Socioeconomic relations and identities in the Southeastern Adriatic Iron Age

Abstract

The focus of this paper is on the connections between socioeconomic relations and collective identities in the Late Iron Age communities from the Southeastern Adriatic and its hinterland. The aim is to draw attention to different perceptions of collective identity in the distant past, in contrast to the traditional view that typically focuses on ethnicity as the main expression of identity in the Late Iron Age Southeastern Adriatic. This interpretation is based on a constructivist approach to culture and on a re-evaluation of archaeological records that are significantly marked with imported artefacts, which remarkably highlight socioeconomic interactions from the past.
By correlating archaeological data and previously proposed theoretical concepts, it will be concluded that the conceptions of collective identities in this particular social context in the past were considerably embedded in socioeconomic relations. Such conceptions, partly understood through various social practices including the consumption of material culture, were significantly articulated through socioeconomic interactions (e.g., warfare, habitation, goods exchange) rather than through notions of ethnic distinctions between individuals and groups in the past.