The festivals of the Athenian sacred calendar constitute a vital key to classical Greek culture and religion. Erika Simon sets out here to explicate those complex and often obscure festivals. By careful marshalling of a variety of proofs from literary, historical, and archaeological sources, she is able to justify some startling conclusions and achieve a comprehensive and truly original synthesis that clarifies, as never before, the probable origins and meanings of the Attic cults.

The amount of 3D modelling applications in archaeology has increased enourmously over the last decade. 3D recording techniques allow researchers to quickly and accurately document archaeological evidence, and 3D reconstructions have created new possibilities to communicate the results to a larger public. In this latter case, however, numerous scholars have expressed their concern regarding the ethics of such digital representations, since they give prominence to a crystallized image of the past and do not account for the complexity of the archaeological record. The study presented here aims to make a practical contribution to a new understanding and use of 3D reconstructions, namely as 'laboratories' to test hypotheses and visualize, evaluate and discuss alternative interpretations. In order to do so, an analysis of visual reconstructions of the early and late modern period is presented first, followed by a discussion of current applications of 3D digital reconstructions, with a special focus on cityscapes. Lastly, a practical implementation of a research-driven, intellectually transparent and GIS-based 3D reconstruction is proposed for the urban site of Koroneia, in Boeotia, Central Greece. Specifically, the methodology developed in this work uses tools that are employed in geo-design and modern urban planning in an innovative way, integrating GIS with a rule-based modelling approach. With a strong focus on the automation and iteration of the reconstruction process, our 3D visualization provides an intuitive insight into hidden relationships and associations among data, and allows the creation and evaluation of alternative reconstruction hypotheses.

Thurrock's Deeper Past: A Confluence of Time' looks at the evidence for human activity in Thurrock and this part of the Thames estuary since the last Ice Age, and how the river crossing point here has been of great importance to the development of human settlement and trade in the British Isles. It is a book about the archaeology of Thurrock. It takes in all periods and most of the sites which have been excavated in the borough of Thurrock over the last sixty or more years. The account opens at a time when Britain is still joined to the continent and the inhabitants are using flint tools and weapons. The author follows through the impact of the succeeding ages on the locality: the melting of the ice, the Neolithic period bringing the farming of crops and stockholding, the first appearance of worked metal in the Bronze Age, through the widespread use of iron in the Iron Age; and then the dramatic impact of Rome and its gradual dissolution to the English kingdoms whose traces are still recognisable today. All is set in the context of the author's lasting interest in the subject, first nurtured at his Tilbury school.

Since the time of the ancient Greeks we have been fascinated by accounts of the Amazons, an elusive tribe of hard-fighting, horse-riding female warriors. Equal to men in battle, legends claimed they cut off their right breasts to improve their archery skills and routinely killed their male children to purify their ranks. For centuries people believed in their existence and attempted to trace their origins. Artists and poets celebrated their battles and wrote of Amazonia. Spanish explorers, carrying these tales to South America, thought they lived in the forests of the world's greatest river, and named it after them. In the absence of evidence, we eventually reasoned away their existence, concluding that these powerful, sexually liberated female soldiers must have been the fantastical invention of Greek myth and storytelling. Until now. Following decades of new research and a series of groundbreaking archeological discoveries, we now know these powerful warrior queens did indeed exist. In Amazons, John Man travels to the grasslands of Central Asia, from the edge of the ancient Greek world to the borderlands of China, to discover the truth about the warrior women mythologized as Amazons. In this deeply researched, sweeping historical epic, Man redefines our understanding of the Amazons and their culture, tracking the ancient legend into the modern world and examining its significance today.

'Rethinking the Concept of 'Healing Settlements': Water, Cults, Constructions and Contexts in the Ancient World' brings together papers dealing with therapeutic aspects connected to thermomineral sites both in Italy and in the Roman Provinces, as well as cultic issues surrounding health and healing. The first part of the book consists of contributions that are focused on the numerous problems concerning the exploitation of curative springs and the settlement patterns at spa sites in terms of topography, infrastructure, architecture, cult, society and economy, emphasizing the particularities accompanying the use of beneficial sources and comparing them to that of common freshwaters. The papers in the second part of the volume concentrate on religious aspects connected to health, fertility and healing, focussing especially on sites located at particular natural surroundings such as caves and water sources. Together, the contributions in this book give us an idea of the amount and quality of research currently being undertaken in different parts of the Roman world (and complemented by one paper on the Greek world) on the topic of health and healing associated with cults and salutiferous waters.

