Debating Orientalization: Multidisciplinary Approaches to Change in the Ancient Mediterranean

Initially coined by art historians in the second half of the nineteenth century to denote an ambivalent artistic style and period, `Orientalizing' has been invariably used to describe a phenomenon, a revolution, or a movement. Regional developments and innovations in the ancient Mediterranean have been explained by reference to an Orient, the metaphorical bazaar containing the artistic opulence and social sophistication that spread to the West and changed it Debating Orientalization brings together papers presented at a symposium held in Oxford in 2002 to debate the theme of ancient Orientalization. The volume reassesses the concept of Orientalizing, questioning whether it is valid to interpret Mediterranean-wide processes of change in the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages by the term. Orientalization. Like the ancient Mediterranean itself, the list of contributors is multicultural, and their contributions multidisciplinary, combining various strands of archaeological and textual evidence with different methodological and theoretical approaches.

Corinna Riva is Lecturer in Mediterranean Archaeology at University College London. From 2000-2005 she was a Junior Research Fellow at St. John's College, Oxford, and served as temporary Lecture in Mediterranean Archaeology at the Department of Archaeology, University of Glasgow in 2005-2006. Since 2002, she has been co-director of the Upper Esino Valley Survey (Marche, Italy). She is the author of the Urbanization of Etruria (2010).
Nicholas C. Vella is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Classics and Archaeology at the University of Malta. He co-directs two excavation projects in Malta and is co-director of the Belgo-Maltese Malta Survey Project. He is the co-editor, with Josephine Crawley, Quinn, of Identifying the Punic Mediterranean (British School at Rome, forthcoming).