Migration, mobility and place in ancient Italy

Migration, Mobility and Place' in Ancient Italy challenges prevailing conceptions of a natural tie to the land and a demographically settled world. It argues that much human mobility in the last millennium BC was ongoing and cyclical. In particular, outside the military context "the foreigner in our midst" was not regarded as a problem. Boundaries of status rather than of geopolitics were those difficult to cross. The book discusses the stories of individuals and migrant groups, traders, refugees, expulsions, the founding and demolition of sites, and the political processes that could both encourage and discourage the transfer of people from one place to another. In so doing it highlights moments of change in the concepts of mobility and the definitions of those on the move. By providing the long view from history, it exposes how fleeting are the conventions that take shape here and now.

Introduction -- Statistical uncertainties: mobility in the last 250 years BC -- Routeways, kinship and storytelling -- Mixed communities: mobility, connectivity and co-presence -- Why choose to come together and move apart? Convergence and redistribution of people and power -- Plautus on mobility of the every-day -- Polybius on mobility and a comedy of the Hostage Prince -- Polybius on the moving masses and those who moved them -- Social war: reconciling differences of place and citizenship -- Mapping the moving Rome of Livy's Camillus speech -- Materialising Rome and Patria -- Conclusion: everyday and unpredictable mobility.