The city of Rhodes was an important harbour in the Hellenistic period, and although its political role in the Roman period was significantly diminished, it never ceased to be a key hub for trade. The catastrophic earthquake of 515 AD marked the transition from the Late Roman to the Early Byzantine period in Rhodes. The glorious ancient city shrunk in size; its streets, which had been laid out according to the Hippodamian grid, were encroached upon and large basilicas were founded on the sites of ancient sanctuaries. A significant portion of the city has been uncovered over the past few years by rescue excavation, revealing houses, mansions, streets and extensive cemeteries, all yielding a large quantity of finds. This study focuses on the recording, study and publication of the corpus of the Late Antique lamps dating from the 3rd to the 7th centuries as found in these rescue excavations in the town of Rhodes. The lamps of this period from Rhodes and the other Dodecanesian islands are nearly unknown in the bibliography. The aim here is to present the diachronic changes in the artistic sensibility and preferences of this particular market. An integral component in this process are topographical observations regarding the Early Byzantine town of Rhodes, giving some details about the extent of the building remains. In addition, facets of the economic and commercial activities of the island during Late Antiquity are highlighted. Subjects such as the transformation/adaptation of the ancient city to new circumstances are also debated. For some lamps, analyses of the clay have been undertaken and the results are presented.

Ptolemais of the Libyan Pentapolis was founded in the second half of the third century B.C., probably early in the reign of Ptolemy III, on a site that had already been occupied for almost three centuries by the anonymous 'harbor at Barca.' Extensive remains of Ptolemais have always been visible and a careful plan of them was made by the Beechey brothers in 1822. Between 1935 and 1942 a number of sites including the Street of the Monuments, the Square of the Cisterns, the Palazzo delle Colonne, the Fortress Church, and the Tower Tomb were cleared and studied by the Italians under Professor Giacomo Caputo; and three more buildings, a villa of the early Roman period, a public building on the Street of the Monuments and the City Bath of the Byzantine period, were examined in detail by the Oriental Institute of Chicago under Professor Carl Kraeling between 1956 and 1958. The purpose of the present volume is twofold: to present detailed excavation reports on these last three buildings, and also to attempt a survey of Ptolemais as a whole on the basis of a thorough re-examination of the site carried out by the Institute. This was something well worth doing and generally speaking it has been well done. Even if some of the conclusions reached here must inevitably be regarded as provisional, we now have a broad and solid foundation on which future investigators can build, and for which they will be grateful. From a review by D. E. L. Haynes in the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 52 (1966) 195].

..". an interesting and valuable contribution to geoarchaeology." Geoarchaeology

The geomorphology of Franchthi paralia; soil profiles; classification of sediments; stratigraphic succession; submarine sediments; holocene environment of the Argolid; and more."

When the great citadel of Mycenae, then the center of the Aegean world, went up in flames about 1100 B.C., what followed was a "dark age" that left no written records. But rich archaeological records show conclusively that there was a radical discontinuity between Mycenaean-Minoan culture and Greek civilization. Chester G. Starr argues that true Greek civilization was swiftly and spontaneously generated in a remarkably autonomous renaissance during the two centuries from 850 to 650 B.C. Supporting his thesis with archaeological evidence previously unavailable to historians, he offers a masterly reconstruction of an obscure and important period of Greek history.

Greek myths abound in images of beauty and perfection: charming gods, attractive goddesses, and handsome heroes, all of them standards of physical and spiritual flawlessness. However, the ancient Greeks were not fond of absolutes. No god or hero is shown without blemishes in character and ethics, and some are even physically imperfect, like Hephaestus, who is ugly and lame. Another element that dominates Greek mythology is the idea of balance. Good and evil, light and darkness, hubris and punishment. What could not be missing from this world is the image of reversed beauty: monstrosity. The aim of this book is to explore the realm of the imaginary world of Greek mythology and present the reader with a categorization of monstrosity, referring to some of the most noted examples in each category.

Features the archaeological and paleoenvironmental data from Franchthi Cave that provide a site-specific record of the cultural responses to great environmental changes.

