Synopses & Reviews
This book presents a theoretically informed, up-to-date study of interactions between indigenous peoples of Mediterranean France and Etruscan, Greek, and Roman colonists during the first millennium BC. Analyzing archaeological data and ancient texts, Michael Dietler explores these colonial encounters over six centuries, focusing on material culture, urban landscapes, economic practices, and forms of violence. He shows how selective consumption linked native societies and colonists and created transformative relationships for each. Archaeologies of Colonialism also examines the role these ancient encounters played in the formation of modern European identity, colonial ideology, and practices, enumerating the problems for archaeologists attempting to re-examine these past societies.
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and#8220;An important and valuable addition to current studies in postcolonial theory and the colonial phenomenon in the ancient Mediterranean.and#8221;
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“Recommended.” Choice
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and#8220;Dietler has produced an outstanding work of scholarship that is sophisticated, intelligent, and insightful, and that deserves the close attention of scholars.and#8221;
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and#8220;Dietlerand#8217;s book is full of interesting . . . insights woven from a particular anthropologically driven perspective.and#8221;
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and#8220;Dazzling. . . . Dietler offers in this utterly captivating study . . . an account of a colonial entanglement like nothing you have ever read.and#8221;
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"An excellent account." Daniel Lord Smail, Harvard University - H-France Review Of Books
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“Substantial and highly informative. . . . A detailed study.” European Jrnl Of Archaeology
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and#8220;Recommended.and#8221;
Synopsis
"
Archaeologies of Colonialism contributes to a new understanding of a very large body of material. Its publication will be welcomed by historians and archaeologists who study ancient Greek and Roman colonialism, Mediterranean trade, and Iron Age Europe."and#151;Peter S. Wells, author of
The Battle that Stopped Rome"Dietler examines colonial encounters and entanglements through a variety of lenses (consumption, violence, space), elegantly deploying the rich archaeology and history of the Western Mediterranean, an antiquity that shaped our very notions of the colonial experience. This is a book as complex and nuanced as the process it explores."and#151;Susan E. Alcock, Brown University
About the Author
Michael Dietler is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago and the author of Consumption and Colonial Encounters in the Rhone Basin of France.