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Books > Humanities > Archaeology > Archaeology by period / region > European archaeology > Classical Greek & Roman archaeology
The three centuries which followed the conquests of Alexander are perhaps the most thrilling of all periods of ancient history. This was an age of cultural globalization: in the third century BC, a single language carried you from the Rhone to the Indus. A Celt from the lower Danube could serve in the mercenary army of a Macedonian king ruling in Egypt, and a Greek philosopher from Cyprus could compare the religions of the Brahmins and the Jews on the basis of first-hand knowledge of both. Kings from Sicily to Tajikistan struggled to meet the challenges of ruling multi-ethnic states, and Greek city-states came together under the earliest federal governments known to history. The scientists of Ptolemaic Alexandria measured the circumference of the earth, while pioneering Greek argonauts explored the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic coast of Africa. Drawing on inscriptions, papyri, coinage, poetry, art, and archaeology Peter Thonemann opens up the history and culture of the vast Hellenistic world, from the death of Alexander the Great (323 BC) to the Roman conquest of the Ptolemaic kingdom (30 BC).
The ancient Greeks attributed great importance to the sacred during war and campaigning, as demonstrated from their earliest texts. Among the first four lines of the Iliad, for example, is a declaration that Apollo began the feud between Achilles and Agamemnon and sent a plague upon the Greek army because its leader, Agamemnon, had mistreated Apollo's priest. In this first in-depth study of the attitude of military commanders towards holy ground, Sonya Nevin addresses the customs and conduct of these leaders in relation to sanctuaries, precincts, shrines, temples and sacral objects. Focusing on a variety of Greek kings and captains, the author shows how military leaders were expected to react to the sacred sites of their foes. She further explores how they were likely to respond, and how their responses shaped the way such generals were viewed by their communities, by their troops, by their enemies and also by those like Herodotus, Thucydides and Xenophon who were writing their lives. This is a groundbreaking study of the significance of the sacred in warfare and the wider culture of antiquity.
Wroxeter: Ashes under Uricon offers a perspective on how people over time have viewed the abandoned Roman city of Wroxeter in Shropshire. It responds to three main artistic outputs relating to the site: poetry, images and texts. The poets include Wilfred Owen, A.E. Housman and Mary Webb. The writers cover a range of interests relating to the site but include Darwin, Dickens, Rosemary Sutcliff and John Buchan. The artists are perhaps less well-known but include watercolours by Thomas Girtin, archaeological reconstructions by Alan Sorrell and Amedee Forrestier, and paintings by Wroxeter's own resident artist, Thomas Prytherch. Photographs are represented by the work of Francis Bedford and others more closely associated with aerial archaeology such as J.K. St Joseph and Arnold Baker. While the famous names have their value, The book also investigates what locals and visitors thought of the site over time - how they perceived it and have responded to it. It reflects in particular upon how the public and locals responded to the archaeological discoveries on the site and perceived the narratives that were created by the archaeologists working on it. It contends that archaeologists are just as much story-tellers as the writers, poets or artists, although their work is more filtered or controlled, and through these narratives, they inspire others. A further strand to the book is to explore the increasing focus over the past century on the democratisation of access to and understanding of the site, alongside increasing state intervention in its running. This too has had its impact on who visits and what is understood about the site. A short concluding section offers a vision of how the site might develop in the near-future, and how its cultural side might flourish once again.