One of the most fascinating topics in the study of ancient art concerns artistic practices and models and the means of transmission of iconographic designs and decorative compositions. This phenomenon, although well known, has not drawn much attention of scholars of the ancient art. Apart from copies of originals, the practice dates back to the first civilizations and may be even older. The media used could be painted vignettes on papyri, paint on leather, or sketches painted on ostraca, used as pattern books. This issue is practically unheard of regarding ancient Greece, although a few media have been found which may have facilitated the transmission of iconographic designs and decorative compositions. In this study we present some examples that suggest the existence of pattern books in the Greek world. If the media used in the Greek world are insofar unknown, the same cannot be said of the Roman world. Written sources mention the existence of manuals in the form of papyrus scrolls (stemmata, imagines) which served as models as well as inspiration for the artists.

In the year 19 BC, Roman legions arrived in Nijmegen with the aim of conquering the Rhenish territories from the local populations. In addition to the legionaries themselves, the Roman army required a regular provision of staple supplies in order to keep such a war machine in top condition. The archaeological evidence for this provision is a myriad of organic remains (i.e. seeds, bones, pollen) as well as ceramic containers such as amphorae. One of the first military camps at Nijmegen, together with that on the Hunerberg, was Kops Plateau. This timber fortress - the most northerly military site of the Julio-Claudian period - dating from 12 BC to AD 69, has provided an extraordinary amphora assemblage. At a time when most Roman roads were still only projects, this distant military outpost received amphora products from all over the Mediterranean basin - from Palestine to Greece in the east to Baetica and northern Africa in the west as well as from the Italian core. In addition to amphorae, Kops Plateau also provided a wide repertory of regional vessels whose contents are unknown. The amphorae from Kops Plateau represent a singular example of Roman military supply in northern Europe at a very early date. Their analysis sheds light on trading routes in the Atlantic regions, and from Gaul to Germany; indeed also on the Claudian invasion of Britain.

This publication presents the results of over 30 years of investigation into Roman Godmanchester, (Cambridgeshire), by Michael Green. The book accurately locates the 25 "sites" investigated, and pinpoints the trenches against the modern street layout. Although some sites covered large areas, many often had to be conducted as small trenches undertaken by volunteers. The origins for Durovigutum include evidence for Iron Age settlement which preceded two Roman forts during the 1st century AD. After its initial military establishment the book goes on to reveal the development of the Roman civic community and its cemeteries along Ermine Street adjacent to its crossing of the Great Ouse. The town was surrounded by defences in the 2nd century and a wall in the 3rd century, its public buildings included a mansio, bath-house and brewery, aisled barns, basilica and several temples, and the socio-economic foundation of the community is explored with specific examples from excavated evidence including different types of domestic housing and workshops. A tavern, glassware-shop, dairy equipment, pottery manufacture and a smithy are detailed in this book, as well as analysis of land organization, infield and outfield agriculture, and a villa estate at Rectory farm. Specialist analyses include samian and coarse wares, vessel and window glass, coins, animal bone, dairy production, belief systems and burial practices, as well as the exceptional finds of a hoard of jewellery from one of the mansio pits, and a burial casket of wood and bronze. Although partial or full reports of various excavations have been published in journals and monographs previously, this is the first time Green's full body of work on Godmanchester has been collated and presented in one comprehensive volume. The book has not tried to include more recent investigations, and most illustrations are by Michael Green, drawn contemporary with his excavations.

"With the long-awaited publication of these three volumes we have the first thorough documentation of one of the most important prehistoric sites in the Mediterranean, that of Franchthi Cave in the Argolid Peninsula of Greece." American Anthropologist

..". the archaeological and paleoenvironmental data from Franchthi Cave are unique in providing a site-specific record of the cultural responses to great environmental changes." Quarterly Research

This volume describes the evolution of the landscape around Franchthi Cave over 25,000 years, its impact on prehistoric inhabitants, and theirs on it."

Classical and Hellenistic cemeteries can give us more than descriptions and styles of pottery, art and burial architecture; they can speak of people, societies, social conventions as well as of social distinctions. This book aims to employ and illustrate the unique strengths of burial evidence and its contribution to the understanding of social identity and status in the Classical and Hellenistic Northern Peloponnese. By thoroughly reviewing published burials from the regions of Achaia, Arcadia, the Argolid and Cynouria, Corinthia, Elis and Triphylia, spatial and temporal variations which led to a change in definitions of 'society' and perceptions of 'community' on the basis of shifting reactions to death and the dead are demonstrated. Social roles of men, women, children, elite and non-elite individuals as expressed or negotiated in the mortuary record are explored. Preconceived ideas and stereotypes within and about the Classical and Hellenistic burials are challenged. In spite of the many constraints imposed by the limited previous research, what clearly emerges from this study is the wide degree of variation in what are often loosely termed 'customary' or unappealing Classical and Hellenistic burial practices in the Northern Peloponnese. If death was indeed an occasion or 'opportunity', then the meaning of this opportunity varied along the shifting dimensions, in time and space, of identity and status.

