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Books > Humanities > Archaeology > Archaeology by period / region > European archaeology > Classical Greek & Roman archaeology
The life cycle of a coin is long. One might even argue that its existence as a coin is only a minor part of the recycling of metal. In the field of archaeology, coin finds are evidence of connections between human beings. Coins were brought from one place to another by someone, with a reason to do so. Any object acquires new properties when moved from one cultural context to another, and the meaning of the Roman coin in the Danish Iron Age context no doubt differed greatly from its original significance. The Roman denarius was meant to be used as a coin in a monetary economy. Having left the area where the denarius was recognized as coin, it assumed new meanings. But, what were those new meanings? How was the denarius perceived in non-Roman communities? Which purposes did the coin serve? This book covers the later part of the Roman coin's existence - its arrival in Bornholm, its use there, and its deposition in and recovery from the soil.
This volume of essays focuses principally on the collection of books of British and Irish antiquarian scholars held in the Gennadius Library. Collectively, the essays are the product of two thematically-linked conferences: the first of these was held in Athens in June 2010, and was organised by the School of Art History and Cultural Policy, University College Dublin, in collaboration with the Gennadius Library, and graciously hosted by the Irish Institute of Hellenic Studies; the second, held in Dublin in June 2011, was organized by the School of Art History and Cultural Policy, and hosted by the Humanities Institute of Ireland. The major premise explored in the paper sessions of those conferences, and in this volume, concerns the work of some of the most pioneering British and Irish 18th and early 19th century antiquarians, artists, and architects who voyaged into the Mediterranean. The publication of their findings in architectural treatises, travelogues and illustrated books came, in turn, to inform international movements of art and architecture; specifically, the Neoclassical and Greek Revival styles. Collectively, these books capture the allure of the broader Mediterranean world for scholars of antiquity - ever expanding beyond the well-traveled boundaries enjoyed by Grand Tourists - exploring issues such as topography, history, cultural mores, dress and, of course, art and architecture. Print and book culture was at the core of the early modern period, not least in the world of architecture, and the conscious effort to gather and disseminate knowledge of the wider classical world through this medium is remarkable. The significant contribution of British and Irish scholarship to this broader European discourse is here viewed through the lens of the extraordinary book collection held in the Gennadius Library.
This volume presents sculptural finds made by the University of Chicago at Isthmia during their excavations from 1952 to 1967. Sculpture found by the UCLA team in excavations from 1967 onwards are published elsewhere (Isthmia VI). The finds range in date from the seventh century B.C. to third century A.D. but are mostly fragmentary objects of Roman date. The two most important works are the Archaic perirrhanterion (a large shallow bowl) from the sanctuary of Palaimon, and a cult statue group of Amphitrite and Poseidon on a base decorated with reliefs depicting the Calydonian board hunt and the slaughter of the Niobids.
This volume, featuring sixteen contributions from leading Roman historians and archaeologists, sheds new light on approaches to the economic history of urban craftsmen and traders in the Roman world, with a particular emphasis on the imperial period. Combining a wide range of research traditions from all over Europe and utilizing evidence from Italy, the western provinces, and the Greek-speaking east, this edited collection is divided into four parts. It first considers the scholarly history of Roman crafts and trade in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, focusing on Germany and the Anglo-Saxon world, and on Italy and France. Chapters discuss how scholarly thinking about Roman craftsmen and traders was influenced by historical and intellectual developments in the modern world, and how different (national) research traditions followed different trajectories throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The second part highlights the economic strategies of craftsmen and traders, examining strategies of long-distance traders and the phenomenon of specialization, and presenting case studies of leather-working and bread-baking. In the third part, the human factor in urban crafts and trade-including the role of apprenticeship, gender, freedmen, and professional associations-is analysed, and the volume ends by exploring the position of crafts in urban space, considering the evidence for artisanal clustering in the archaeological and papyrological record, and providing case studies of the development of commercial landscapes at Aquincum on the Danube and at Sagalassos in Pisidia.
