Trans-Adriatic Dynamics. Late Bronze to Early Iron Age Matt-Painted Pottery in the Southwestern Balkans and Southern Italy

The present issue of Studia Hercynia, Trans-Adriatic Dynamics: Late Bronze to Early Iron Age Matt-Painted Pottery in the Southwestern Balkans and Southern Italy, brings together a series of studies that emerged from the session held at the annual meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists in 2024 in Rome. The aim of that session was to reassess a ceramic tradition that, although highly visible across several regions of the Adriatic and its hinterlands, has rarely been considered as a coherent phenomenon. Connections between the traditions on both sides of the Adriatic have been mentioned several times in literature since at least the 1970ies, based on similar painted motifs (e.g. Kilian 1976), but never systematically explored. The last comprehensive treatments of the materials from the Northwest Aegean and Southwestern Balkans (Horejs 2007, 218–286) dates back almost twenty years, while for Southern Italy it is necessary to go back more than thirty years (Yntema 1990; but see also De Juliis – Galeandro – Palmentola 2006). Since that time both field research and analytical approaches have advanced to various degrees and material from numerous new sites is now available across the entire region. Developments on the Western side of the Adriatic – especially in southern Italy – have yielded significant new evidence and have prompted a fresh evaluation of long-held assumptions regarding interaction, mobility, and the transfer of knowledge during the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages.