Communicating Identity in Italic Iron Age Communities

The volume explores the many and much varied identities of the Italic peoples of the Iron Age, and how specific objects, places and ideas might have been involved in generating, mediating and communicating these identities. The term 'identity' here covers both the personal identities of the individuals as well as the identities of groups on various levels (political, social, gender, ethnic, religious, etc.). The inhabitants of Iron Age Italy, just like modern-day human beings, did not possess a single, fixed identity. Identity is a product of how others have defined you as well as your own individual choice. It therefore fluctuates and may be negotiated, also because it is most often a way of self-definition either to promote the membership in a group, or to dissociate from another group. The papers in this volume, a result of a symposium, which took place on 22-23 October 2008 at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, discuss these multiple identities, and explore different types of evidence in order to provide answers to a range of questions on the issues raised.