This book was published to coincide with an exhibition mounted in both France and Greece, dedicated to marine representations on vases, and particularly those inspired by mythology. Thanks to the variety of shapes and decorated surfaces found in vases, the art of pottery developed a more extensive repertoire of subjects related to the sea than any other art form. The first part of this book examines forty-two characteristic examples of marine iconography, which come mainly from the collections of the Louvre, though also from those of other museums. These are divided into four groups: marine fauna and seafaring, the deities of the deep, the voyages of gods and heroes who crisscrossed the ocean, and, finally, the miraculous birth of the goddess who emerged from the waves, Aphrodite, born from the foam. The variety and aesthetic quality of marine scenes in vase-painting reveal once more the importance of the sea to Greek civilization. The second part of the book contains more specialist articles on the iconography of the sea, and on various aspects of marine archaeology, contributed by both French and Greek experts in the field. Parallel text Greek and English
The Greeks and Romans in the Black Sea presents the Proceedings of the Sixth International Congress on Black Sea Antiquities, dedicated to the 90th birthday of Prof. Sir John Boardman, President of the Congress since its inception. It was held in Constanta in September 2017 with the same theme as the first of these congresses, which took place just down the coast in Varna 20 years earlier ('the Greeks and Romans in the Black Sea and the importance of the Pontic region for the Graeco-Roman world between the 7th century BC and 5th century AD'), celebrating the work of successive congresses in bringing together scholars and scholarship from Eastern and Western Europe and the extensive progress of 'Black Sea Studies' in the intervening years. Overall, 85 papers were received for publication from authors in Western and Eastern Europe-there is also a full set of the abstracts submitted to the Congress in Appendix 2. As with previous congresses, the work is divided into sections, the largest of which, the fourth, is, following a pattern established with the first congress, devoted to New Excavations and Projects. The opening lectures and various papers in the first sections reflect (on) the '20 years on' in the title. The vast majority of contributions are in English, a handful each in French and German.
From the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Terracotta Army, ancient artifacts have long fascinated the modern world. However, the importance of some discoveries is not always immediately understood. This was the case in 1901 when sponge divers retrieved a lump of corroded bronze from a shipwreck at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea near the Greek island of Antikythera. Little did the divers know they had found the oldest known analog computer in the world, an astonishing device that once simulated the motions of the stars and planets as they were understood by ancient Greek astronomers. Its remains now consist of 82 fragments, many of them containing gears and plates engraved with Greek words, that scientists and scholars have pieced back together through painstaking inspection and deduction, aided by radiographic tools and surface imaging. More than a century after its discovery, many of the secrets locked in this mysterious device can now be revealed. In addition to chronicling the unlikely discovery of the Antikythera Mechanism, author Alexander Jones takes readers through a discussion of how the device worked, how and for what purpose it was created, and why it was on a ship that wrecked off the Greek coast around 60 BC. What the Mechanism has uncovered about Greco-Roman astronomy and scientific technology, and their place in Greek society, is truly amazing. The mechanical know-how that it embodied was more advanced than anything the Greeks were previously thought capable of, but the most recent research has revealed that its displays were designed so that an educated layman could understand the behavior of astronomical phenomena, and how intertwined they were with one's natural and social environment. It was at once a masterpiece of machinery as well as one of the first portable teaching devices. Written by a world-renowned expert on the Mechanism, A Portable Cosmos will fascinate all readers interested in ancient history, archaeology, and the history of science.
Ancient Sardis, the capital of Lydia, was of outstanding importance: in the Lydian period it held the residence of the kings and subsequently, under Persian rule, the satraps. Throughout antiquity it remained an administrative center. Travelers of modern times and archaeological excavations have revealed, from the city site and its surroundings, inscriptions written mostly in Greek, some in Latin. Their texts deal with all kinds of subjects: decrees, public honors, civil and sacred laws, letters, epitaphs, and more. In the corpus "Sardis VII 1" (1932) W. H. Buckler and D. M. Robinson published all inscriptions (228 items) known up to 1922, after which year excavation at Sardis came to a halt because of the Greek-Turkish war. Since excavation resumed in 1958, a portion of the Greek and Latin inscriptions has been published in various, widely scattered places; another portion, containing important texts discovered during the last ten years, was until now unpublished. The aim of this monograph is to present in a comprehensive corpus the entire epigraphic harvest (485 items) made in Sardis and its territory since 1958. Each inscription is accompanied by a description of the monument, bibliography, translation, and commentary; indices, concordances, photographs, and maps complement the collection.
