ACCORDIA RESEARCH INSTITUTE
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 2022-2023 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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Recent Publications
New Publication: special offer available until November 30th, 2022
Who do you think you are? Ethnicity in the Iron Age Mediterranean. 2022. Edited by Fabio Saccoccio and Elisa Vecchi
Recently Published
Neolithic Spaces (two volumes). 2020. Sue Hamilton and Ruth Whitehouse.
Etruscan Literacy in its Social Context. 2020. edited by Ruth Whitehouse
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The Accordia Lectures 2022-23
The full programme for this year's Accordia Lectures can be found here. This year we are welcoming a return to normality and reverting to face-to-face lectures. For logistical reasons we are not able to hold the lectures in hybrid format. I appreciate that this will be a disappointment to our friends oversees (and in the UK) who joined us via Zoom during the pandemic period – and we will miss you too. However, we plan to organise a few events exclusively via Zoom during the academic year and I will keep you informed as these plans develop.
Tuesday, March 28th, 17.30
Accordia Anniversary Lecture
Joint Lecture with the Institute of Classical Studies
Room G22/26 Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1
Mark Pearce, University of Nottingham
The Ötzi paradox: what does the Iceman tell us about the Copper Age of the southeastern Alps and northern Italy?
We know a lot about Ötzi, the mummy of an approximately 45-year-old male found at about 3210 m asl near the Tisenjoch (Giogo di Tisa) pass, close to the border between Austria and Italy, on 19 September 1991: what he ate, where he lived and how he died. It is arguably ‘the best-studied and most extensively published archaeological find assemblage ever’ (Pilø et al. 2022: 1). In this presentation I shall ask whether this treasure-store of information informs us about the Copper Age more generally, whether in the south-eastern Alps or northern Italy more widely.
Traditionally archaeologists have agreed that we talk
about groups, not individuals, but more recently some
scholars have argued for more focus on the individual.
I shall discuss the tension between the general and the
particular using Ötzi as a case study. I will ask whether
the Iceman can be said to be what ‘Microhistorians’
term a ‘normal exception’ (Grendi 1977: 512). I shall
give some examples of how prehistoric archaeologists
have extrapolated from what we know about Ötzi to
generalise about the past and ask how effective this
has been.
Edoardo Grendi 1977. Micro-analisi e storia sociale.
Quaderni storici 35 (2): 506-520.
Lars Pilø, Thomas Reitmaier, Andrea Fischer, James H.
Barrett & Atle Nesje 2022. Ötzi, 30 years on: A
reappraisal of the depositional and post-depositional
history of the find. The Holocene: online first.
