Preface: The PRIN2017 “Peoples of the Middle Sea” Project: innovations and inventions to chart the paths of integration of mediterranean cultures

Abstract

For more than four years (2020-2024), during the corona virus pandemic, the Project PRIN2017 “Peoples of the Middle Sea. Innovation and Integration in Ancient Mediterranean”, carried out by about sixty researchers distributed in four research units,
pursued the main objective of studying the formation of Mediterranean civilization, between 1600 and 500 BC, from the Levant to the Iberian Peninsula. The fil rouge of the research was to follow the formation and dissemination of the main inventions and innovations as elements capable of revealing contacts, exchanges, contaminations and transformations that are not known or only partially known.