Rescue excavations were carried out along the terrace north of Ancient Corinth by Henry Robinson, the director of the Corinth Excavations, and the American School of Classical Studies at Athens on behalf of the Greek Archaeological Service, in 1961 and 1962. They revealed 70 tile graves, limestone sarcophagi, and cremation burials (the last are rare in Corinth before the Julian colony), and seven chamber tombs (also rare before the Roman period). The burials ranged in date from the 5th century B.C. to the 6th century A.D., and about 240 skeletons were preserved for study. This volume publishes the results of these excavations and examines the evidence for changing burial practices in the Greek city, Roman colony, and Christian town. Documented are single graves and deposits, the Robinson "Painted Tomb," two more hypogea, and four built chamber tombs. Ethne Barnes describes the human skeletal remains, and David Reese discusses the animal bones found in the North Terrace tombs. The author further explores the architecture of the chamber tombs as well as cemeteries, burial practices, and funeral customs in ancient Corinth. One appendix addresses a Roman chamber tomb at nearby Hexamilia, excavated in 1937; the second, by David Jordan, the lead tablets from a chamber tomb and its well. Concordances, grave index numbers, Corinth inventory numbers, and indexes follow. This study will be of interest to classicists, historians of several periods, and scholars studying early Christianity.
Kom al-Ahmer and Kom Wasit were ideally placed to take advantage of the Mediterranean trade given their close proximity to the Egyptian ports of Thonis-Heracleion, Alexandria, and Rosetta during the Hellenistic, Roman, Late Roman, and early Islamic period. The social and economic vitality of the sites has been revealed during investigations undertaken by the Italian archaeological mission between 2012 and 2016 and published in Kom al-Ahmer - Kom Wasit I: Excavations in the Metelite Nome, Egypt ca. 700 BC - AD 100. This volume presents over 1070 coins (ca. 310 BC-AD 641) and 1320 examples of Late Roman and Early Islamic pottery, testimony to the considerable commercial activity in the region during the Late Antique period. Kom al-Ahmer and Kom Wasit emerge as centers of an exchange network involving large-scale trade of raw materials to and from the central and eastern Mediterranean.
Unearthing Alexandria's Archaeology: The Italian's Contribution' contains the results of an archival survey, historical research, and archaeological description of the main Italian excavations in Alexandria from the 1890s to the 1950s. The Italian archaeological investigations in the city of Alexandria are presented through unpublished photographs of Evaristo Breccia, Achille Adriani, and some of the glass negatives of the Graeco- Roman Museum of Alexandria. Various Italians contributed to the fieldwork and the production of drawings and plans, and documenting the majority of the most important sites in Alexandria, on which our archaeological knowledge today is based. But their names have been forgotten compared with Giuseppe Botti, Breccia, and Adriani: Giacomo Biondi, Gino Beghe, Antonio Gentili, Giuseppe Ramacciotti, Mariano Bartocci, Giovanni Dattari, Despina Sinadino, Michele Salvago, Orazio Abate, and Giovanni Peruto. The book gives detailed descriptions of the Italian excavations at Hadra, Chatby, Anfushi, Kom al-Chougafa, the Serapeum, and Kom al-Dikka, accompanied by often unpublished photographs and followed by a catalogue of other rare photographs of different archaeological sites in Alexandria.
Latrinae: Roman Toilets in the Northwestern Provinces of the Roman Empire' presents examples of Roman toilets from a wide area in northwestern Europe comprising Austria, Belgium, Britain, Germany and the Netherlands. Seven papers consider 'typically Roman' stone channel toilets, while five papers discuss the actually much more common wooden toilets of the cesspit type. Some studies concentrate on a single installation, others present a number of installations in their architectural surroundings. In addition, Roman chamber pots, which could be used either solo or in a toilet chair, are presented in two papers. A further paper on stercus, usually connected to latrine duty in the Roman army, questions this interpretation and offers a different meaning of the word. This book is the first collection on Roman toilets of the northwestern provinces, and gives a good overview of the possibilities for human waste removal in Roman times. The volume provides a fascinating introduction to this under-researched group of Roman installations.