An easy-to-read guide based on excavations conducted under the auspices of the University of Pennsylvania Museum. The book includes contributions by D. Buitron, D. Christou, M. Loulloupis, A. H. S. Megaw, A. Papgeorhiou, S. Sinos and D. Soren. Also included are drawings maps, full-color photographs, and a bibliography. University Museum Monograph, 42
The Encyclopedia of Material Culture in the Biblical World (EBW) builds on the German "Standardwerk" Biblisches Reallexikon (BRL), edited by Kurt Galling 1937, second edition 1977 (2BRL). It is a reference book for biblical scholars, historians, and archaeologists. The EBW focusses on the material culture from the Neolithic Age to the Hellenistic period, giving attention to the material from the Bronze and Iron Ages, including the Persian period. The geographic regions covered by the entries include primarily the records of Palestine (= the Southern Levant) limited by (excl.) the southern fringe of Lebanon and Hermon (North), the Wadi al-Aris, the Sinai peninsula and North-Arabia (South), the Mediterranean Sea (West) and the Transjordanian desert (East). If appropriate to the entry, the neighboring evidence from Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, and Mesopotamia is included. The Encyclopedia presents and documents the material culture based on the archaeological, epigraphical, and iconographical data in historical order and documents the state of current research. The entries do not only list or mention the most important material data, but try to synthesize and interpret it within the horizon of a history of Southern Levantine culture, economy, technical development, art, and religion. The EBW consists of around 120 articles and an introductory part pertaining to the chronology of the EBW, archaeology and cultural History, epigraphy, and iconography, written by specialists from 15 different countries.
This volume includes: Rachel Zelnick-Abramovitz, "Half Slave, Half Free: Partial Manumission in the Ancient Near East and Beyond"; Chris Eckerman, "I Weave a Variegated Headband: Metaphors for Song and Communication in Pindar's Odes"; Alexander Nikolaev, "Through the Thicket: The Text of Pindar Olympian 6.54 ( ' )"; Tobias Joho, "Alcibiadean Mysteries and Longing for 'Absent' and 'Invisible Things' in Thucydides' Account of the Sicilian Expedition"; Peter Barrios Lech, "Menander and Catullus 8-Revisited: Menander Misoumenos and Catullus Carmen 8"; Katharina Volk, "Varro and the Disorder of Things"; John T. Ramsey, "The Date of the Consular Elections in 63 and the Inception of Catiline's Conspiracy"; Brian D. McPhee, "Erulus and the Moliones: An Iliadic Intertext in Aeneid 8.560-567"; Julia Scarborough, "Eridanus in Elysium: The Underground Poetics of Virgil's Violent River"; Geert Roskam, "Providential Gods and Social Justice: An Ancient Controversy on Theonomous Ethics"; Rafael J. Galle Cejudo, "Progymnasmatic Alteration in the Love Letters of Philostratus"; Moyses Marcos, "Callidior ceteris persecutor: The Emperor Julian and His Place in Christian Historiography"; Valery Berlincourt, "Dea Roma and Mars: Intertext and Structure in Claudian's Panegyric for the Consuls Olybrius and Probinus"; Fabio Stok, "What is the Spangenberg Fragment?"; George M. Hollenback, "Do Not Steal Seed: An Overlooked Double Entendre in Oracula Sibyllina 2.71"; and Paolo Pellegrini, "R. A. B. Mynors and Harvard: An Unpublished Letter to E. K. Rand (10.10.1944)."
When the site of Elean Pylos was threatened by the construction of a dam in 1968, a team from the University of Colorado moved in to salvage as much information as possible about the ancient town before it was submerged. This report is divided chronologically: Middle Helladic, Geometric, Archaic, Classical, Roman, Byzantine, and Frankish. Each chapter consists of a brief description of the remains in the field, followed by a catalogue of the finds. While earlier finds are mainly of wells, the Classical settlement was the size of a large village providing everyday finds of bronze, lead, iron, and pottery. Some fragments of terracotta figurines and amber suggest a certain amount of wealth, but the primary character of the whole site is agricultural. Roman and Frankish remains are primarily funerary.
Domestic architecture at the site of Mycenae was systematically explored for the first time in a series of investigations sponsored by the Archaeological Society of Athens and Washington University in St. Louis between 1962 and 1966 and again in 1977. The work revealed a block of houses in the area north of the Treasury of Atreus, the so-called Panagia Houses. The author describes the artifacts and reconstructed floor plans, and draws comparisons with other Bronze Age sites. University Museum Monograph, 68
Bringing together a team of international experts from different subject areas - including law, history, archaeology and anthropology - this book re-evaluates the traditional narratives surrounding the origins of Roman law before the enactment of the Twelve Tables. Much is now known about the archaic period, relevant evidence from later periods continues to emerge and new methodologies bring the promise of interpretive inroads. This book explores whether, in light of recent developments in these fields, the earliest history of Roman law should be reconsidered. Drawing on the critical axioms of contemporary sociological and anthropological theory, the contributors yield new insights and offer new perspectives on Rome's early legal history. In doing so, they seek to revise our understanding of Roman legal history as well as to enrich our appreciation of its culture as a whole.
