nor the transcribed text. Although infrequent, there are instances when unresolved issues are treated summarily and as if resolved. For example, on page 62 is the not-universally-accepted statement that Etruscans were indigenous Italians. The latest DNA says they are, but even if this stands, it does not address the issue of Etruscan being a non-Indo-European language and why a native Italian population would speak such a language. On page 70, Hodos states as matter of fact that Thapsos ware is Corinthian, but such an identification is still very much in question.
In spite of my small concerns, they do not distract from the value of this book. Hodos has produced a sound resource accompanied by cogent reasoning and interpretation of disparate datasets. To have done so with a subject so geographically and chronologically expansive speaks highly of her contribution.
