Exploring Mediterranean Connections and Iron Age Entanglements

Abstract

Despite the conventional association with sophisticated metallurgical technologies, the Iron Age has long fallen between the two academic poles of prehistoric and classical archaeology. The more recent invention of a self-consciously ambivalent terminology of ‘proto-historic’ and ‘proto-urban’ features represents an attempt by mostly European archaeologists to give the Iron Age socioeconomic substance in its own right, while at the same time also underscoring the ambiguity of the period. Moreover, as the Iron Age has since become synonymous with notions of state formation and urbanization, its deep evolutionist roots have only become more evident.