Home | Accordia Research Institute, London

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.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

News and Recent Publications

We are pleased to announce the creation of a new prize for the best paper in the Early Career Talks series. The winner will be chosen by an Accordia committee and the prize will consist of 10 Accordia books of the winner’s choice. We are happy to share that Giacomo Fontana (now of Texas Tech University) is the winner for 2023-2024 for his talk on ‘Empty hillforts: challenging narratives on Samnite society beyond urban-centric views’. Congratulations, Giacomo!

The Accordia Research Papers 16 (2019-2023) was published in summer 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.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Accordia Events 2024-2025

The full programme for this year's Accordia Lectures can be found here. This year we are continuing with in person lectures, held either at the Senate House or the Institute of Archaeology in Gordon Square.

The second series of Early Career Researcher seminars organised in conjunction with the University of Nottingham is held on Zoom.

Accordia Lecture

Tuesday, February 18, 17.30

Joint Lecture with the Institute of Archaeology

Room 209, 31-34 Gordon Square, London WC1

Island Archaeology revisited: social and critical perspectives from the small Mediterranean islands 25 years on

Helen Dawson, University of Tubingen

While islands have long been a focus in ecology and anthropology, Island Studies as a distinct academic field has only taken shape in the past 25 years. The establishment of ISISA (International Small Islands Studies Association) in the early 1990s and SICRI (Small Island Cultures Research Initiative) in 2005 laid the foundation, followed by key academic journals such as the Island Studies Journal (2006), Shima (2007), the Journal of Marine and Island Cultures (2012), and more recently the Okinawan Journal of Island Studies (2020). In 2005, The Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology firmly established the study of islands within archaeology. On a personal note, it is also 25 years since I began my PhD in island archaeology at the UCL Institute of Archaeology. This milestone prompts two existential questions: (1) How has island archaeology evolved over the past 25 years? and (2) Are its premises and aims still relevant? Mediterranean archaeologists have yet to engage with social and critical perspectives as deeply as their counterparts working in the Pacific and Caribbean islands. This is unsurprising, given that Mediterranean island communities have experienced colonialism to a much lesser extent. Yet, decolonisation remains crucial also in the Mediterranean, not in the same urgent terms as elsewhere, but in amplifying islander voices, challenging their imposed subalternity and addressing the persistent mainlander bias in historical narratives, which continue to treat islands as “laboratories”. This paper will refer to key findings from my research on the colonisation and abandonment of the Mediterranean islands, with a focus on the smaller islands surrounding Sicily, advocating for a more engaged, critical, and socially relevant archaeology. Moving beyond essentialising tropes of islanders as either vulnerable or resilient, I propose alternative perspectives – ones that explore gender, status, and the complexities of island life in the past and present.

Accordia Early Career Talks

Tuesday, February 25, 2025 at 17:30 via Zoom

Urbanisation is a winding road: non-linear settlement development in Satricum during the first millennium BCE

Marcello de Vos, Sapienza University of Rome

and

Exploring Clays and Early Neolithic Pottery from the Maltese Islands

Emma Richard-Trémeau, University of Malta