This is a study of the twelve small gold lamellae from Crete that were tokens for entrance into a golden afterlife: the deceased who were buried or cremated with them believed that they had 'earned Paradise.' The lamellae are placed within the context of a small corpus of similar texts, and published with extensive commentary on their topography, lettering and engraving, dialect and orthography, meter, chronology, and usage. The texts reveal a "hieros logos" whose poetics and rituals are not much different from Homeric rhapsodizing and prophetic discourses. Cretan contexts, both literary and archaeological, are also brought to bear on these incised objects and on the burial custom involved. Finally, this work adduces parallels to the texts on the lamellae from the Byzantine period and modern Greece to illuminate the everlasting and persistent human quest for 'earning Paradise.'
In an expansion of his 2012 Robson Classical Lectures, Clifford Ando examines the connection between the nature of the Latin language and Roman thinking about law, society, and empire. Drawing on innovative work in cognitive linguistics and anthropology, Roman Social Imaginaries considers how metaphor, metonymy, analogy, and ideation helped create the structures of thought that shaped the Roman Empire as a political construct. Beginning in early Roman history, Ando shows how the expansion of the empire into new territories led the Romans to develop and exploit Latin's extraordinary capacity for abstraction. In this way, laws and institutions invented for use in a single Mediterranean city-state could be deployed across a remarkably heterogeneous empire. Lucid, insightful, and innovative, the essays in Roman Social Imaginaries constitute some of today's most original thinking about the power of language in the ancient world.
In this extensively revised third edition of The Viking Age: A Reader, Somerville and McDonald successfully bring the Vikings and their world to life for twenty-first-century students and instructors. The diversity of the Viking era is revealed through the remarkable range and variety of sources presented as well as the geographical and chronological coverage of the readings. The third edition has been reorganized into fifteen chapters. Many sources have been added, including material on gender and warrior women, and a completely new final chapter traces the continuing cultural influence of the Vikings to the present day. The use of visual material has been expanded, and updated maps illustrate historical developments throughout the Viking Age. The English translations of Norse texts, many of them new to this collection, are straightforward and easily accessible, while chapter introductions contextualize the readings.
The relentlessly self-promoting amateur archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann took full credit for discovering Homer's Troy over one hundred years ago, and since then generations have thrilled to the tale of his ambitions and achievements. But Schliemann gained this status as an archaeological hero partly by deliberately eclipsing the man who had launched his career. Now, at long last, Susan Heuck Allen puts the record straight in this fascinating archaeological adventure that restores the British expatriate Frank Calvert to his rightful place in the story of the identification and excavation of Hisarlik, the site now thought to be Troy as described in the Iliad. Frank Calvert had lived in the Troad - in the northwest corner of Asia Minor - excavating there for fifteen years before Schliemann arrived and learning the local topography well. He was the first archaeologist to test the hypothesis that Hisarlik was the Troy of Hector and Helen. So that he would have unrestricted access to the site, he purchased part of the mound and was the first archaeologist to conduct excavations there. Running out of funds, he later interested Schliemann in the site. The thankless Schliemann stole Calvert's ideas, exploited his knowledge and advice, and finally stole Calvert's glory, in part by slandering him and denigrating his work. Allen corrects the record and does justice to a man who was a victim of his own integrity while giving a balanced treatment of Schliemann's true accomplishments. This meticulously researched book tells the story of Frank Calvert's development as an archaeologist, his adventures and discoveries. It focuses on the twists and turns of his turbulent relationship with the perfidious Schliemann, the resulting gains for archaeology, and the successful conclusion of their common quest. Allen has brought together a wide range of relevant published material as well as unpublished sources from archives, diaries, letters, and personal interviews to tell this gripping story.
This book provides an introduction to Roman dress accessories - defined here as what would today be called costume jewellery (non-precious metal jewellery). Items such as bracelets and pins are widely found in the Roman period in copper alloy, bone, glass, jet, shale and other materials. Completely new objects were introduced by the Romans, spread rapidly in each area of the Empire and were adopted by local populations. Different styles of Roman object became popular in each succeeding century, as dress fashions changed. Using new evidence from finds, production areas, distribution patterns and the locations of workshops are examined. The interpretation of dress accessories is introduced, with reference to the depiction of objects in Roman art. Brooches, bracelets, beads, necklaces, rings, earrings, pins and belt sets are explained in detail, and the most popular types are described and illustrated, enabling the reader to identify common objects that might be found on an archaeological site or in a museum.
