Fracturing Narratives of Colonization Views of Early Iron Age Sicily through Metals and Metallurgy

Abstract

The study of Greek colonization has tended to explore relationships between Greek and Indigenous communities through the lens of ethnicity. My dissertation charts a new path forward in understanding how communities experienced colonization during this period by reconstructing systems of practice without using ethnic labels. Focused on the island of Sicily between 900 and 500 BCE, I explored the development of local Sicilian communities through their evolving relationships with metals and metallurgy. Informed by postcolonial studies and anthropological theories of craft production, I conducted a systematic reanalysis of evidence for metalworking and the use of metal objects on the island to explore the development of socially embedded practices throughout the period. My research combined a georeferenced database of over 4000 objects with the close study of materials in museum storerooms, where I tested new methods to identify forming traces on objects as evidence for distinct artisanal communities. I identify systems of practice and chart their development over time to explore micro-regional trends, shared behaviors, and divergences as evidence for changing communities in the Early Iron Age and Archaic periods. Above all, I elucidate the diversity and regionalism that defined Sicilian communities as a means of deconstructing conventional, monolithic views of cultural groups on the island. My dissertation project collects a comprehensive dataset of evidence for metallurgical practice on the island of Sicily, fibulae, and the contents of every metal hoard on the island during the concerned period. I explore these metals to illustrate the complicated and conflicting processes and behaviors that emerge in colonial contexts and move beyond narratives of power and control towards a multi-vocal history of the socio-cultural life of Sicilian communities. I structure my chapters as a series of multi-scalar case studies, layering the discussion of different communities of practice – social groupings defined by their shared participation in and perpetuation of specific practices – atop one another to provide a fuller appreciation for the variability of experiences across Early Iron Age and Archaic Sicily. These case studies cohere as a multivocal exploration of Sicilian archaeology that highlights the diversity of experiences evident in the archaeological record. I offer this model in place of collapsing complexity and dissonance for the sake of simple narratives of colonization, hybridity, or acculturation. Altogether, I elucidate practices predating the arrival of Greeks and Phoenicians that persist into the 6th century BCE and communities that responded differently based on their specific contexts. Synthesizing material evidence for persistent and adaptive communities of practice across the island, I assert the enduring, and at times fundamental, role of indigenous Sicilian communities in shaping religious, economic, and cultural networks through the Archaic period