The Economic Contribution of Migrants to Ancient Societies. Technological Transfer, Integration, Exploitation and Interaction of Economic Mentalities

Archaeological studies on migrants usually focus on their role in production activities, either as part of the labour force, or as specialized craftsmen dependent on local entrepreneurs, families or public institutions. This book aims to overcome this unidirectional discourse on dependency and to propose an alternative approach, examining migrants as actors in the economic life of ancient societies. The economic dimension of migration is thus analysed as part of the complex dynamics of integration and segregation in local communities. Migrants are considered as consumers, cultural mediators, social climbers, promoters of different lifestyles, and as ‘triggers’ for innovation. The papers in this volume suggest new methodologies and interpretative paths, dealing with a wide spectrum of case studies from the Middle Kingdom Egypt to the Bronze and Iron Age of the western Mediterranean, from Classical Greece to Hellenistic Etruria, concluding with the Przeworsk Culture of Pannonia. Overcoming the binary oppositions usually set up between colonists and indigenous peoples, locals and incomers, this book points out how economic mentalities are part of a greater entanglement of personal, social and economic identities.