British Academy: The UK's National Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences
An island in the stream: global perspectives on cultural environments and networks from the Greek archipelago
Dr Cyprian Broodbank (Institute of Archaeology, UCL) on behalf of the British School at Athens
(Dr Broodbank was unable to present his contribution to the conference but we are pleased to show his intended summary here. His place on the day was taken by Professor Catherine Morgan, Director of the British School at Athens.)
Islands, as environments with finite resources but potentially infinite linkages to lands and seas beyond, are metaphors for our planet’s condition; interdisciplinary research by Kythera Island Project investigates one Aegean island from the Neolithic up to the present.
This project was sponsored by the Greek Ministry of Culture and Archaeological Service. The British School at Athens and the Institute of Archaeology, University College London were organisational co-sponsors. Other funding was provided by Arts and Humanities Research Board; British Academy; Cambridge University, Faculty of Classics; Institute for Aegean Prehistory; Leverhulme Trust; Mediterranean Archaeological Trust; National Geographic Society; Society of Antiquaries; University College London, Graduate School.
For further information, visit: www.ucl.ac.uk/kip; www.bsa.ac.uk
Summary
From Plato’s Atlantis, via Prospero’s cell and Darwin’s Galapagos, to comparisons between Polynesian voyaging and modelling of inter-planetary colonisation, islands have played a key role in humanity’s attempts to understand itself and the universe around it. As 
environments with finite dimensions but potentially infinite overseas contacts, islands provide insights of exceptional clarity into howpeople fashion local identities, how they create a place in the wider world, and how that world impacts on them, both in war and peace. External networks are crucial to island life, and enable developments far beyond the limited resources of the island itself. Islands, in short, are microcosms of our world and the challenges and opportunities that it faces today.
Mediterranean islands are enmeshed in Europe’s present: frequently degraded by mass tourism, vulnerable to global warming and on the front line of the critical interface with north Africa. But the fundamental reason to explore the deeper past of these, rather than other, islands is their unique wealth of information, derived from archaeological work that has illuminated millennia of island life, written sources spanning Herodotus to the archives of Venice and beyond, and a vast range of scientific analysis. Since 1998, Kythera Island Project has developed an holistic approach to the long-term dynamics of one paradigmatic Aegean stepping-stone island. This interdisciplinary venture involves international scholars and funding, and aims to draw out recurrent themes in Kythera’s 7500-year history that are of wider significance for our knowledge of islands and hence ourselves.
Other contributors
Dr Evangelia Kiriatzi, British School at Athens (co-director)