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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​

 

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!

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  • 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.

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Accordia Events  2024-2025

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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.

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Accordia Lecture

Tuesday, February 4, 17.30​

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Joint Lecture with the Institute of Classical Studies

Room 261, Senate House, Mallet Street, London WC1

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The politics of death in prehistoric Italy

Jess Thompson and John Robb, University of Cambridge​

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Prehistoric politics is rarely addressed critically in archaeological discourse. When it is, it is often equated with the emergence of ranked hierarchies observed through differential burial treatment. The origins of such political structures are thus located late in the Bronze Age. The Neolithic, in contrast, is imagined as a period of over 2 millennia in which egalitarian village life was oriented around ritual events and ancestral veneration. Stuck in the middle, evidence for directional change must be found in the Copper Age, when metal weaponry, increased violence, and male ‘warriors’ are all frequently emphasised. Yet, burial treatment tells us very little about peoples’ lives: funerary treatment is a collective undertaking which may project ideal social norms, efface the identity of the dead, or transform their role.

The “Ancestors” Project has been testing alternative narratives of Italian prehistory by investigating the relationship between people’s lives and deaths by connecting osteobiography, genetics, and isotopic analysis with evidence for deathways. In this talk, we discuss the changing role of ancestors in prehistoric Italy by contrasting funerary landscapes at three moments: the Neolithic Tavoliere, the Copper Age of the Po Valley, and the Middle Bronze Age of Puglia.

 

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Accordia Early Career Talks 

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

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

Marcello de Vos, Sapienza University of Rome

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and

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Exploring Clays and Early Neolithic Pottery from the Maltese Islands

Emma Richard-Trémeau, University of Malta

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Saccoccio&Vecchi_Ethnicity.jpg
ARP16coverfrontonly.jpeg
Reconstruction of ancestral rites at Masseria Candelaro in the Neolithic Tavoliere
Thompson&Robb.jpg
 © Accordia Research Institute 2025
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