This volume represents the culmination of decades of work on Aegean-style pottery in Italy by researchers connected to what is now called the Istituto di Studi sul Mediterraneo Antico at the CNR (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche) in Italy. Each of the volume's authors has written extensively on this topic from diverse angles in other publications, and here they pool their collective knowledge. More than anyone else, the main authors and other contributors to the volume are the people responsible for transforming our knowledge of Aegean materials in Italy and guiding how we think about their significance, so the book is much anticipated. The resulting work is remarkably coherent and unified in vision. In bringing together disparate information from sometimes difficult-to-find publications, as well as presenting new data and analyses—all in perfect English—the book will be a terrific resource to prehistorians of Italy and of interest to scholars of the Bronze Age Mediterranean and of ancient technologies more generally.
While some attention is given to local ceramic industries, the volume's value is as the most up-to-date comprehensive study of Aegean style pottery in Italy, including those pieces that were made in Greece and imported, and those made in the Aegean style, or using Aegean technologies, on Italian soil. The volume covers some seven centuries, corresponding to LH I–LH IIIC in the Aegean chronology and the Middle to Final Bronze Ages in the Italian chronology. Geographically, it encompasses the Italian peninsula and the islands. It comprises straightforward documentation of finds as well as consideration of what these finds tell us about contacts between the Aegean and Italy. The archaeometric analyses to determine the provenance of the sherds are central to the programme. In the decades since the project's inception characterisation studies have established not only which pots were imports or not, but also moved towards pinpointing their provenance in Italy by region and in some cases by individual sites. It is because of this work that we now understand just how region-specific the cultural contact experience must have been and, to some extent, the movements of goods within Italy. The researchers also have analysed the hybrid products emerging in southern Italy such as the Grey wares and large storage jars (dolia). Here we have all these analyses in one place, plus new work too.
After Chapter 1's introduction to the research programme and its evolution over several decades, Chapter 2 provides a gazetteer of sites yielding Aegean style pottery in Italy. This is not the first such list, but this one supersedes any earlier ones as it contains the most recent discoveries. Sites are listed by number on the accompanying map and alphabetically, making for easy cross-referencing. The reader can then locate these sites more precisely on the regional geological maps of Chapter 4. In the gazetteer entries, the actual numbers of sherds are provided when known. These sherd numbers would mean more if given in relation to the quantities of ceramics of other kinds in the same levels, but such ratios are still rare in excavation reports.
A key goal in the studies of Aegean pottery in Italy has been to sync the established Aegean chronology with the native Italian one. Chapter 3 brings this work up to date, comparing Italian pots with Aegean ones in stratigraphic context at the better-excavated sites in Italy and, in a few cases, the Aegean. What becomes clear from Bettelli and Alberti's careful work is the site-specific nature of the Italian craft industries, which renders this task extremely complex. The native pottery (and metalworking) industries have local variations and chronologies, meaning that precise crossdating is rarely, and may never be, possible.
At over 250 pages, Chapter 4 is the heart of the book, presenting the pottery characterisation studies that have largely driven the research. Unsurprising for such a long-term project, the methods have evolved due to circumstance and research agendas. Here, the results of the AAS, INAA and ICP-ES work are brought together and compared, with frank assessments of the drawbacks and advantages of each (the book's appendices provide the raw chemical-composition data). There is far more exciting information in this chapter than I can even begin to summarise here. One example of novel information concerns regional production centres. Besides the better-known case of southern Italy, chemical characterisation demonstrates that Latium, Marche and the Po were all producing their own Aegean-style pots, in the near absence of any actual imports. This is unexpected indeed.
Chapter 5 tackles another question regarding Aegean-style pots in Italy: how they were made, particularly throwing and firing technologies. Of interest is the interplay between indigenous and Aegean production techniques and what that reveals about communities of practice in Bronze Age Italy. The authors of this section distinguish between fully wheel-thrown pots and wheel-shaped ones, which were hand-built and then finished on the wheel. The summary of the significance of the manufacturing techniques is brief, with fuller discussion reserved for the end of the volume. An expanded discussion here would have been useful, however, lest scholars interested in ceramic technology read only this chapter.
The results and significance of the research project are summed up in Chapter 6. In some cases, this constitutes a quantification of known trends, such as the progressive shift in proportions of imported to Italo-Mycenaean pots over time. It is helpful to have the actual numbers for that shift. In other cases, the conclusions reveal interesting new patterns, such as the high percentage of Mycenaean imports originating in the Peloponnese during all periods: fully 79 per cent of the imported Mycenaean pots whose origin is known come from that region. The differences in vessel function between imports and locally made Mycenaean pots are revealing too. While tablewares are common among imports and local products alike, the frequency of storage and transport vessels is higher among the imports than the Italo-Mycenaean wares. This would seem to confirm that the contents of the pots were central in these long-distance exchanges, not (or not only) the pots themselves. Also included in Chapter 6 is a typology of vessel form and decoration of the Italo-Mycenaean wares, which will be useful for excavators of Italian sites wishing to classify their finds according to local comparanda.
The ‘Implications’ section (6.3) presents the current narrative of Aegean-Italian interactions in the Bronze Age, for the most part without explicitly incorporating the findings presented earlier in the book; it would almost have served better as an historical background section in Chapter 1. It is a complex story to tell given the extreme regional variation: there are few generalisations one can make. One point that comes through, however, is that technology transfer is crucial to all assessments of the extent of the interactions between these groups. At some sites, such as Roca Vecchia, there must have been sustained interaction with Aegean potters to replicate the firing techniques so faithfully: the Italo-Mycenaean wares could not have been made from simply looking at an import. This convinces me that at that site the interactions went far beyond a quick exchange of goods and then back in the boat.
The authors have been so successful in their characterisation of a prodigious sample of the wares on Italian soil, that in terms of future research (section 6.4), they note that what is really needed now is more precise chemical characterisation coming out of the Aegean itself. This would allow for the tracking of connections between individual Greek communities and their central Mediterranean counterparts: thus, which sites in the Peloponnese are the materials coming from? That level of geographical precision would transform our studies of Bronze Age exchange, elucidating further the role of the Mycenaean palaces and the structure and scale of these enterprises.
