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Books > Arts & Architecture > History of art / art & design styles > BC to 500 CE, Ancient & classical world
In this study, Marcello Mogetta examines the origins and early dissemination of concrete technology in Roman Republican architecture. Framing the genesis of innovative building processes and techniques within the context of Rome's early expansion, he traces technological change in monumental construction in long-established urban centers and new Roman colonial cites founded in the 2nd century BCE in central Italy. Mogetta weaves together excavation data from both public monuments and private domestic architecture that have been previously studied in isolation. Highlighting the organization of the building industry, he also explores the political motivations and cultural aspirations of patrons of monumental architecture, reconstructing how they negotiated economic and logistical constraints by drawing from both local traditions and long-distance networks. By incorporating the available evidence into the development of concrete technology, Mogetta also demonstrates the contributions of anonymous builders and contractors, shining a light on their ability to exploit locally available resources.
A study of the material culture of Egypt during the period of Achaemenid Persian rule, c. 526-404 BCE Provides a clear overview of the archaeological evidence for Achaemenid Egypt, including temples, tombs, irrigation works, statues, stelae, seals and coins Demonstrates how different types of evidence, both textual and archaeological - including material of uncertain provenance - can be used to address a single historical question Offers critical discussion of the dating criteria used by archaeologists for Egyptian Late Period material Elucidates strategies used by the Persians to establish and maintain control of Egypt Examines how these strategies may have affected the lives of people living in Egypt during the 27th Dynasty Creates a new explanatory model for the introduction of coinage to ancient Egypt Previous studies have characterised Achaemenid rule of Egypt either as ephemeral and weak or oppressive and harsh. These characterisations, however, are based on the perceived lack of evidence for this period, filtered through ancient and modern preconceptions about the Persians. Henry Colburn challenges these views by assembling and analyzing the archaeological remains from this period, including temples, tombs, irrigation works, statues, stelae, sealings, drinking vessels and coins. By looking at the decisions made about material culture - by Egyptians, Persians and others - it becomes possible to see both how the Persians integrated Egypt into their empire and the full range of experiences people had as a result.
A fully illustrated, comprehensive, and scholarly catalogue of the paintings in the Ashmolean Museum's collection by French artists born between 1775 and 1875 The only complete catalogue of French paintings of the period in the Ashmolean Museum, this comprehensive and scholarly study explores their rich collection of nineteenth-century French art. Continuing a convention set by earlier Ashmolean catalogues that mirrors the concept of the long nineteenth century, the book defines nineteenth-century French artists as those born between 1775 and 1875. Stretching into the twentieth century, it covers a fascinating range of paintings including works by Louis-Leopold Boilly, Camille, Lucien, and Fe lix Pissarro, Henri Fantin-Latour, Edouard Manet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Ce zanne, Claude Monet, and Henri Matisse. The catalogue was compiled by the late distinguished art historian Jon Whiteley. In each entry, Whiteley draws upon his encyclopaedic knowledge of French art and the Ashmolean holdings. Provenance, literature, and exhibition history are recorded as well as extensive technical notes and information on frames. The entries on each work are accompanied by new, high-quality photography and comparative images, resulting in a complete and thorough documentation of this important part of the Ashmolean collection of Western art, providing an informative contribution to existing scholarship. Distributed for Modern Art Press
This volume aims to present the current state of research on Roman roads and their foundations in a combined historical and archaeological perspective. The focus is on the diverse local histories and the varying degrees of significance of individual roads and regional networks, which are treated here for the most important regions of the empire and beyond. The assembled contributions will be of interest to historians, archaeologists and epigraphers, since they tackle matters as diverse as the technical modalities of road-building, the choice of route, but also the functionality and the motives behind the creation of roads. Roman roads are further intimately related to various important aspects of Roman history, politics and culture. After all, such logistical arteries form the basis of all communication and exchange processes, enabling not only military conquest and security but also facilitating the creation of an organized state as well as trade, food supply and cultural exchange. The study of Roman roads must always be based on a combination of written and archaeological sources in order to take into account both their concrete geographical location and their respective spatial, cultural, and historical context.
Adaptations of Greek tragedy are increasingly claiming our attention as a dynamic way of engaging with a dramatic genre that flourished in Greece some twenty-five centuries ago but remains as vital as ever. In this volume, fifteen leading scholars and practitioners of the theatre systematically discuss contemporary adaptations of Greek tragedy and explore the challenges and rewards involved therein. Adopting a variety of methodologies, viewpoints and approaches, the volume offers surveys of recent developments in the field, engages with challenging theoretical issues, and shows how adapting Greek tragedy can throw new light on a range of contemporary issues - from our relation to the classical past and our shifting perceptions of ethnic and cultural identities to the place, function and market-value of Greek drama in today's cultural industries. The volume will be welcomed by students and scholars in Classics, Theatre, Drama and Performance Studies, as well as by theatre practitioners.
