Migration, Mobility and Place in Ancient Italy

Migration, Mobility and Place in Ancient Italy challenges prevailing conceptions of a natural tie to the land and a demographically settled world. It argues that much human mobility in the last millennium BC was ongoing and cyclical. In particular, outside the military context 'the foreigner in our midst' was not regarded as a problem. Boundaries of status rather than of geopolitics were those difficult to cross. The book discusses the stories of individuals and migrant groups, traders, refugees, expulsions, the founding and demolition of sites, and the political processes that could both encourage and discourage the transfer of people from one place to another. In so doing it highlights moments of change in the concepts of mobility and the definitions of those on the move. By providing the long view from history, it exposes how fleeting are the conventions that take shape here and now.

Elena Isayev is Associate Professor of Ancient History at the University of Exeter. She is the author of Inside Ancient Lucania: Dialogues in History and Archaeology (2007) and co-editor of Ancient Italy: Regions without Boundaries (with G. Bradley and C. Riva, 2007). In support of her research into ancient mobility she has held the Davis Fellowship at Princeton University, New Jersey and for her current work on hospitality and asylum she has been awarded a Historical Research Centre Fellowship at the Australian National University, Canberra. She also works in current refugee contexts, including with Campus in Camps in Palestine, and has created the initiative Future Memory which works with communities where there are tensions.