Unit PROTOHISTORY OF THE MEDITERRANEAN
- Course
- Cultural heritage
- Study-unit Code
- A002543
- Curriculum
- In all curricula
- Teacher
- Andrea Polcaro
- Teachers
-
- Andrea Polcaro
- Hours
- 36 ore - Andrea Polcaro
- CFU
- 6
- Course Regulation
- Coorte 2022
- Offered
- 2022/23
- Learning activities
- Caratterizzante
- Area
- Discipline relative ai beni storico-archeologici e artistici, archivistici e librari, demoetnoantropologici e ambientali
- Academic discipline
- L-ANT/01
- Type of study-unit
- Opzionale (Optional)
- Type of learning activities
- Attività formativa monodisciplinare
- Language of instruction
- Italian
- Contents
- The course is aimed to give a basic knowledge of the Protohistory of the Mediterranean, in relationship to the islands and the seashores between East and West between the 9th and the 2nd millennia BCE. Special attention will be given to the Levant, birth place of the first new production experiences of the Neolithic Period. The greater island of the Mediterranean (as such as Cyprus, Crete, Malta, Sardinia, Sicily) will be also analyzed, as points of encounter and re-elaboration of different cultures and basis for the formation of future classical civilizations. Furthermore, the course will include a historical-geographical framework of the various cultural areas and an analysis of the settlement aspects, the evolution of subsistence economies and ideological and religious changes also reflected in the iconographical choices.
- Reference texts
- Cyprian Broodbank, Il Mediterraneo. Dalla preistoria alla nascita del mondo classico, Einaudi Editore 2015 (Capitoli 3-8).
Further study texts will be given during the lessons. - Educational objectives
- Basic knowledge of the Prehistory and the Protohistory of the Mediterranean area between the Neolithic and Iron Age.
- Prerequisites
- Nessuno
- Teaching methods
- Frontal lessons and guided tours to the regional museums and archaeological parks with prehistorical and protohistorical archeological evidences.
- Other information
- Attendance at the course will give the opportunity to apply for participation in the teacher's research activities in the protohistoric Mediterranean area, in particular in Jordan (Italian-Spanish Archaeological Expedition to Jebel al-Mutawwaq).
- Learning verification modality
- Oral test, in presence or online based on the university regulations.
- Extended program
- The course will begin deepening the birth of herding, agricolture and village life in the Neolithic Period, followed by an analysis of the historical dynamics which will bring to the appearance of the Proto-urban culture of the Copper Age. Furthermore, both architectural traditions, such as megalithism, an important element of civilizations that developed along the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea, and material culture, already an expression of strong cultural contacts, will be studied in depth for this period of transition. These regional connections leaded the early development of navigation techniques, which allowed the colonization of the archipelagos. Finally, the course will address the fully urban developments that occurred in the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean during the Bronze Age, up to the appearance of the Phoenician civilization in the Iron Age, after the upheavals caused by the arrival of the Sea Peoples at the end of the second millennium. B.C.