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Books > Humanities > Archaeology > Archaeology by period / region > European archaeology > Classical Greek & Roman archaeology
In 2006, the American School of Classical Studies at Athens celebrates seventy five years of archaeological work in the Athenian Agora, the civic center of classical Athens. Since the first trench was dug on May 25th 1931, excavations have continued in a series of yearly campaigns, only briefly interrupted by the Second World War. The impact of the discoveries made on our understanding of Athenian history and topography is well-documented, but relatively little has been published about the fascinating history of the Agora excavations from the clearing of one of the most densely settled areas of Ottoman Athens at the start of the enterprise to the reconstruction of the Stoa of Attalos twenty five years later to house the finds. This book fills that gap, presenting a pictorial history of the project illustrated with many archival photographs. Rather than taking a simple chronological approach, the authors focus on some of the greatest contributions of the American School's work, such as the reconstruction of the Church of the Holy Apostles from 1954-1956 and the painstaking work involved in re-building the Stoa. Each section of photographs is preceded by an introductory text, and there are a number of maps and diagrams placing the images in context. In modern Greek.
This volume is both a companion to the editors' Greek Historical Inscriptions, 404-323 BC, and a successor to the later part of the Selection of Greek Historical Inscriptions to the End of the Fifth Century BC, edited by Russell Meiggs and David M. Lewis and published in 1969. As with the editors' earlier collection, it seeks to make a selection of historically significant inscribed texts accessible to scholars and students of fifth-century Greek history. Since the publication of Meiggs and Lewis' collection, a number of significant new inscriptions and fragments have been unearthed and new interpretations of previously known examples developed. As well as updating the scholarly corpus, this volume aims to broaden the thematic range of inscriptions discussed and to include a greater selection of material from outside Athens, while still adhering to the intention of presenting texts which are important not just as typical of their genre but in their own right. In doing so, it offers an entry point to all aspects of fifth-century history, from political and institutional, to social, economic, and religious, and in order to make the material as accessible as possible for a broad readership concerned with the study of these areas, the Greek texts are presented here alongside both English translations and incisive commentaries, which will be of utility both to the specialist academic and to those less familiar with the areas in question. The inclusion of photographs depicting inscribed stones and bronzes complements discussion of the inscriptions themselves and enables parallel consideration of their nature, appearance, and transmission history, resulting in a work of thoroughly comprehensive, cutting-edge scholarship and an invaluable reference text for the study of fifth-century Greek history.
This book undertakes to answer questions relating to the creation of deity assimilation statues for young boys, a common mode of commemoration for the Romans. In addition, it demonstrates that many statues traditionally understood to represent youthful divinities actually possess portraits, even and especially if the faces appear joyful. It also proposes that these deity assimilation statues were commissioned primarily as posthumous commemorations. As such, the sculptural examples should be recognized as belonging to and constituting an important class of funerary sculpture; a class which has been, to this point, overlooked. It is also suggested that despite the fact that they were posthumous commemorations, deity assimilation statues of young boys were not necessarily placed in a sepulchral context, rather, it is maintained that images of children assimilated to divinities primarily served a sentimental purpose, and that, in that capacity, they may have been intended for and regularly kept in a domestic context, close to the surviving family.
The twentieth annual meeting of the Symposium on Mediterranean Archaeology (SOMA) was held in Saint-Petersburg, Russia on 12-14 May 2016. As in the past, the symposium provided an important opportunity for scholars and researchers to come together and discuss their works in a friendly and supportive atmosphere. The main theme of the 2016 meeting is the archaeology of the Northern Black Sea. The Northern Black sea region is an area rich in archaeological sites, on the one hand, and subject to active industrial development, a rapidly growing population and the development of port and recreational facilities on the other, with an attendant growth of pollution and waste. Therefore, in addition to traditional issues related to archaeological finds in various parts of the Mediterranean, the papers focus on new ideas for the conservation and management of sites of historical and cultural heritage.