Ancient Greek vase-paintings offer broad-ranging and unprecedented early perspectives on the often intricate interplay of images and texts. By bringing together-for the first time in English-language scholarship-an international group of leading scholars in classical art and archaeology who have worked on vase-inscriptions, this book investigates epigraphic technicalities of Attic and non-Attic inscriptions on pottery as well as their broader iconographic and sociocultural significance. The ten chapters in this book propose original and expert methodological approaches to the study of vase-inscriptions and vasepaintings, while also foregrounding the outstanding but not fully examined importance of the area of vase-inscriptions for current research on ancient Greek visual representations. Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings constitutes a major contribution to the fields of Greek epigraphy and classical art and archaeology and will prove significant for epigraphists, archaeologists, and art-historians interested in the complexities of the interaction of art and text.

This report presents the vessel glass and small finds found during the excavations between 1995 and 2006 that took place in Insula VI.1, Pompeii (henceforth VI.1). More than 5,000 items are discussed, and the size of the assemblage has meant that the publication is in two parts. The book you are reading consists of the discussion with associated illustrations and the catalogue entries for a subset of the data. The other half is available digitally on the Archaeological Data Service. That part contains the full catalogue of the material recorded, additional contextual information, and details about the initial excavations of the insula during the eighteenth century.

This book examines different forms of ritual activities performed in houses of Graeco- Roman Egypt. It draws on the rich archaeological record of rural housing and evidence from literature or papyrological references to both urban and rural housing. The introduction critically considers the literature relevant to the topic in order to identify the research gap. Chapter I attempts to reconstruct the structure of urban and rural houses in Graeco- Roman Egypt in the light of papyri and archaeology. This aims to establish the physical and spatial framework for the rituals considered in the following chapters. In line with this reconstruction of domestic properties is the reconstruction of the architectural layout and use of the domestic pylon in Chapter II. Chapter III deals with two rituals enacted before the front door of the house, namely the sacrifice of fish on the 9th of Thoth and the sacrifice of pigs on the 15th of Pachon. Chapter IV considers the ritual of the illumination of lamps for the goddess Athena-Neith within and around houses on the 13th of Epeiph. Chapter V highlights the use of the house as an arena for social types of rituals associated with dining, birthdays, the mallokouria, the epikrisis, and marriage. Chapter VI explores the religious sphere of houses, which is obvious from domestic shrines, wall paintings with religious themes, and figurines of Egyptian and Graeco-Roman deities uncovered from houses. The last chapter deals with mourning rituals, which the house occupants performed after the demise of their beloved animals, such as dogs, and their family members. In the conclusion, I summarize my work and draw out its implications, suggesting that the house was the locus of social, religious, and funerary rituals in Graeco-Roman Egypt.

Although there have been numerous studies of individual cities or groups of cities, there has never been a study of the urbanism of the Roman world as a whole, meaning that we have been poorly informed not only about the number of cities and how they were distributed and changed over time, but also about their sizes and populations, monumentality, and civic status. This book provides a new account of the urbanism of the Roman world between 100 BC and AD 300. To do so, it draws on a combination of textual sources and archaeological material to provide a new catalogue of cities, calculates new estimates of their areas and uses a range of population densities to estimate their populations, and brings together available information about their monumentality and civic status for the first time. This evidence demonstrates that, although there were relatively few cities, many had considerable sizes and populations, substantial amounts of monumentality, and held various kinds of civic status. This indicates that there was significant economic growth in this period, including both extensive and intensive economic growth, which resulted from an influx of wealth through conquest and the intrinsic changes that came with Roman rule (including the expansion of urbanism). This evidence also suggests that there was a system that was characterized by areas of intense urban demand, which was met through an efficient system for the extraction of necessity and luxury goods from immediate hinterlands and an effective system for bringing these items from further afield. The disruption of these links seems to have put this system under considerable strain towards the end of this period and may have been sufficient to cause its ultimate collapse. This appears to have been in marked contrast to the medieval and early modern periods, when urbanism was more able to respond to changes in supply and demand.