Hilprecht's collection is important because it was put together at the turn of the century by one of the great names in Near Eastern archaeology, because he had documented the provenance and nature of the pieces, and because so many of the objects were from Anatolia, thus providing evidence for provincial bronze production of a type that is not well known or published. The Hilprecht collection is not well known, yet it forms a cohesive group which this publication now makes available, taking advantage of the recent strides in the study of classical bronzes. University Museum Monograph, 98
The most famous conspiracy of silence in the history of antiquity is examined here by one of the three archaeologists entrusted by the Archaeological Society of Athens with the final excavations of the Sanctuary. He traces the history of the cult in the archaeological remains, from the first traces of habitation at the site in the Middle Bronze Age (around 1900 B.C.) to its final grandeur and decay in Imperial Roman times. A guided tour of the Museum at Eleusis, illustrated with photographs of objects in the Museum, as well as air views, plans, and detailed photographs of the ruins closely correlated with the text, takes into account the needs of the visitor at the site as well as the reader at home. Originally published in 1961. 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.
Mail armour (commonly mislabelled 'chainmail') was used for more than two millennia on the battlefield. After its invention in the Iron Age, mail rapidly spread all over Europe and beyond. The Roman army, keen on new military technology, soon adopted mail armour and used it successfully for centuries. Its history did not stop there and mail played a vital role in warfare during the Middle Ages up to the Early Modern Period. Given its long history, one would think mail is a well-documented material, but that is not the case. For the first time, this books lays a solid foundation for the understanding of mail armour and its context through time. It applies a long-term multi-dimensional approach to extract a wealth of as yet untapped information from archaeological, iconographic and written sources. This is complemented with technical insights on the mail maker's chaine operatoire.
'Archaeology and Techne' publishes papers resulting from the European project EPNet (Production and Distribution of Food during the Roman Empire: Economic and Political Dynamics). Various interdisciplinary research techniques and results are presented. The main goal of the EPNET project was to use formal tools to investigate existing hypotheses about the Roman economy in order to understand which products, and in which periods, were distributed through the different geographical regions of the empire. The project also aimed to ascertain the role that different political and economic agents played in controlling both production and trade networks.
Athenian governance and culture are reconstructed from the Bronze Age into the historical era based on traditions, archaeological contexts and remains, foremost the formal commensal and libation krater. Following Mycenaean immigration from the Peloponnesos during the transitional years, changes in governance are observable. Groups under aristocratic leadership, local and immigrant, aspired to coexist under a surprisingly formal set of stipulations that should be recognized as Athens' first constitution. Synoikismos did not refer to a political union of Attica, sometimes attributed to Theseus, but to a union of aristocratic houses (oikoi). The union replaced absolute monarchy with a new oligarchical-monarchy system, each king selected from one of the favoured aristocratic houses and ruling for life without inheritance. The system prevailed through the late eleventh to the mid-eighth c. and is corroborated by Athenian traditions cross-referenced with archaeological data from the burial grounds, and a formerly discredited list of Athenian Iron Age kings. Some burial grounds have been tentatively identified as those of the Melanthids, Alcmeonids, Philaids and Medontids, who settled the outskirts of Athens along with other migrant groups following the decline of the elite in the Peloponnesos. While the Melanthids left during the 11th c. Ionian Migration other aristocratic houses remained and contributed to the evolution of the historical era polis of Athens. One noble family, the Alcmeonids preserved their cemetery into the Archaic period in a burial record of 600 years' duration. Incorporated into this work is a monograph on the Athenian formal krater used by these primarily Neleid aristocratic houses in assembly and ritual. Some Homeric practices parallel those found in Athens, so the Ionic poets may have documented customs that had existed on the Mainland and were transferred to Ionia during the Ionian Migration. The demise of both the constitution and the standard, ancestral krater in Athens following a mid-eighth c. watershed is testimony to an interval of political change, as noted by Ian Morris, before the systematized establishment of annual archonship in the following century. The support this research has given to the validity of the King List has resulted in a proposed new chronology, with an earlier onset for the Geometric period at 922 BC, rather than the currently accepted 900 BC. The relative chronology of Coldstream based on style is generally accepted here, but some intermediate stages are revised based on perceptible break data, such as the onset of a new kingship, a reported war, or the demise of a governance system.