Crete was famous in Greek myth as the location of the labyrinth in which the Minotaur was confined in a palace at somewhere called 'Knossos'. From the Middle Ages travellers searched unsuccessfully for the Labyrinth. A handful of clues that survived, such as a coin with a labyrinth design and numerous small bronze age items. The name Knossos had survived - but it was nothing but a sprinkling of houses and farmland so they looked elsewhere. Finally, in 1878, a Cretan archaeologist, Minos Kalokairinos discovered evidence of a Bronze Age palace. British Archaeologist and then Keeper of the Ashmolean Arthur Evans came out to visit and was fascinated by the site. Between 1900 and 1931 Evans uncovered the remains of the huge palace which he felt must be the that of King Minos, and he adopted the name 'Minoans' for its occupants. He employed a team of archaeologists, architects and artists, and together they built up a picture of the Bronze Age community that had occupied the elaborate building. They imagined a sophisticated, nature-loving people, whose civilisation peaked, and then disintegrated. Evans's interpretations of his finds were accurate in some places, but deeply flawed in others. The Evans Archive, held by the Ashmolean, records his finds, theories and (often contentious) reconstructions.
Originally published between 1920-70, the "History of Civilization" was published at a formative time within the social sciences, and during a period of decisive historical discovery. The aim of the general editor, C.K. Ogden, was to summarize the most up to date findings and theories of historians, anthropologists, archaeologists and sociologists. This reprinted material is available as a set or in the following groupings: "Prehistory and Historical Ethnography" set of 12 (0-415-15611-4, u800); "Greek Civilization" set of 7 (0-415-15612-2, u450); "Roman Civilization" set of 6 (0-415-15613-0, u400); "Eastern Civilizations" set of 10 (0-415-15614-9, u650); "Judaeo-Christian Civilization" set of 4 (0-415-15615-7, u250); "European Civilization" set of 11 (0-415-15616-5, u700).
Studies of ancient theater have traditionally taken Athens as their creative center. In this book, however, the lens is widened to examine the origins and development of ancient drama, and particularly comedy, within a Sicilian and southern Italian context. Each chapter explores a different category of theatrical evidence, from the literary (fragments of Epicharmus and cult traditions) to the artistic (phylax vases) and the archaeological (theater buildings). Kathryn G. Bosher argues that, unlike in classical Athens, the golden days of theatrical production on Sicily coincided with the rule of tyrants, rather than with democratic interludes. Moreover, this was not accidental, but plays and the theater were an integral part of the tyrants' propaganda system. The volume will appeal widely to classicists and to theater historians.
Vitruvius' De architectura is the only extant classical text on architecture, and its impact on Renaissance masters including Leonardo da Vinci is well-known. But what was the text's purpose in its own time (ca. 20s BCE)? In this book, Marden Fitzpatrick Nichols reveals how Vitruvius pitched the Greek discipline of architecture to his Roman readers, most of whom were undoubtedly laymen. The inaccuracy of Vitruvius' architectural rules, when compared with surviving ancient buildings, has knocked Vitruvius off his pedestal. Nichols argues that the author never intended to provide an accurate view of contemporary buildings. Instead, Vitruvius crafted his authorial persona and remarks on architecture to appeal to elites (and would-be elites) eager to secure their positions within an expanding empire. In this major new analysis of De architectura from archaeological and literary perspectives, Vitruvius emerges as a knowing critic of a social landscape in which the house made the man.
Oxford Scholarly Classics is a new series that makes available again great academic works from the archives of Oxford University Press. Reissued in uniform series design, the reissues will enable libraries, scholars, and students to gain fresh access to some of the finest scholarship of the last century.
Located in the small kingdom of Commagene at the upper Euphrates, the late Hellenistic monument of Nemrud Dag (c.50 BC) has been undeservedly neglected by scholars. Qualified as a Greco-Persian hybrid instigated by a lunatic king, this fascinating project of bricolage has been written out of history. This volume redresses that imbalance, interpreting Nemrud Dag as an attempt at canon building by Antiochos I in order to construct a dynastic ideology and social order, and proving the monument's importance for our understanding of a crucial transitional phase from Hellenistic to Roman. Hellenistic Commagene therefore holds a profound significance for a number of discussions, such as the functioning of the Hellenistic koine and the genesis of Roman 'art', Hellenism and Persianism in antiquity, dynastic propaganda and the power of images, Romanisation in the East, the contextualising of the Augustan cultural revolution, and the role of Greek culture in the Roman world.
