material Culture 289New production methods led to specializing locales. That metallurgy was a
noticeable feature of the later Greco–Roman insular Mediterranean may not have
been just a coincidence of convenient locations to network raw materials (such as fuel
for smelting) but a consequence of knowledge transfer between kin–groups and fam-
ilies and their undoubted protectiveness of their secret arts. The Amarna letters of
mid-fourteenth century bCe Cyprus attest to the deep anxiety that ensued after all the
copper workers of the kingdom were killed (Knapp et al., 2001: 204). Cypriot copper
miners and workers were relied upon right into the Roman period. But locales of min-
ing and ore dressing also expanded and shifted in the Roman Mediterranean as the
need for copper (and silver) for the working person’s currency grew. These were
technology-based object cultures in places where old sources became commercially
(re-)exploitable with the application of quintessentially Roman technology such as
hydraulic engineering, as was strikingly evident at the Rio Tinto mines in Huelva,
southern Spain (Jones, 1980: 156–158). The clinker-built settlements of these miners
stretch back to the period of Punic exploitation and further highlight how historical
industry and material culture must be viewed together.
If the implications of archeometallurgical evidence were brought to bear on
mainstream debates about the Mediterranean they would go some way in answering
questions on the ancient Mediterranean’s connectedness and interdependence that
have hitherto been too reliant on the evidence of foodstuffs and ceramics for their
answers. What the prehistoric and ancient copper industries help us to understand
is the way in which we can better study production and producers as well as the
products. This is a useful way to understand Mediterranean material culture because
it addresses the historical reality of the sources, and obviates the need for layers of
often mystifying notions such as Orientalism, that privilege modern ideas of artistic
style over substance.Medieval and early modern things: silk and Cosimo’s breeches
Medieval and early modern evidence for material culture brings texts and artifacts
face-to-face. Inventories and travel literature, grave goods and treasuries provide his-
torians with a richness and variety of information that conveys color, texture, shape
and sometimes weight and value for societies across the post-Roman Mediterranean.
The documentary reconstruction of historical commerce and commodities also
affords an opportunity to consider what value past societies placed on certain types of
objects and materials. Copper and bronze ran through the veins of most Mediterranean
communities well into late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, as they remained the
preferred currency of working people. Copper and its alloys were responsible for a
new auditory heritage in the medieval Mediterranean, the bell. Campanilismo—the
erection of bell towers—is synonymous with increasing parochialism and the shift in
power to city-based rich and aristocratic families across the Italian peninsula from the
ninth century. The Marinelli bell foundry in Agnone in Molise, central Italy, contin-
ues a tradition of bell founding which started in 1040. But other materials have
diverted Mediterranean historians more than metals in this period. While ceramics
remain the workhorses of studies in the region’s medieval and early modern material
culture, particularly the transformation of fine wares by the late twelfth century with0002063960.INDD 289 2/17/2014 11:38:27 AM