Domesticating Empire is the first contextually-oriented monograph on Egyptian imagery in Roman households. Caitlin Barrett draws on case studies from Flavian Pompeii to investigate the close association between representations of Egypt and a particular type of Roman household space: the domestic garden. Through paintings and mosaics portraying the Nile, canals that turned the garden itself into a miniature "Nilescape," and statuary depicting Egyptian themes, many gardens in Pompeii offered ancient visitors evocations of a Roman vision of Egypt. Simultaneously faraway and familiar, these imagined landscapes made the unfathomable breadth of empire compatible with the familiarity of home. In contrast to older interpretations that connect Roman "Aegyptiaca" to the worship of Egyptian gods or the problematic concept of "Egyptomania," a contextual analysis of these garden assemblages suggests new possibilities for meaning. In Pompeian houses, Egyptian and Egyptian-looking objects and images interacted with their settings to construct complex entanglements of "foreign" and "familiar," "self" and "other." Representations of Egyptian landscapes in domestic gardens enabled individuals to present themselves as sophisticated citizens of empire. Yet at the same time, household material culture also exerted an agency of its own: domesticizing, familiarizing, and "Romanizing" once-foreign images and objects. That which was once imagined as alien and potentially dangerous was now part of the domus itself, increasingly incorporated into cultural constructions of what it meant to be "Roman." Featuring brilliant illustrations in both color and black and white, Domesticating Empire reveals the importance of material culture in transforming household space into a microcosm of empire.
Herodotus in the Long Nineteenth Century traces the impact of Herodotus' Histories during a momentous period in world history - an era of heightened social mobility, religious controversy, scientific discovery and colonial expansion. Contributions by an international team of specialists in Greek historiography, classical archaeology, receptions, and nineteenth-century intellectual history shed new light on how the Histories were read, remembered, and re-imagined in historical writing and in an exciting array of real-world contexts: from the classrooms of English public schools and universities to the music hall, museum, or gallery; from the news-stand to the nursery; and from the banks of the Nile to the mountains of the Hindu Kush. They reveal not only how engagement with Herodotus' work permeated nationalist discourses of the period, but also the extent to which these national and disciplinary contexts helped shape the way both Herodotus and the ancient past have been understood and interpreted.
The modern Cypriot town of Polis Chrysochous-"City of Gold"-lies above the city of Arsinoe and the earlier city-kingdom of Marion. In 1885 excavators began exploring the extensive cemeteries of these cities. Since 1983 the Princeton Cyprus Expedition has focused on the remains of sanctuaries, public buildings, workshops, and private residences spanning the Geometric through Classical periods of Marion and the Hellenistic through Roman, early Christian, and medieval periods of Arsinoe. Combining archaeological investigation and historical analysis, City of Gold relates the discoveries establishing that these cities had close ties with Greece and with regions from Egypt to Anatolia, findings best represented by the painted vases and terracotta sculptures of Marion and the architecture of Arsinoe. Nearly half of the 110 artifacts included in the catalogue are previously unpublished, and another third are published in detail for the first time. Distributed for the Princeton University Art Museum Exhibition Schedule: Princeton University Art Museum(10/20/12-01/20/13)
Throughout its history, the Kingdom of Israel had strong connections with the Aramaean world. Constantly changing relations, from rivalry and military conflicts to alliances and military cooperation, affected the history of the whole Levant and left their marks on both Biblical and extra-Biblical sources. New studies demonstrate that Israelite state formation was contemporaneous with the formation of the Aramaean polities (11th-9th centuries BCE). Consequently, the Jordan Valley (and especially its northern parts and its extension to the valley of Lebanon) was a constantly changing border zone between different Iron Age polities. In light of that, there is a need to study the history of Ancient Israel not only from the "Canaanite" point of view but also within the political and cultural context of the Aramaean world. This volume brings together experts working in different fields to address the relations and interactions between Aram and Israel during the Early Iron Age (12th to 8th centuries BCE) through three main aspects: the first aspect, relates to the archaeology and the material culture of Aram and Israel, with a special focus on the Jordan valley as a political and cultural border zone. The material culture of the region is examined in its spatial as well as chronological context in order to discuss cultural traits as against political affiliation. The second aspect relates to the history of the Aramaean kingdoms highlighting the formation of territorial kingdoms in the Levant and the history of Israel in its Aramaean context. The third aspect relates to the question of historical memory especially as it was preserved in the biblical traditions. The place of the Aramaeans in the Biblical literature is discussed as a mean to clarify the construction of Israelite and Aramaic identity in a fluid cultural region.
