The TCM Project. Interculturality and "Mediterranean-Centric" Perspective

The CNR's TCM project, in collaboration with Giuseppe Garbati, aims to: study "cultural identity", and examine the applicability of this concept to the Phoenician civilization in the Eastern and Western Mediterranean; also to investigate the processes of "interculturality", meeting, encountering and hybridization throughout the Mediterranean, from a pan-Mediterranean viewpoint. Moreover, since archeology usually "presumes" to throw light even on those dark corners of history where the light of written sources cannot penetrate, material culture is supposed to "talk" and thereby answer our questions about encounters and clashes between different ancient cultures and "identities". Therefore, in the search for interculturality processes, we can, for example, investigate material culture in order to recognize in a local repertoire the apparently "non-local" artefacts, and, more precisely, their "degree of foreignness". As objects always need to be set in their specific context of social action, so these specific contexts can be investigated especially at a local level and/or on a micro-regional scale. A "Mediterranean-centric" perspective, therefore, can arise from studies carried out on a regional scale. These theoretical perspectives, and their application to specific case studies, are central themes in the TCM project.