ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book analyses data at secondary level in a strongly historical and contextual framework covering a long timespan. It provides new specific and general models for understanding movement's role in the region, drawing on a variety of archaeological and anthropological approaches to the study of cultural and social connection and change. The book introduces the study's historiographical concerns and references in broader terms, helping to avoid repetition and providing a coherent set of evaluative arguments around this important aspect of the work. It suggests that while movement did often have deeply transformative effects in the Aegean and that some repeated patterns exist, the features of movement and its effects across the period studied are complex, deeply historically grounded and non-predictable.