Blood of the Provinces is the first fully comprehensive study of the largest part of the Roman army, the auxilia. This non-citizen force constituted more than half of Rome's celebrated armies and was often the military presence in some of its territories. Diverse in origins, character, and culture, they played an essential role in building the empire, sustaining the unequal peace celebrated as the pax Romana, and enacting the emperor's writ. Drawing upon the latest historical and archaeological research to examine recruitment, belief, daily routine, language, tactics, and dress, this volume offers an examination of the Empire and its soldiers in a radical new way. Blood of the Provinces demonstrates how the Roman state addressed a crucial and enduring challenge both on and off the battlefield - retaining control of the miscellaneous auxiliaries upon whom its very existence depended. Crucially, this was not simply achieved by pay and punishment, but also by a very particular set of cultural attributes that characterized provincial society under the Roman Empire. Focusing on the soldiers themselves, and encompassing the disparate military communities of which they were a part, it offers a vital source of information on how individuals and communities were incorporated into provincial society under the Empire, and how the character of that society evolved as a result.
JHP is an independent learned journal dedicated to the research of ceramics and objects of daily use of the Hellenistic period in the Mediterranean region and beyond. It aims at bringing together archaeologists, historians, philologists, numismatists and scholars of related disciplines engaged in the research of the Hellenistic heritage.
Lyde Green Roman Villa, Emersons Green, South Gloucestershire was excavated between mid-2012 and mid-2013 along with its surroundings and antecedent settlement. The excavations took place as part of the Emersons Green East Development Area, funded through the mechanism of commercial archaeology by Gardiner & Theobald LLP. The results of the stratigraphic analysis are given here along with specialist reports on the human remains, pottery (including thin sections), ceramic building material, small finds, coinage and iron-working waste. Six open-area excavations allowed the archaeologists the rare opportunity to trace a substantial part of the site's layout. Three ancillary buildings within the villa compound, including a bathhouse, were excavated. Evidence of advanced water management was uncovered in the form of lead piping, ceramic drain tiles and an enigmatic stone structure built into a canalised spring line. The villa's economy included stock raising, crop processing and iron and textile production. The settlement appears to have originated in the mid-1st century AD, or slightly earlier.
This is the first study of ancient theatre and performance around the coasts of the Black Sea. It brings together key specialists around the region with well-established international scholars on theatre and the Black Sea, from a wide range of disciplines, especially archaeology, drama and history. In that way the wealth of material found around these great coasts is brought together with the best methodology in all fields of study. This landmark book broadens the whole concept and range of theatre outside Athens. It shows ways in which the colonial world of the Black Sea may be compared importantly with Southern Italy and Sicily in terms of theatre and performance. At the same time, it shows too how the Black Sea world itself can be better understood through a focus on the development of theatre and performance there, both among Greeks and among their local neighbours.
