Ties that bind: assessing ancient networks in Iron Age Campania

Morris, Owain Gwynn (2022) Ties that bind: assessing ancient networks in Iron Age Campania. PhD thesis, Birkbeck, University of London.

Abstract

This thesis explores social network connections in Campania from the Iron Age to Orientalising period using Granovetter’s concept of strong and weak ties. Because weak ties allow greater access to new innovations, they offer a novel insight into how culture, technology and ideas entered the region. I move away from current interpretations that maintain that the superiority of Greek culture saw incoming Greeks dominate interactions with local groups. With the archaeological data from this period coming almost exclusively from funerary contexts, eight settlements were chosen as a sample. Imports, imitations, and locally produced objects in the grave good assemblages were identified to ascertain connections between other regions. Using a specific weighting for local and foreign objects the connections were classified as either strong or weak ties. My study shows the existence of an indigenous network along the Tyrrhenian coast of Campania that had long-distance ties with the western and central Mediterranean in the early Iron Age. Pontecagnano was the most important node in this network and the weak ties it held gave it access to what was a global culture circulating the Mediterranean. Amongst these weak ties were Euboian Greeks, who by later establishing Pithekoussai and Cumae, displaced Pontecagnano as the key nodes in the network. Such new dynamics did not mean that the Greeks dominated Campania, but by working as weak ties, they bridged the local clique of ties and connected them with the wider Mediterranean. Access to new ideas and technologies was a clear consequence of this network change. Pontecagnano and other settlements therefore acquired elements of the global culture which found their way into the so-called ‘princely’ tombs of central and southern Italy. Furthermore, I demonstrate that some areas of the region were not as isolated as previously argued, particularly the Oliveto-Cairano and Sarno Valley areas.

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