Myths of Migration

The formation of collective identities - of communities and states in particular - remains a tense issue into the present day. How did the new communities formed in the period of migration come to define themselves as Greek?

It has often been assumed that ‘Greekness’ of new settlements was the automatic result of communities being founded by Greek people, bringing Greek culture with them when they migrated out of the Greek heartland in the Aegean. Yet Greek migrants settled in some new settlements that never adopted a Greek civic identity (e.g. Sardinia), and both locals and non-Greek migrants were present at many new settlements that did (e.g. Calabria, Ionia). The simple fact of long-distance migration around the time of foundation cannot, therefore, have been the sole factor determining which communities became Greek. What other factors were at play? Did these factors vary between communities and regions? How and why was a sense of collective Greekness constructed in different places, and how did this change over time? How did community identity develop differently in different parts of the Greek world - whether at its ‘core’ in the Aegean, or in ‘peripheries’ elsewhere?

MIGMAG explores the construction of civic identity at new settlements in the generations and centuries after their establishment, examining claims made by and for these settlements about origins, kinship, and identity (Work Package 3). To do this, it will focus on myths of foundation and origin told for communities in the following case study regions:

• Magna Graecia

• Anatolia

• Central Greece