Archaeology in Sardinia and South Italy, 1983–88

Abstract

INTRODUCTION The two sections of this report have not been combined before in AR. In compiling them, I have been acutely aware that it would have been possible and probably easier to devote the space I have for six years' work in two areas to every year in each area. I have, to put it mildly, been highly selective; and where selection is the result of human frailty, whether my own or that of others, I have not hesitated to bow to the inevitable. The two treatments I have prepared below are very different in character. SARDINIA is still essentially terra incognita to all but the most enterprising classical archaeologists. I have therefore paid particular attention to recent advances that illustrate the island's crucial role in episodes hitherto regarded as the exclusive preserve of Aegean specialists—notably the activities of the Bronze Age entrepreneurs from Cyprus and the Levant who (I believe) paved the way for the first Western Greeks of the 8th century. Greek SOUTH ITALY, on the other hand, has long been basically familiar in the outside world—and is more so now than it was when Professor Trendall inaugurated these Reports a generation ago. Accordingly, in the reduced space that I have allowed myself for the flourishing classical scene in Campania, Apulia, Basilicata and Calabria, I have usually refrained from summarizing information that is already published: abstracts can never be a substitute for the real thing, and least of all for scholars and students whose institutions (particularly in Britain) can no longer afford to subscribe to even the main journals. Where I have had a choice, I have opted for news of projects that illustrate the methodological kinship that is increasingly being sought between classical and non-classical archaeology: hence the pictures of urban rescue in Naples and notes on field survey around Croton.