Negotiated Peripheries: Social Complexity, Landscape and Place in Ancient Attica

The question of core vs periphery has been intensely debated in the social sciences and the humanities since the 1970s, following the publication of Wallerstein's (1974) seminal study on World Systems--a cornerstone of contemporary thinking about the global. The project focuses on an ancient settlement distant enough from the larger centers of its time to classify as a liminal frontier or 'periphery,' but suggested by tantalizing initial finds to have constituted a semi-core of its own right. The project aims to elucidate processes by which ancient Aphidna emerged as a significant site in complex society of Middle and Late Bronze Age Greece (2000--1100 BCE); explore its political integration into Archaic and Classical Athens as 'frontier' and its possible links with other liminal sites in the region (from 800 BCE); and understand its transmutations as rural countryside of Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Athens (from 100 BCE).