This book presents the results of the excavations conducted by the Archaeological Service of the Ministry of Culture and carried out by archaeologists working just ahead of the construction teams building the new Metro. They uncovered a wealth of artefacts, and the foundations of homes and temples from ancient Athens, which had been hidden under the modern city. The excavations followed Vouliagmenis Avenue and the underground Line 2 of the Metro whose seven stations serve the southern areas of Athens. Both the Metro line and Vouliagmenis Avenue follow the course of the ancient city road which connected the city of Athens with the demes (suburbs) west of Hymettus and continued to the Sanctuary at Sounion and the mines at Laurion. Full of interesting detail and extensively illustrated, the book explores the history of one of the main arterial routes of Attica- the historical region that encompasses the city of Athens-which was used from antiquity until the present day. The archaeological artefacts illustrated, both in drawings and with photographs, were recovered from excavations in both public and private sites. Translated by British archaeologist Nicola Wardle. Foreword by Michalis A. Tiverios, Emeritus Professor of the Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki.
A penetrating and lucid history of the best-known and most spectacular monument to the Roman Empire in Britain In this new edition of their remarkable book, the authors have updated their study of the famous Wall that divided Britain in two. Occasionally the Romans would march north and consider the complete conquest of the island; at other times the northern tribes would spill over the Wall to pillage the Roman province. Despite this, for three hundred years, with very few lapses, the peace of the frontier was regulated by the troops along the Wall. Only when the Western Empire fell did the soldiers drift away and the Wall decay. Taking into account new research findings about the building of the Wall, David Breeze and Brian Dobson include fascinating details about the Roman army, its religion and daily bureaucratic life. A selection of photographs, maps and diagrams help to make this a book for both the expert and the layman, being simultaneously erudite and unusually accessible.
Rome, Ostia, Pompeii captures how studies of the Roman city are
currently shifting away from architecture towards a dynamic
understanding of activities within the urban space. This is
becoming a defining feature of new and innovative research on the
nature of ancient urbanism and is underpinned by an understanding
of the relationship between space and society - the two sides of
the core dialectic of the 'Spatial Turn' in cultural studies. In
this volume a new generation of scholars provide detailed case
studies of the three best known cities from antiquity, Pompeii,
Ostia, and Rome, and focus on the movement or flow of a Roman
city's inhabitants and visitors, demonstrating how this movement
contributes to our understanding of the way different elements of
society interacted in space. Through a uniquely broad range of
historical issues, such as the commoditization of movement in
patronage relationships, the appropriation of 'architectural space'
by 'movement space', the importance of movement and traffic in
influencing representations of ancient urbanism and the Roman
citizen, this volume studies movement as it is found both at the
city gate, in the forum, in the portico, and on the street, and as
it is represented in the text and on the page.
More than a century has passed past since German archeologist
Heinrich Schliemann discovered the treasures of Bronze Age Mycenae.
The richly decorated artifacts of the entombed warriors, whose
bodies still lay in their graves, confirmed that Homer's epic "The
Iliad" was based upon true events, and that the Achaeans described
in his poems probably did exist.
War lay at the heart of life in the classical world, from conflicts between tribes or states to internal or civil wars. Battles were resolved by violent face-to-face encounters: war was a very personal experience. At the same time, warfare and its conduct often had significant and wide-reaching economic, social, or political consequences. The Oxford Handbook of Warfare in the Classical World offers a critical examination of war and organized violence. The volume's introduction begins with the ancient sources for the writing of war, preceded by broad surveys of warfare in ancient Greece and Rome. Also included herein are chapters analyzing new finds in battlefield archaeology and how the environment affected the ancient practice of war. A second section is comprised of broad narratives of classical societies at war, covering the expanse from classical Greece through to the later Roman Empire. Part III contains thematic discussions that examine closely the nature of battle: what soldiers experienced as they fought; the challenges of conducting war at sea; how the wounded were treated. A final section offers six exemplary case studies, including analyses of the Peloponnesian War, the Second Punic War, and Rome's war with Sasanid Persia. The handbook closes with an epilogue that explores the legacy of classical warfare. Authored by experts in classics, ancient history, and archaeology, this handbook presents a vibrant map of the field of classical warfare studies. |
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