This volume addresses the treatment and perception of historic buildings in Imperial Rome, examining the ways in which public monuments were restored in order to develop an understanding of the Roman concept of built heritage. It considers examples from the first century BC to the second century AD, focusing primarily on the six decades between the Great Fire of AD 64 and the AD 120s, which constituted a period of dramatic urban transformation and architectural innovation in Rome. Through a detailed analysis of the ways in which the design, materiality, and appearance of buildings - including the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus and hut of Romulus - developed with successive restorations, the case is made for the existence of a consistent approach to the treatment of historic buildings in this period. This study also explores how changes to particular monuments and to the urban fabric as a whole were received by the people who experienced them first-hand, uncovering attitudes to built heritage in Roman society more widely. By examining descriptions of destruction and restoration in literature of the first and second centuries AD, including the works of Seneca the Younger, Pliny the Elder, Martial, Tacitus, and Plutarch, it forms a picture of the conflicting ways in which Rome's inhabitants responded to the redevelopment of their city. The results provide an alternative way of explaining key interventions in Rome's built environment and challenge the idea that heritage is a purely modern phenomenon.
For a century following the end of the Lamian War in 322 B.C., Athens' harbour at Pireus was almost constantly occupied by a Macedonian garrison. The Macedonian presence dealt a crucial blow to Athenian independence and Athenian democracy, initiating the first in a long and intermittent series of foreign occupations. The twenty-eight papers in this volume are based on an international conference hosted by the University of Athens in May 2001, and focus on various aspects of Athenian art, archaeology and history in the century of Macedonian domination. They consider Athens' new role as a political stepping stone for potential Successors to the throne of Macedon - Cassander, Demetrios Poliorketes and Antigonos Gonatas were each able to secure Macedonia by using Athens as a power base - and the ways in which Athenian culture was affected by the Macedonian presence. They contribute to the ongoing debate about the reasons for the Macedonian ascendancy, the degree of independence accorded Athens by their Macedonian overlords, the third-century archon list, and changes in Athenian art and architecture.
This is the first official guidebook to the site of Ancient Corinth published by the American School of Classical Studies at Athens in 50 years. Fully updated with the most current information, color photos, maps, and plans, the Corinth Site Guide is an indispensable resource for the casual tourist or professional archaeologist new to the site. The Guide begins with a history of Corinth and its excavations, followed by a tour of the museum. The Guide continues with a route inside the fenced area of the archaeological site from the Temple of Apollo to the Bema to the Peirene Fountain and more. The final section describes the ancient monuments outside the fence: the Odeum, the Theater, and the Asklepieion, and then the various remains of Ancient Corinth located within and outside the ancient Greek walls, including the Sanctuary of Demeter and Kore and the Lechaion Basilica. Short bibliographic notes for many entries lead the reader to fuller descriptions of monuments, objects, and concepts. A glossary is also provided. Interspersed between descriptions of 69 monuments are seven Topographical Notes and focus boxes on special topics such as geology, Pausanias, St. Paul, and prehistoric Corinth and the Corinthia.
In this book, Guy D. Middleton explores the fascinating lives of thirty real women of the ancient Mediterranean from the Palaeolithic to the Byzantine era. They include queens and aristocrats, such as the Pharoah Hatshepsut and the Etruscan noblewoman Seianti; Eritha and Karpathia, Bronze Age priestesses from the Aegean; a Pompeiian prostitute called Eutychis; the pagan philosopher Hypatia and the Christian saint Perpetua, from North Africa, as well as women from smaller communities. Middleton uses a wide range of archaeological and historical evidence, including burials and funerary practices, graffiti, inscriptions and painted pottery, handprints, human remains and a variety of historical texts, as well as the latest modern research. His volume weaves together the stories of real women, placing them firmly in the spotlight of history. Engagingly written and up-to-date in its scholarship, Middleton's book offers new insights for students and researchers in Ancient History, Archaeology and Mediterranean Studies, as well as in Women's History.
This book is the result of the processing of the excavation data and of the pottery coming from the stratigraphy underneath the cathedral of Siena. The surveys were conducted between August 2000 and May 2003 by the Department of Archaeology and History of Arts of the University of Siena, with the scientific coordination of Prof. Riccardo Francovich and Prof. Marco Valenti and the collaboration of the Opera del Duomo di Siena. The ultimate goal is to trace a view of the settlement types and economic framework that has affected the hill of the Cathedral from the Classical age to the late Middle Ages, combining stratigraphic data and the study of materials. The limited planimetric extension of the excavations (often physiological to urban contexts) did not allow an investigation in open area, so the findings have often been compared with those coming from the deposits investigated in the immediate vicinity, both in front and below the Santa Maria della Scala, in order to obtain a more complete and articulated perspective on a diachronic context. The stratigraphy is developed over a time span ranging from the 7th century BC until the 20th century AD, unearthing a very structured sequence that represents a significant view in understanding the evolutionary dynamics of the urban fabric of Siena: in this regard, it is important to emphasize the fact that the chronological junction on which most attention is focused on is between the Augustian Age and the end of the 14th century, since the survey revealed that the archaeological deposit is better preserved in the time period between the two phases mentioned above and, as a result, the restitution of ceramics has been more complete. The settlement/economic dynamics developed over this extended period in different ways and this is what we are going to analyse: the goal is to develop a dialogue between stratigraphic deposit and material culture, with the aim of understanding the evolution of an urban reality, especially in those phases that led to the crisis of the "classical" city and its consequent transformation and reconfiguration between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages.