Images relating to imperial power were produced all over the Roman Empire at every social level, and even images created at the centre were constantly remade as they were reproduced, reappropriated, and reinterpreted across the empire. This book employs the language of social dynamics, drawn from economics, sociology, and psychology, to investigate how imperial imagery was embedded in local contexts. Patrons and artists often made use of the universal visual language of empire to navigate their own local hierarchies and relationships, rather than as part of direct communication with the central authorities, and these local interactions were vital in reinforcing this language. The chapters range from large-scale monuments adorned with sculpture and epigraphy to quotidian oil lamps and lead tokens and cover the entire empire from Hispania to Egypt, and from Augustus to the third century CE.
The frames of classical art are often seen as marginal to the images that they surround. Traditional art history has tended to view framing devices as supplementary 'ornaments'. Likewise, classical archaeologists have often treated them as tools for taxonomic analysis. This book not only argues for the integral role of framing within Graeco-Roman art, but also explores the relationship between the frames of classical antiquity and those of more modern art and aesthetics. Contributors combine close formal analysis with more theoretical approaches: chapters examine framing devices across multiple media (including vase and fresco painting, relief and free-standing sculpture, mosaics, manuscripts and inscriptions), structuring analysis around the themes of 'framing pictorial space', 'framing bodies', 'framing the sacred' and 'framing texts'. The result is a new cultural history of framing - one that probes the sophisticated and playful ways in which frames could support, delimit, shape and even interrogate the images contained within.
The relation between the visual and the verbal spheres has been much contested in recent years, from laments about the 'logocentricism' of the academy to the heralding of the 'pictorial turn' of the multimedia age. This lavishly illustrated book recontextualises these debates through the historical lens of Greek and Roman antiquity. Dr Squire shows how modern Western concepts of 'words' and 'pictures' derive from a post-Reformation tradition of theology and aesthetics. Where modern critics assume a bipartite separation between images and texts, classical antiquity toyed with a more playful and engaged relation between the two. By using the ancient world to rethink our own ideologies of the visual and the verbal, this interdisciplinary book brings together classics and art history, as well as a sustained reflection on their historiography: the result is a new and explosive cultural history of Western visual thinking.
This volume is devoted to the history, monuments and topography of Byzantine Constantinople, and includes two specially written pieces, as well as up-dates to the studies reprinted. Many of the articles deal with the imperial constructions of the first centuries of the City's existence - for instance, the columns of Constantine and Justinian, the Mausoleum of the Holy Apostles and the churches of St Sophia, St John of Studius, and Sts Sergius and Bacchus - structures which provided the basic monumental framework around which Constantinople developed and its life was lived. In his reconstruction of these monuments and their history, Cyril Mango demonstrates how much can be achieved by combining the information gained from meticulous examination of the written sources, whether contemporary or from post-medieval travellers, with that provided by the surviving buildings themselves and the remains that have been excavated. Ce volume, voue A l'histoire, aux monuments et A la topographie de Constantinople la Byzantine, comprend deux etudes redigees pour l'occasion, ainsi qu'une mise A jour des travaux qui y sont re-publies. Bon nombre des etudes traitent plus particulierement des constructions imperiales datant des premiers siecles d'existence de la cite - tels, les colonnes de Constantin et de Justinien, la Mausole des Saints ApAtres et les eglises de Ste Sophie, St Jean de Studius, ou de Sts Serge et Bacchus; un ensemble de structures qui apporterent la base monumentale autour de laquelle Constantinople s'est developpee et a vecu. Au travers de cette reconstruction des monuments et de leur histoire, Cyril Mango demontre combien peut Atre atteint en combinant l'information acquise A partir d'un examen meticuleux des sources ecrites - que celles-ci soient contemporaines ou proviennent des voyageurs post-medievaux - A celle que l'on peut tirer des bActiments-mAmes qui ont survecu, ainsi que des restes qui ete re
This book is a history of ancient Greek and Roman professionals: doctors, seers, sculptors, teachers, musicians, actors, athletes and soldiers. These individuals were specialist workers deemed to possess rare skills, for which they had undergone a period of training. They operated in a competitive labour market in which proven expertise was a key commodity. Success in the highest regarded professions was often rewarded with a significant income and social status. Rivalries between competing practitioners could be fierce. Yet on other occasions, skilled workers co-operated in developing associations that were intended to facilitate and promote the work of professionals. The oldest collegial code of conduct, the Hippocratic Oath, a version of which is still taken by medical professionals today, was similarly the creation of a prominent ancient medical school. This collection of articles reveals the crucial role of occupation and skill in determining the identity and status of workers in antiquity.