Open area excavation on 14.45ha of land at Cambridge Road, Bedford was carried out in 2004-5 in advance of development. A background scatter of Early Neolithic flint, including a Langdale stone axe, may be related to the nearby presence of the Cardington causewayed enclosure. Two Early Bronze Age ring ditches sat on a low lying gravel ridge between the River Great Ouse and the Elstow Brook. A causewayed ring ditch, 30m in diameter, had a broad entrance to the southwest, where a shallow length of ditch either silted or had been filled in. Adjacent to the shallow ditch was a pit containing three crouched burials, probably in an oak-lined chamber, radiocarbon dated to the early Middle Bronze Age. A nearby small round barrow enclosed a deep central grave containing the crouched burial of a woman, probably within an oak-lined chamber. An L-shaped ditch to the east, radiocarbon dated to the Middle to Late Bronze transition, may have been the final feature of the monument group. It parallels the addition of L-shaped ditches/pit alignments at other contemporary ring ditch monuments. Shallow linear ditches formed a land boundary extending north and south from the Bronze Age ring ditch, and other contemporary ditches were remnants of a rectilinear field system, contemporary with a scatter of irregular pits and a waterhole. This phase came to an end at the Late Bronze Age/ Early Iron Age transition, when a large assemblage of decorated pottery was dumped in the final fills of the waterhole. By the Middle Iron Age there was a new linear boundary, comprising three near parallel ditches, aligned north-south; a rectangular enclosure and a complex of intercut pits. The pottery assemblage was sparse, but the upper fills of both the deepest linear boundary ditch and the pit complex contained some Roman pottery. To the south-east an extensive Romano-British ladder settlement is dated to the 1st to 4th centuries AD. Only the northern fringe lay within the excavated area, comprising successive boundary ditches, along with pits, a stone-lined well, an inhumation burial and animal burials. In the early Anglo-Saxon period (5th-6th centuries AD), there was a loose cluster of three sunken featured buildings with another to the south. In the middle Saxon period (8th-9th centuries AD) a small rectangular mausoleum contained a single inhumation burial, with a second inhumation to the immediate west. Subsequent land use comprised truncated furrows of the medieval ridge and furrow field cultivation and post-medieval quarry pits.

This volume represents a selection of contributions on Mediterranean themes from a wider international interdisciplinary conference on Magical Texts in Ancient Civilizations, organised by the Centre for Comparative Studies of Civilizations at Jagiellonian University in Krakow in Poland between 27-28 June 2013. The meeting welcomed researchers from Hungary, Italy, Poland and Ukraine, covering various disciplines including comparative civilizations, comparative religions, linguistics, archaeology, anthropology, history and philosophy. In the past 'magic' was often misunderstood as irrational behaviour, in contrast to the tradition of philosophical or rational thought mostly based on Greek models. Evidence collected from ancient high cultures, like that of Pharaonic Egypt, includes massive amounts of documents and treatises of all kinds related to what has been labelled 'magic'. Today it cannot be written off as merely a primitive or 'lesser human' phenomenon: the awareness of magic remains to the present day in many societies, at all social levels, and has not been generally replaced by what might be considered as more advanced thinking. The researches in this volume focus heavily on Egypt (in particular Predynastic, Pharaonic, Hellenistic, Roman and Christian evidence), but Near Eastern material was also presented from Pagan (Ugaritic) and Christian (Syriac) times.

Taking an unusual approach to his subject, J. J. Coulton examines ancient Greek architecture from the point of view of the practicing architects. He discusses their ideas and technical achievements from the early seventh century B.C. to the first century B.C. Drawing on surviving written evidence from antiquity as well as on the evidence of the buildings themselves, Mr. Coulton provides answers to such questions as: What must it have been like to build a Greek temple? Who did the building? What training was required? How did the Greeks begin? What problems did they face? The first chapter considers the relations of architects to patrons and clients and the role of architects in ancient society generally. Subsequent chapters explore a series of architectural problems and their solutions. In his final chapter Mr. Coulton assesses the architects' techniques and their contributions to structural design, evaluating their theoretical knowledge of mechanics and their practical understanding of structural concepts. Generously illustrated and lucidly written, this volume will appeal to all who are interested in architecture, architectural history, and archaeology.