It has long been thought that imperial portrait types were officially commissioned to commemorate specific historical moments and that they were made available to both the mint and the marble workshops in Rome, assuming a close correspondence between portraits on coins and in the round. All of this, however, has never been clearly proven, nor has it been disproven by a close systematic examination of the evidence on a broad material basis by those scholars who have questioned it. Through systematic case studies of Faustina the Younger's and Marcus Aurelius' portraits on coins and in sculpture, this book provides new insights into the functioning of the imperial image in Rome in the second century AD that move a difficult, much-discussed subject forward decisively. The new evidence presented here has made it necessary to adjust the established model; more flexibility is needed to describe the processes and practices behind the phenomenon of 'repeated' imperial portraits and how the imperial portrait worked in the mint of Rome and in the metropolitan marble workshops.
Final report on the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age evidence (pottery, metalwork, terracottas, architecture and other constructions) from excavations conducted by the University of Chicago at the sanctuary of Poseidon at Isthmia between 1952 and 1989. Stylistic analysis of artifacts offers important new information on Corinthian production: Isthmia has produced the first substantial collection of Early Iron Age Corinthian terracottas, for example, as well as 8th-century human figure depictions. Functional analysis, developing established methodology for site characterization, distinguishes Late Bronze Age settlement from Early Iron Age cult activity. Thus Isthmia may be counted among the growing number of Greek shrines established during the Bronze Age/Iron Age transition, and the nature and variety of cult practices at the site may be compared with those elsewhere. In its Corinthian context, Isthmia offers unique insights into 800 years of development, from Mycenaean province to Archaic polis.
The Making of a Roman Imperial Estate presents excavations and analysis of material remains at Vagnari, in southeast Italy, which have facilitated a detailed and precise phasing of a rural settlement, both in the late Republican period in the 2nd and 1st centuries BC, when it was established on land leased from the Roman state after Rome's conquest of the region, and when it became the hub (vicus) of a vast agricultural estate owned by the emperor himself in the early 1st century AD. This research addresses a range of crucial questions concerning the nature of activity at the estate and the changes in population in this transitional period. It also maps the development of the vicus in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD, shaping our understanding of the diversity and the mechanics of the imperial economy and the role of the vicus and its inhabitants in generating revenues for the emperor. By contextualising the estate in its landscape and exploring its economic and social impact on Apulia and beyond, archaeological research gives us extremely valuable insight into the making of a Roman imperial estate.
Roman Egypt is a critical area of interdisciplinary research, which has steadily expanded since the 1970s and continues to grow. Egypt played a pivotal role in the Roman empire, not only in terms of political, economic, and military strategies, but also as part of an intricate cultural discourse involving themes that resonate today - east and west, old world and new, acculturation and shifting identities, patterns of language use and religious belief, and the management of agriculture and trade. Roman Egypt was a literal and figurative crossroads shaped by the movement of people, goods, and ideas, and framed by permeable boundaries of self and space. This handbook is unique in drawing together many different strands of research on Roman Egypt, in order to suggest both the state of knowledge in the field and the possibilities for collaborative, synthetic, and interpretive research. Arranged in seven thematic sections, each of which includes essays from a variety of disciplinary vantage points and multiple sources of information, it offers new perspectives from both established and younger scholars, featuring individual essay topics, themes, and intellectual juxtapositions.
This handsome volume describes and illustrates the excavation of an artificial rock shelter in Crete, Greece. Minoan pottery and small finds such as stone tools, loomweights, and ecofactual remains were recovered. The ceramics elucidate the style and chronology of East Cretan White-on-Dark Ware, which dates to the end of the Early Bronze Age.