In this book, Hella Eckardt offers new insights into literacy in the Roman world by examining the tools that enabled writing, such as inkwells, styli and tablets. Literacy was an important skill in the ancient world and power could be and often was, exercised through texts. Eckardt explores how writing equipment shaped practices such as posture and handwriting and her careful analysis of burial data shows considerable numbers of women and children interred with writing equipment, notably inkwells, in an effort to display status as well as age and gender. The volume offers a comprehensive review of recent approaches to literacy during Roman antiquity and adds a distinctive material turn to our understanding of this crucial skill and the embodied practices of its use. At the heart of this study lies the nature of the relationship between the material culture of writing and socio-cultural identities in the Roman period.
In this book, Gabriel Zuchtriegel explores and reconstructs the unwritten history of Classical Greece - the experience of nonelite colonial populations. Using postcolonial critical methods to analyze Greek settlements and their hinterlands of the fifth and fourth centuries BC, he reconstructs the social and economic structures in which exploitation, violence, and subjugation were implicit. He mines literary sources and inscriptions, as well as archaeological and data from excavations and field surveys, much of it published here for the first time, that offer new insights into the lives and status of nonelite populations in Greek colonies. Zuchtriegel demonstrates that Greece's colonial experience has far-reaching implications beyond the study of archaeology and ancient history. As reflected in foundational texts such as Plato's 'Laws' and Aristotle's 'Politics', the ideology that sustained Greek colonialism is still felt in many Western societies.
Stamps on Terra Sigillata Found in Excavations of the Theatre of Aptera, Crete presents a group of stamped fragments of Italian and eastern sigillata found in excavations of the theatre of Aptera (Crete). A total of 258 stamped sherds have been discovered and identified: 28 already published by the author and another 230 included here. Aptera now yields more stamped fragments of terra sigillata than any other Cretan city to date, including Knossos. The sigillata stamps from the theatre of Aptera can be analysed so as to address a series of fundamental questions. Three of these constitute traditional uses of the evidence available from an analysis of terra sigillata: which potters supplied the theatre of Aptera and its environs; where these potters were active; when these potters were active and therefore what production centres supplied the theatre and its area over time. Two questions go further, in an effort to take advantage of this kind of material's ability to testify to patterns of contact and exchange, as well as to details of life within the Roman imperial system: what distribution patterns might have brought terra sigillata to the theatre and its vicinity; and whether we can suggest how terra sigillata was consumed in Aptera's theatre and its environs. Aptera's theatre was a venue not only for performances but also for drinking, eating, and serving by the theatre-goers, spectators, actors and other performers. These activities took place during a period of prosperity for Roman Aptera in the first and second centuries, a period that coincides nicely with the production and distribution of terra sigillata. The people of Aptera and the surrounding area took full advantage of Crete's strategic position amid crossroads of transit and exchange as well as integration into the Roman economy, to display their prosperity and status in public and in private.
Picenum and the Ager Gallicus at the Dawn of the Roman Conquest: Landscape Archaeology and Material Culture is a coherent collection of papers presented at an International Workshop held in Ravenna (Italy) on 13-14 May 2019. The event, organized by the Universities of Bologna and Ghent and Arcadria, focussed on the transition between Italic culture and Romanised society in the central Adriatic area - the regions ager Gallicus and Picenum under Roman dominance - from the fourth to the second centuries BCE. By bringing together the experience of international research on this topic, the volume highlights a period that marks a profound transformation in the whole of central Italy by analysing the relationships between the central settlements and their territories and, more generally, by measuring the impact of early Romanization on the territorial structure, social organization and cultural substrata of populations living here. The volume also discusses methodological aspects regarding best practices in fieldwork, landscape investigation and study of material culture, identifying research lines and perspectives for the future deepening of knowledge in this crucial period of central Adriatic archaeology.
Acta Hyperborea is a periodical by a group of classical archaeologists associated with Danish universities and museums. Although primarily a journal of classical archaeology, it also covers other fields in classical scholarship. One of the main objectives of the periodical is the interdisciplinary approach to promote a dialogue between historians, philologists and archaeologists.
A desire to recreate Minoan palaces, villas, and houses of the Late Bronze Age inspired the author of this book to undertake an eight year research program that has radically modified our conception of the appearance of Cretan dwellings. He not only interprets the use of the rooms that partially survive but reconstructs the guest suites and banquet halls of the vanished upper storeys. Written both as a preparation for a visit to Crete and as an actual guide to the sites," the book is prefaced with an account of the island's geography, history, and culture in antiquity, and packed with illustrations including photographs, plans, reconstructions, and a map of the island showing the sites. Originally published in 1987. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. Originally published in 1987. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. |
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