Conceptualising early colonisation

Conceptualising early Colonisation focuses on various ways scholars represent ancient Greek colonisation in Italy. The conventional term "colonisation" has come under scrutiny for its misleading implication of imperialism, unbalanced interactions between "colonisers" and "colonised" and institutionalised racism, that characterised modern colonial movements. The complexity of the phenomenon in Antiquity does not allow for a straightforward equation with modern colonisation, but alternative concepts for this ancient "colonisation" appear to be equally elusive. Conceptualising early colonisation needs to take the entanglement with other processes into account, as there are state formation, urbanisation, technological innovations, increasing connectivity and identity formation, among others.

This volume constitutes a second group of texts that have originally been presented at the Contextualising early colonisation conference, held in Rome in June 2012. Papers address general questions on how early colonisation should be conceptualised, and several present in-depth case studies that explore how various approaches and terminologies operate in practice. Concepts that are explored range from migration, network theory and identity formation over postcolonialism, gender theory to connectivity.