Islandscapes under question : the Maltese Archipelago, Pantelleria and Marettimo and their contexts in classical antiquity

Abstract

During the last two decades, three new concepts were introduced in the field of maritime archaeology, and in maritime history as a whole. The first was that of “Maritime Cultural Landscape” defined as the “whole network of sailing routes, old as well as new, with ports and harbours along the coast, and its related constructions and remains of human activity, underwater as well as terrestrial” (Westerdhal 1992: 6). It opposed Natural Landscape (i.e. geo-biological determinisms) and Cultural Landscape (human impact) and reached a fair success in the following years among many scholars (Parker 1999). It quickly led to the specialization of the notion of Landscape as to indicate natural landscape, as opposed to other particular, mainly cultural, landscapes (Gosden & Head 1994). The concept of “Seascape” (Gosden & Pavlides 1994) was thus applied to islands considered as lands partially determined by the sea, in a balanced view of the complementary impacts of Man and Nature. Increased interest in Island Archaeology, especially among prehistorians, led many to consider islands as a world per se and insularity as a sufficient common feature. In other words, the implicit premise of island archaeology was “that insular human societies show intrinsic characteristics essentially dissimilar from those on mainlands” (Boomert & Bright 2007: 3). In 1996, a dissertation about Archaeology of the Early Cyclades, published four years later (Broodbank 2000) introduced the notion of “Islandscape”, which focused on the Islands, especially under the cultural aspect of maritime connectivity, a concept made essential by recent research in the history of the classical Mediterranean as a whole (Horden & Purcell 2000). Despite a good reception, contained in the first reviews of the book, the concept of “Islandscape” encountered scepticism and was put under discussion (Tartaron 2001).