The Hellenistic Period witnessed striking new developments in art, literature and science. This volume addresses a particularly vibrant area of innovation: the study of animals and the natural world. While Aristotle and his followers had revolutionized fields such as zoology and botany during the fourth century BC, these disciplines took on exciting new directions during Hellenistic times. Kings imported exotic species into their royal capitals from faraway lands. Travel writers described unusual creatures that they had never previously encountered. And buyers from a range of social levels chose works of art featuring animals and plants to decorate their palaces, houses and tombs. While textual sources shed some light on these developments, the central premise of Art, Science and the Natural World in the Ancient Mediterranean is that our surviving artistic evidence permits a fuller understanding. Accordingly, the study brings together a rich body of visual material that invites new observations on how and why knowledge of the natural world became so important during this period. It is suggested that this cultural phenomenon affected many different groups in society: from kings in Alexandria and Pergamon to provincial aristocrats in the Levant, and from the Julio-Claudian imperial family to prosperous homeowners in Pompeii. By analysing the works of art produced for these individuals, a vivid picture emerges of this remarkable aspect of ancient culture.
Before the creation of the Agora as a civic center in the 7th century B.C., the region northwest of the Acropolis was a vast cemetery. Over 150 ancient burial places have been found by excavators, and a few of the more remarkable are described here. These range from a wealthy Mycenaean chamber tomb, filled with the vases and jewelry of a rich noblewoman, to the poignant pithos burial of an infant from around 725 B.C., accompanied by eight tiny vases. As well as describing the assemblages found, the author discusses the symbolism of funeral rites and the information about social status and identity that burials reveal.
Pompeii's tragedy is our windfall: an ancient city fully preserved, its urban design and domestic styles speaking across the ages. This richly illustrated book conducts us through the captured wonders of Pompeii, evoking at every turn the life of the city as it was 2,000 years ago. When Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D. its lava preserved not only the Pompeii of that time but a palimpsest of the city's history, visible traces of the different societies of Pompeii's past. Paul Zanker, a noted authority on Roman art and architecture, disentangles these tantalizing traces to show us the urban images that marked Pompeii's development from country town to Roman imperial city. Exploring Pompeii's public buildings, its streets and gathering places, we witness the impact of religious changes, the renovation of theaters and expansion of athletic facilities, and the influence of elite families on the city's appearance. Through these stages, Zanker adeptly conjures a sense of the political and social meanings in urban planning and public architecture. The private houses of Pompeii prove equally eloquent, their layout, decor, and architectural detail speaking volumes about the life, taste, and desires of their owners. At home or in public, at work or at ease, these Pompeians and their world come alive in Zanker's masterly rendering. A provocative and original reading of material culture, his work is an incomparable introduction to urban life in antiquity.
Walking served as an occasion for the display of power and status in ancient Rome, where great men paraded with their entourages through city streets and elite villa owners strolled with friends in private colonnades and gardens. In this book-length treatment of the culture of walking in ancient Rome, Timothy O'Sullivan explores the careful attention which Romans paid to the way they moved through their society. He employs a wide range of literary, artistic and architectural evidence to reveal the crucial role that walking played in the performance of social status, the discourse of the body and the representation of space. By examining how Roman authors depict walking, this book sheds new light on the Romans themselves - not only how they perceived themselves and their experience of the world, but also how they drew distinctions between work and play, mind and body, and Republic and Empire.
The fully revised second edition of this successful volume includes updates on the latest archaeological research in all chapters, and two new essays on Greek and Roman art. It retains its unique, paired essay format, as well as key contributions from leading archaeologists and historians of the classical world. * Second edition is updated and revised throughout, showcasing the latest research and fresh theoretical approaches in classical archaeology * Includes brand new essays on ancient Greek and Roman art in a modern context * Designed to encourage critical thinking about the interpretation of ancient material culture and the role of modern perceptions in shaping the study of art and archaeology * Features paired essays one covering the Greek world, the other, the Roman to stimulate a dialogue not only between the two ancient cultures, but between scholars from different historiographic and methodological traditions * Includes maps, chronologies, diagrams, photographs, and short editorial introductions to each chapter
Longlisted for the RUNCIMAN AWARD, 2021 Medicine is one of the great fields of achievement of the Ancient Greeks. Hippocrates is celebrated worldwide as the father of medicine and the Hippocratic Oath is admired throughout the medical profession as a founding statement of ethics and ideals. In the fifth century BC, Greeks even wrote of medicine as a newly discovered craft they had invented. Robin Lane Fox's remarkable book puts their invention of medicine in a wider context, from the epic poems of Homer to the first doctors known to have been active in the Greek world. He examines what we do and do not know about Hippocrates and his Oath and the many writings that survive under his name. He then focuses on seven core texts which give the case histories of named individuals, showing that books 1 and 3 belong far earlier than previously recognised. Their re-dating has important consequences for the medical awareness of the great Greek dramatists and the historians Herodotus and Thucydides. Robin Lane Fox pieces together the doctor's thinking from his terse observations and relates it in a new way to the history of Greek prose and ideas. This original and compelling book opens windows onto many other aspects of the classical world, from women's medicine to street-life, empire, art, sport, sex and even botany. It fills a dark decade in a new way and carries readers along an extraordinary journey form Homer's epics to the grateful heirs of the Greek case histories, first in the Islamic world and then in early modern Europe.
