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 2026-2027 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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News and Recent Publications
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Accordia is happy to announce that the prize for the best Early Career Talk of the 2025-2026 year is Stefano Floris for his talk on ‘The tophet of Bithia (south Sardinia): new evidence from recent excavations’.
Congratulations, Stefano!
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Ruth Whitehouse published Writing Matters: Italy in the First Millennium BCE with Bloomsbury in 2024.
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Accordia Events 2026-2027
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 fourth series of the Early Career talks will also continue -details will be announced here soon.
Accordia Lecture
Tuesday, November 10, 17.30
Joint Lecture with the Institute of Classical Studies
Room 261, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1
Beyond the Maritime City: productive ecologies and territorial management in early Medieval Pisa
Marco Panato, University of Nottingham
Medieval Pisa is often approached through its maritime connections and the rise of its Mediterranean power. Yet its history unfolded within a diverse and changing hinterland, shaped by rivers, wetlands, woodland and cultivated land. Drawing primarily on archaeological and palaeoenvironmental evidence, alongside historical cartography and spatial analysis of more than 600 charters, this lecture examines how Pisa’s productive ecologies were exploited and reorganised between the sixth and eleventh centuries. Particular attention is given to vineyards, olive groves, woodland resources and the Arno–Serchio river systems. The contraction of Mediterranean imports from the later seventh century did not mark the end of economic activity, but coincided with changing patterns of local and regional exchange. I argue that the emergence of medieval Pisa cannot be understood through maritime connectivity alone: it must also be situated within the changing relationships between productive environments, landholding and resource management.
Leonardo Da Vinci, A Bird’s Eye View of Western Tuscany (c,1503–1504), Royal Collection Trust
Accordia Early Career Talks
Tuesday, October 20, 17:30 via Zoom
(organised jointly with Nottingham University)
The fibre revolution in Bronze Age (c. 2200-1200 BCE) Northern Italy
Maria Elena Bartoli, University of Glasgow
and
Small Islands, Shared Strategies? Zooarchaeological perspectives on insularity, connectivity and animal exploitation in Sicily and the circum-Sicilian islands
Vito Giuseppe Prillo, Institute for Anthropological Research, Zagreb & University of Padua
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