"Identità", incontri fra culture e prospettive plurilinguistiche nel Mediterraneo antico. Il progetto Transformation and Crisis in the Mediterranean

Developed in 2013 from the confluence of two different lines of research, the tcm project (Transformations and Crisis in the Mediterranean) has the main aim to investigate the forms and modalities in which a given community or social group creates its self-definition, the instruments it uses in its search for cohesion and stability, as well as the encounter and/or conflict with the “other”, during particular moments of crisis and transformation in the historical and cultural conditions. At the same time, the research wishes to offer some reflections on the methodology and analytical tools that can be utilized when engaging with such a topic, with specific reference to the concept and term “identity”, to its connotations and to its applicability to historical investigations. At the centre of the study are placed the peoples of the Levant during the late 2nd and the 1st millennium bce, including those – such as the socalled Phoinikes – who soon became protagonists in western Mediterranean history as well. The following notes, then, are addressed to discuss two of the main concepts and terms around which the research revolves: “identity” and “interculturality”