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Welcome to the webpage of the Accordia Research Institute

Accordia is a research institute in the University of London. It operates in association with the Institute of Archaeology, UCL and with the Institute of Classical Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London. It is dedicated to the promotion and co-ordination of research into all aspects of early Italy, from first settlement to the end of the pre-industrial period.

We organise lectures, research seminars, conferences and exhibitions on aspects of Italian archaeology and history, and publish a regular journal on the same theme; details of the 2024-2025 lecture series can be found here.

Accordia also has an extensive programme of research publications. We publish specialist volumes, seminars, conferences and excavation reports. Our policy is to encourage and support research into early Italy, especially by younger scholars, to get new work disseminated as rapidly as possible, and to improve access to recent and innovative research. We believe our books and our journal represent a valuable contribution to the development of the subject area. Accordia publishes its own Journal, the Accordia Research Papers.

We also run - or are associated with - a number of research and fieldwork projects based in Britain and in Italy.

Accordia operates on a voluntary, non-profit basis, supported by subscriptions and donations. Publications are self-financing. Everyone gives their services without payment.

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News and Recent Publications

Ruth Whitehouse published Writing Matters: Italy in the First Millennium BCE with Bloomsbury in 2024.
A new book edited by Fabio Saccoccio and Elisa Vecchi, entitled, Who do you think you are? Ethnicity in the Iron Age Mediterranean was released in 2022.

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Accordia Events 2025-2026

The full programme for this year's Accordia Lectures can be found here. As in previous years, lectures are held either at the Senate House or the Institute of Archaeology in Gordon Square. We are also very pleased that the third series of the Early Career talks will continue with two papers in each session, details can be found here.

Accordia Lecture

Tuesday, November 11, 17.30

Joint Lecture with the Institute of Classical Studies

Room 261, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1

All PaTHS Lead to the Pastures: investigating ancient droveways in central–southern Italy through landscape archaeology and geosciences

Francesca Romana Del Fattore, University of Newcastle

PaTHS – Pastoral Tracks Heading South: The Evolution of the Droveways (Tratturi) in Central–Southern Italy (Marie Skłodowska-Curie/EPSRC Post-Doctoral Fellow, Newcastle University) investigates the origins, development, and transformation of transhumance routes (tratturi) in Central–Southern Italy through an integrated archaeological, geoarchaeological, archival, and participatory approach. The project seeks to determine when medium- and long-distance pastoral routes first emerged in this region, and to understand how transhumant mobility has shaped Mediterranean landscapes over millennia through the continuous interaction of people, animals, and environments. Fieldwork in Abruzzo and Apulia (2024-2025) combined the systematic collection of sediment samples from targeted test excavations and stratigraphic units with micromorphological, LOI, XRF, and spherulite analyses. Preliminary results reveal possible localized signals of trampling and organic enrichment along selected pathways, demonstrating the potential of archaeopedological proxies to identify and characterise pastoral movement corridors. In parallel, a dedicated historical map archive and GIS infrastructure have been established to support least-cost path modelling and retrogressive landscape analysis. Fieldwork also led to the identification of a Neolithic high-altitude site at Civitella

Alfedena (~1000 m a.s.l.), marking early evidence for human

movement along the upperSangro corridor (5th–4th

millennium BCE). Community-based research, including oral

histories with memory-bearers, informs interpretation and

supports the development of VIAE (Valuable Itineraries Across

Europe), a transnational initiative to define shared European

guidelines for safeguarding pastoral routes.

The Carrino family’s flock during summer transhumance.

View across the Tavoliere plain from the Daunian

Sub-Apennines, June 2024