Questioning Islands, Islanders and Insularity in the Mediterranean Longue Durée: Some views from the island of Gavdos (Crete, Greece)

Abstract

Τhe geological history of the island topoi started in the interior of the primordial sea of our planet hundreds of millions of years ago, an immensely long time before the appearance of humans. Evidence of hominid-“islanders”, and, consequently, their age-old sea crossings, is today being traced deeper and deeper in Palaeolithic stratigraphies. Written forms of the concept of islands exist in early scripts and, with consistency, later in Homer, in ancient literature and in other accounts. Research on islands was established in the 19th and early 20th centuries in major works by authors such as Darwin and Malinowski. But, despite such initial or “proto” activity, how much has our modern synthesis of knowledge and interdisciplinary understanding of islands and islanders – and their territories and seas, identities and behaviours – progressed? What makes us keep wondering about natural and human-made material and symbolic islandscapes, and their potential similarities and distinctions from non-insular worlds? Following on from previous reflections about the work of the University of Crete’s Island Interdisciplinary Workshop that mainly derive from our archaeological and interdisciplinary study of the island of Gavdos, off the southwestern shore of Crete, I shall try to suggest a relevant methodological framework by summarising a number of insular issues in a diachronic Aegean and Mediterranean perspective.