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.
Even though, at death, identity and social status may undergo major changes, by studying funerary customs we can greatly gain in the understanding of a community's social structure, distribution of wealth and property, and the degree of flexibility or divisiveness in the apportionment of power. With its great regional diversity and variety of community forms and networks, ancient Greece offers a unique context for exploring, through the burial evidence, how communities developed. Mortuary Variability and Social Diversity in Ancient Greece brings together early career scholars working on funerary customs in Greece from the Early Iron Age to the Roman period. Papers present various thematic and interdisciplinary analysis in which funerary contexts provide insights on individuals, social groups and communities. Themes discussed include issues of territoriality, the reconstruction of social roles of particular groups of people, and the impact that major historical events may have had on the way individuals or specific groups of individuals treated their dead.
John J. Dobbins, Professor of Roman Art and Archaeology, taught at the University of Virginia in the Department of Art from 1978 until his retirement in 2019. His legacy of research and pedagogy is explored in A Quaint & Curious Volume: Essays in Honor of John J. Dobbins. Professor Dobbins' research in the field of Roman art and archaeology spans the geographical and chronological limits of the Roman Empire, from Pompeii to Syria, and Etruria to Spain. This volume demonstrates some of his wide-reaching interests, expressed through the research of his former graduate students. Several essays examine the city of Pompeii and cover the topics of masonry analysis, re-examinations of streets and drains, and analyses of the heating capacity of baths in Pompeii. Beyond Pompeii, the archaeological remains of bakeries are employed to elucidate labor specialization in the Late Roman period across the Mediterranean basin. Collaborations between Professor Dobbins and his former students are also explored, including a pioneering online numismatic database and close examination of sculpture and mosaics, including expressions of identity and patronage through case studies of the Ara Pacis and mosaics at Antioch-on-the-Orontes. A Quaint & Curious Volume not only demonstrates John Dobbins' scholarly legacy, but also presents new readings of archaeological data and art, illustrating the impact that one professor can have on the wider field of Roman art and archaeology through the continuing work of his students.
This volume contains the proceedings of two international meetings held by the Minerva Center for the Relations between Israel and Aram in Biblical Times (RIAB) in Ramat-Gan/Jerusalem (March 2017) and Leipzig (May 2018). Most of the papers relate to various aspects of the Aramaic epigraphy in different contexts with a second part of the volume dealing with Idumean ostraca. The papers will be of interest to ancient historians, archaeologists of the ancient Near East, scholars of Semitic and Biblical studies and the ancient Near East.
In this book, Ellen Swift uses design theory, previously neglected in Roman archaeology, to investigate Roman artefacts in a new way, making a significant contribution to both Roman social history, and our understanding of the relationships that exist between artefacts and people. Based on extensive data collection and the close study of artefacts from museum collections and archives, the book examines the relationship between artefacts, everyday behaviour, and experience. The concept of 'affordances'-features of an artefact that make possible, and incline users towards, particular uses for functional artefacts-is an important one for the approach taken. This concept is carefully evaluated by considering affordances in relation to other sources of evidence, such as use-wear, archaeological context, the end-products resulting from artefact use, and experimental reconstruction. Artefact types explored in the case studies include locks and keys, pens, shears, glass vessels, dice, boxes, and finger-rings, using material mainly drawn from the north-western Roman provinces, with some material also from Roman Egypt. The book then considers how we can use artefacts to understand particular aspects of Roman behaviour and experience, including discrepant experiences according to factors such as age, social position, and left- or right-handedness, which are fostered through artefact design. The relationship between production and users of artefacts is also explored, investigating what particular production methods make possible in terms of user experience, and also examining production constraints that have unintended consequences for users. The book examines topics such as the perceived agency of objects, differences in social practice across the provinces, cultural change and development in daily practice, and the persistence of tradition and social convention. It shows that design intentions, everyday habits of use, and the constraints of production processes each contribute to the reproduction and transformation of material culture. |
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