The archaeology of the Mediterranean region deals with Mediterranean and neighboring cultures, from the Minoan culture on Crete (3rdcentury BC) to the end of the (Western) Roman Empire (476 AD).
Within this broad geographical and chronological framework are two main concentrations. The first consists of the Dark Ages (from about 1050/1000 BC), Greek culture from the early formation of states, the transition from archaic aristocratic society to classical democracy, and the Hellenistic period. The second includes the centuries occupied by the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire.
A specific focus of the AMM section is the ancient Mediterranean and Black Sea colonization movement (11th-6thcentury BC) – which stretched from Spain to the Caucasus, and from southern Russian to Egypt – as well as the conquest of the eastern Mediterranean and Persian empires by Alexander the Great and the Diadochian empires (from Macedonia to the Seleucid empire in Bactria and the Ptolemaic empire in Egypt from the 4th-1stcentury BC), and the emergence and consolidation of the Imperium Romanum from the republican city-state (6thcentury BC) to the late Roman empire. Of particular interest here are the cultural encounters and contacts that arise in a variety of ways, as well as the historical aspects of research and reception.
