Bringing up Things out of Date: Re-Assessing Mobility in a Comparative Analysis of Mediterranean and Amazonian Archaeology

Abstract

Ever since the late-nineteenth century, ethnic labels given to prehistoric people by the pioneers of archaeology have framed the discussion over perceptions of cultural identity. In a historiographically informed perspective, it is important to evaluate what are the relations of continuity and rupture that have been perceived in the ascription of collective identity. What are the criteria that have been adopted by scholars to demonstrate what is to be, for instance, Minoan, Mycenaean, or Greek? With the cutting-edge methodological innovation of paleogenomics, a branch of archaeogenetics, the interdisciplinary field made up of archaeology and molecular genetics, modern archaeologists have to face the same historical conundrums concerning the "questions of origins" of these pioneers. Particularly over third-millennium-BC Europe population history, ancient DNA has rekindled the debate for origins of well-known archaeological cultures. This have brought back to discussion also mobility and migration, notions that archaeology always has dealt with in its theoretical history. Here in this Work Plan I am interest to "hold conversation" with the theoretical background of archaeology, especially the Mediterranean archaeology, in order to tentatively suggest a way forward, re-theorizing movement within an interdisciplinary perspective. By setting this conceptual framework, I go into specially two case studies of the Bronze Age Mediterranean and the Pre-Columbian Amazonia to assess how movement generates the dynamics of social change in specific historical trajectories. In brief, I intend to carry out a comparative archaeological enquiry into mobility, migration, contact, and cultural change within centuries-old historiographical controversies over Indo-European and Tupian origins.