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Welcome to the webpage of the Accordia Research Institute

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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. 

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

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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​​​​

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• Ruth Whitehouse published Writing Matters: Italy in the First Millennium BCE with Bloomsbury in 2024.
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• 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

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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.

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Accordia Anniversary Lecture

Tuesday, December 2, 17.30​

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Joint Lecture with the Institute of Classical Studies

Room 264, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1

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Italy, Africa and the Central Mediterranean: changing perspectives on the 1st millennium BCE

David Mattingly, University of Leicester

 

The conventional picture of the central Mediterranean lands of Italy and North Africa in Late Prehistory tends to draw a sharp contrast between the two. Italy and its related islands are recognoised to have been on a sharply rising trajectory of societal developments encompassing agriculture, urbanism, state formation, advanced metallurgy, long range cultural and economic contacts, written language and so forth. By contrast, North Africa has often been viewed as a desert land thinly occupied by nomadic peoples still utilising essentially stone age technologies prior to the initiation of Phoenician and Greek trading contacts and colonial settlement. Furthermore, long-enduring colonialist assumptions have led to key developmentssuch as agriculture and urbanism in North Africa being solely attributed to these external actors, with the local populations denied active agency. A major problem in moving debate forward has been the dearth of archaeological evidence relating to many of these issues in North Africa. The lecture will review recent work relating to the lacunae from two directions, considering both new developments in North African prehistory on the one hand and on the other reflecting on the question from the perspective of what we know of the Roman era that followed. In combination, these approaches build a picture of a more dynamic African Iron Age, where local agency played a considerable part in the cultural complexity that had emerged by the time of the Roman conquests and continued to inform many aspects of life under Roman rule.

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Iron Age Hilltop Settlement in Morocco

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Early Career Lectures

Tuesday, November 18, 17.30​

Online, via Zoom

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The Deposition of Architectural Terracottas from Archaic Central Italy (c.580–480 BC):

interrogating religious value by re-evaluating stratigraphy

Allia Benner, University of Oxford

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Territory in Practice: the potential of craft production studies in ancient Etruria

Anna Soifer, University of Puget Sound 

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