Periodic Reporting for period 2 - MIGMAG (Migration and the Making of the Ancient Greek World)
Reporting period: 2022-04-01 to 2023-09-30
What was the nature and the scale of this migration? Who was moving, over why kinds of distances, and how often? The MIGMAG project combines archaeological and historical evidence to explore the human mobilities c.1200-550 BCE that led to the formation of ancient Greek communities.
As part of Work Package 2, team members have prepared initial literature reviews about each of the five study regions (M3). The population of the database with archaeological data is at an advanced stage, with core data from partner survey projects as well as the majority of published data about settlement patterns already inputted (M4). A baseline dataset of environmental evidence for landscape use has also been inputted (M5). In Work Package 3, claims made about origins and identity known from literary, epigraphic, and numismatic evidence have been inputted into the database, with data entry complete for Ionia, Cilicia, and Calabria, and well advanced for central Greece and Sardinia (M6).
As part of Work Package 4, two annual workshops for the project team and partners have been held - in Oxford in June 2022, and in Malta in May 2023 (M7). Planning is currently underway for the international conference in Year 4 of the project (M8), which will be held in Vienna in June 2024. The preparation of publications stemming from the project will begin in earnest in the coming months, with submission of most publications expected in the final year of the project (i.e. 2025).
As we near completion with data entry, we are increasingly beginning to see patterns in our data, both chronologically and spatially. An initial assessment suggests that patterns of regional mobilities and landscape are broadly comparable in Calabria and Cilicia, but followed different trajectories in central Greece, Ionia, and Sardinia. We anticipate that these patterns will become clearer in the coming months, and the historical explanations for divergent mobilities will emerge. By the end of the project, we anticipate that our conclusions will offer a complex and nuanced new picture of this formative period of Greek antiquity, transforming the way that we understand it.