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Preface
- University of Michigan Press
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Preface This book grew out of my doctoral thesis, which was completed at the University of Cambridge in 2007. I had initially set out to explore the fluid ethnicities of western Anatolia during the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages, but I quickly realized that groups in this area did not define themselves primarily in ethnic terms. Instead, they seemed to come together around a more geographically focused form of identity. At the time, the concept of community identity had not been extensively explored in archaeology , so my thesis drew heavily from research in social theory, anthropology , and social psychology, as well as from the excellent work that had already been done on the archaeology of communities. But many of the ideas in this book only really came together after I finished my doctorate and gained some exposure to policy research on ethnic diversity and contemporary conflicts. I realized that our current notions of the community are highly charged: social cohesion, local empowerment, and civil society have all become standard terms in the political vocabulary of the twenty-first century. In a globalized yet fragmented world, there is more need than ever to understand the dynamics of group solidarity and collective identities. Therefore, while this book is certainly based on my PhD thesis, it also represents a significant development in its own right in that it attempts to address the concept of community identity directly. I am extremely grateful to the many people who have helped me over the years with both the thesis and the book. I owe my greatest debt to Robin Osborne, my doctoral supervisor, whose wisdom and patience have been unfailing. I also thank Lucilla Burn, Anastasia Christophilopoulou , Fulya Dedeoglu, Lisa French, Claudia Glatz, David Hawkins, Erim Konakci, Roger Matthews, Sara Owen, Laura Preston, Nicholas Postgate, John Robb, Emre Serifoglu, and Todd Whitelaw for sharing their ideas and expertise and for discussing this project with me at various stages along the way. Many thanks are due to the past and present staff of the British Institute at Ankara, without whom much of the practical work undertaken for my doctorate would not have been possible, including Gina Coulthard, Hugh Elton, Yaprak Eran, Gülgün Girdivan, Burcak Ögretmen, and Andrew Peacock. The British Institute has granted permission to reproduce several images in this book, and for that I am extremely grateful. I am also obliged to Martha Sharp Joukowsky for her permission to print images from her publication of the Aphrodisias excavations and to Chris Ratté for his photograph of the stadium at Aphrodisias used on the front jacket. Access to the excavated material from Beycesultan was granted by the Turkish Ministry of Culture and facilitated by Hüseyn Baysal and Salim Ugulmar of the Denizli Provincial Museum . Bert Smith and Christopher Ratté kindly allowed me to examine the Aphrodisias material, and I am grateful to all the staff from both the Aphrodisias excavations and the Denizli Museum for all their help and friendliness. I thank Ian Caroll, Anne Taylor, and Nicholas Postgate for allowing me to view other ceramic collections for comparative purposes. I am grateful for doctoral funding received from the United Kingdom’s Arts and Humanities Research Council and for additional financial support from King’s College and the Faculty of Classics at the University of Cambridge. Thanks are also due to the staff of the University of Michigan Press, in particular to my editor Ellen Bauerle, whose encouragement and advice have been invaluable. I am also grateful to the two anonymous reviewers for their many helpful comments. Finally, I want to thank my family and friends for their love and support over the years, through the tough times as well as the good. I owe a special debt to my parents and my sister and to John. This book and the thesis before it could not have been written without them. viii preface ...