The temporal focus of the present volume lies predominantly between c.1100 and c.600 BCE. In the chronologies of the disciplines of Near Eastern Archaeology and Greek Archaeology, this period is known as the Iron Age. This chapter explores the relationship between this absolute date range and its descriptor. In addressing when the Iron Age begins and ends, it also considers who the protagonists of this era are, and how have we identified them as such. None of these topics is straight-forward, however.

I began this book by noting how the term ‘late antiquity’ has a polemical and persuasive force, which has been used by scholars not just to extend the boundaries of what is understood by the antiquity of Greco-Roman culture, temporally, spatially and linguistically, but also to open a debate about how tradition is to be conceptualized – a debate that necessarily invokes notions of self-placement and historical self-understanding for both ancient and modern writers. This book’s partial account of literary form across a long period from Augustus to tenth-century Byzantium has traced – performed – a contribution to this continuing narrative that explores what we understand by antiquity.

One of the most dramatic features of our connected Mediterranean Iron Age period is the use of writing by many of the populations across the sea with alphabets of a common origin. This is the first such occurrence in Mediterranean history. The mechanisms by which this happened, where and when have been the subject of considerable debate, given the particularly patchy nature of the evidence of writing during this period. Our preserved examples are on very durable materials, such as ceramic, stone or metal, although much more was likely written on perishable media, such as papyrus and parchment, which simply have not survived.

To understand the nature of interconnections between people in dispersed places, we must first consider by what means such groups maintain those connections. This is what underpins globalisation processes in a globalising world. Indeed, in modern discourse, globalisation is often regarded initially and predominantly as of an economic nature, from which other forms of connectivity develop, including socio-cultural ones. The foundations of the intensive and widespread interconnectivities we see developing over the Mediterranean Iron Age have their origins in the exchange of objects. This is an economy of both things and ideas, however, since the use of objects in new contexts may well differ from how such items were used in their context of origin. Understanding both their common appeal and transnationalised uses together enables us to consider globalisation in action.

This volume has focused on certain features – materials exchanged, urban development, the use of writing – because these have been the emphasis of much archaeological research on this period to date, especially with regard to comparative Mediterranean Iron Age colonisation studies. Other aspects could have been examined, such as religion, technology, wealth or identities, aspects that are also of considerable interest to scholarship of this period. These aspects cannot be divorced from an interpretation that incorporates knowledge and understanding of the role Phoenicians and Greeks played in creating such a connected Mediterranean (and the Etruscans, to a more limited extent). Yet in order to demonstrate how globalisation thinking can provide a fresh means of reconsideration of not only the movement of people, but also the impact such movements had on others, it has been necessary to begin with an assessment of where we have come from in our interpretations. For this reason, this volume has emphasised those well-known, perhaps obvious, features of study to demonstrate more clearly and explicitly the utility of a globalisation perspective. As a result, a starting point from which to assess additional aspects has now been established.

The Mediterranean is both simple and challenging to define. It is an inland sea where the continents of Europe, Asia and Africa meet (Figure 1.1). It is bounded by a coastline that extends from the shores of modern day Syria, Lebanon and Israel in the east to Morocco and Gibraltar in the west, and it is ringed by mountains for much of its perimeter. This is particularly true along its northern edge, where the environment mutates between high, wide mountainous ranges, fertile upland plateaux, and lower-lying plains. Along its southern littoral, there are sharply defined landscapes of fecund hinterlands and desert expanses. The sea itself is often considered an open, uniform expanse between landfalls that is described by its surface conditions, currents and wind patterns. Its islands may be regarded as stepping stones across the expanse of water and, indeed, have been used by people in this way throughout its inhabited history. Collectively, these present a kind of unification to the definition of what the Mediterranean is. But such a singular conceptualisation can break down when one recognises that the Mediterranean comprises the sum of many seas, such as the Aegean, Adriatic and Tyrrhenian, each of which possesses its own character, and as a result requires its own distinctive navigation methods and sailing crafts.