Greek Sculpture presents a chronological overview of the plastic and glyptic art forms in the ancient Greek world from the emergence of life-sized marble statuary at the end of the seventh century BC to the appropriation of Greek sculptural traditions by Rome in the first two centuries AD. * Compares the evolution of Greek sculpture over the centuries to works of contemporaneous Mediterranean civilizations * Emphasizes looking closely at the stylistic features of Greek sculpture, illustrating these observations where possible with original works rather than copies * Places the remarkable progress of stylistic changes that took place in Greek sculpture within a broader social and historical context * Facilitates an understanding of why Greek monuments look the way they do and what ideas they were capable of expressing * Focuses on the most recent interpretations of Greek sculptural works while considering the fragile and fragmentary evidence uncovered
Augustus' success in implementing monarchical rule at Rome is often attributed to innovations in the symbolic language of power, from the star marking Julius Caesar's deification to buildings like the Palatine complex and the Forum Augustum to rituals including triumphs and funerals. This book illuminates Roman subjects' vital role in creating and critiquing these images, in keeping with the Augustan poets' sustained exploration of audiences' active part in constructing verbal and visual meaning. From Vergil to Ovid, these poets publicly interpret, debate, and disrupt Rome's evolving political iconography, reclaiming it as the common property of an imagined republic of readers. In showing how these poets used reading as a metaphor for the mutual constitution of Augustan authority and a means of exercising interpretive libertas under the principate, this book offers a holistic new vision of Roman imperial power and its representation that will stimulate scholars and students alike.
This book presents a radical new interpretation of Roman expansion in Italy during the fourth and third centuries BCE. Nicola Terrenato argues that the process was accomplished by means of a grand bargain that was negotiated between the landed elites of central and southern Italy, while military conquest played a much smaller role than is usually envisaged. Deploying archaeological, epigraphic, and historical evidence, he paints a picture of the family interactions that tied together both Roman and non-Roman aristocrats and that resulted in their pooling power and resources for the creation of a new political entity. The book is written in accessible language, without technical terms or quotations in Latin, and is heavily illustrated.
In the first comprehensive study of Roman ancestor masks in English, Harriet Flower explains the reasons behind the use of wax masks in the commemoration of politically prominent family members by the elite society of Rome. Broadening her approach from the purely art historical, Flower traces the functional evolution of ancestor masks, from their first appearance in the third century BC to their last mention in the sixth century AD, through the examination of literary sources in both prose and verse, legal texts, epigraphy, archaeology, numismatics, and art. It is by putting these masks, which were worn by actors at the funerals of the deceased, into their legal, social, and political context that Flower is able to elucidate their central position in the media of the time and their special meaning as symbols of power and prestige.
This textbook is endorsed by OCR and supports the specification for AS and A-Level Classical Civilisation (first teaching September 2017). It covers Components 21 and 22 from the 'Culture and the Arts' Component Group: Greek Theatre by James Renshaw and Laura Swift Imperial Image by Robert Hancock-Jones Why was tragedy and comedy so central to Athenian life? How did drama challenge Athenians to reflect on their way of living? How did the emperor Augustus present himself as the restorer of Rome's greatness? To what extent did he provide an example to later political figures as a promoter of his regime? This book guides AS and A-Level students to a greater understanding of these issues. The Greek Theatre chapter explores the festival context in which tragedies and comedies were performed, and then analyses three plays: Oedipus the King by Sophocles, Bacchae by Euripides and Frogs by Aristophanes. The Imperial Image chapter analyses the self-presentation of Rome's most dynamic emperor, who claimed to have found Rome 'a city of bricks, but left it a city of marble'. The ideal preparation for the final examinations, all content is presented by experts and experienced teachers in a clear and accessible narrative. Ancient literary and visual sources are described and analysed, with supporting images. Helpful student features include study questions, quotations from contemporary scholars, further reading, and boxes focusing in on key people, events and terms. Practice questions and exam guidance prepare students for assessment. A Companion Website is available at www.bloomsbury.com/class-civ-as-a-level.
The Temple of Athena at Sounion has long been recognized as one of the most unusual buildings in the architectural history of Greece. Its plan, with columns uniquely on the front and only one side, is unparalleled in the Greek world. Excavations of the temple and other buildings there, however, were complicated by the fact that many architectural pieces from the site had been reused in a Roman temple in the Athenian Agora. Here, Barletta provides a fascinating examination of the early excavations at Sounion, the debate over who was worshipped at the so-called Small Temple within the sanctuary, the varied architectural influences on the Temple of Athena, and the later use of its architectural pieces in the Athenian Agora. Building on unpublished work by William B. Dinsmoor Jr. and Homer A. Thompson, this study represents the first comprehensive view of the temple and its sanctuary. |
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