T. Pedrazzi (2021), Cultural Contacts and Materialized Connections in the Levant and Beyond (5th-2nd Centuries BCE), in (original) (raw)

2021, TRANSFORMATIONS AND CRISIS IN THE MEDITERRANEAN “IDENTITY” AND INTERCULTURALITY IN THE LEVANT AND PHOENICIAN WEST DURING THE 5TH-2ND CENTURIES BCE, edited by G. Garbati, T. Pedrazzi

The TCM project, which originated within the Institute of Studies on the Ancient Mediterranean (ISMA, CNR) and continued within the Institute of Heritage Science (ISPC, CNR), has from the outset had at its heart a critical consideration of the modern concepts of “identity” and "interculturality” and their application to the study of ancient Mediterranean civilizations, paying particular attention to the eastern and western Phoenician world. The notions of “identity” and “interculturality” have been discussed, analysed, criticized and deconstructed through, on the one hand, basic methodological and theoretical reflection and, on the other hand, a careful examination of specific and diversified case studies, presented in the two volumes TCM I and TCM II, and now in the TCM III volume, which concludes the journey undertaken with numerous colleagues and friends.1 At the core of the TCM project is the desire to investigate and, as it were, “dig down” into the notions of “identity” and “interculturality” in order to better understand the different forms of cultural exchange, i.e. that complex, multidirectional circulation of ideas, skills, people and objects, styles, habits, cults, gods, tools, artefacts and images. In order to introduce the contributions dedicated specifically – in this volume – to the Eastern Mediterranean (the Levant, Cyprus and Egypt), some aspects of the theoretical background to the study of interculturality and cultural exchange are discussed here: the very idea of culture, which is placed side by side with that of “identity”; the concept of connectivity; the perspective of glocalism; the idea of a “materialized culture”; and the forms of “cultural exchange”.