As well as the Little Owl or glaux, so often seen accompanying the goddess Athena, many other birds played an important role in Greek art and symbolism. This booklet describes the ways in which the Greeks viewed birds, from useful hawks and fowl to exotic parakeets and peacocks. Some of the birds most often depicted are imaginary, from the griffin to the phallos bird, whose head and neck consisted of an erect penis. The book ends with a field guide to species likely to be seen on a visit to the Agora archaeological park today.

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 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.

This second edition of Alison E. Cooley's accessible introduction to Pompeii takes into account the major new theories and discoveries that have emerged since the first edition was published 20 years ago. Italy's third most popular tourist destination, Pompeii attracts millions of visitors each year, and images of the town are familiar all around the world. However, even today our picture of the site is being impacted by new archaeological discoveries. This book focuses particularly on the date of the eruption, the natural environment of Pompeii, the recovery of skeletal remains and plaster casts, and Pompeii in the popular imagination. In addition, three new chapters look at the popularization of Pompeii, archaeological reconstruction of the Roman town, and how we know what we know about the people who lived there. The technological advances of the 20th and 21st centuries have transformed our understanding of the urban environment of Pompeii, raising new questions even as they dig ever deeper into the surviving material evidence. This volume offers a succinct and insightful exploration of the impact of these scientific and archaeological innovations, as well as that of contemporary politics, upon interpretations of Pompeii over the last 250 years, including the ways in which advances in volcanology have transformed our picture of its last moments.

Hittite is the earliest attested Indo-European language and was the language of a state which flourished in Asia Minor in the second millennium BC. This exciting and accessible introductory course, which can be used in both trimester and semester systems, offers in ten lessons a comprehensive introduction to the grammar of the Hittite language with ample exercises both in transliteration and in cuneiform. It includes a separate section of paradigms, a grammatical index, as well as a list of every cuneiform sign used in the book. A full glossary can be found at the back. The book has been designed so that the cuneiform is not essential and can be left out of any course if so desired. The introduction provides the necessary cultural and historical background, with suggestions for further reading, and explains the principles of the cuneiform writing system.

Bodies of Maize, Eaters of Grain provides a comparative study of the earliest urban civilisations of the Maya lowlands and the Greek mainland. It builds upon earlier comparative studies by Gordon Childe, Robert Adams and Bruce Trigger, extending their work into new directions. Specifically, the focus lies on the art styles of the Late Preclassic lowland Maya and Mycenaean Greece. The approach used here seeks to combine more traditional iconographic approaches with more recent models on metaphor and the social agency of things. Comparing Maya and Mycenaean art styles through the three aspects of metaphor, semiotics and praxis, their differences and similarities are made clear. The book shows art to have played a more active role in the development of the earliest urban civilisations, rather than passively reflecting economic and political trends. In that way, the social role of art provides a key to understanding the relations between the different factors in the development of the two societies, as they played out at different temporal and geographical scales. To understand this, the notion of distinct Maya and Mycenaean 'material worlds', involving both materials and ideas, is proposed, with consequences for models about the earliest urban civilisations in general.

The themes of sedentarisation, urbanisation and state formation are fundamental ones in the archaeology of many diverse parts of the world but have been little explored in relation to early societies of the Saharan zone. Moreover, the possibility has rarely been considered that the precocious civilisations bordering this vast desert were interconnected by long-range contacts and knowledge networks. The orthodox opinion of many of the key oasis zones within the Sahara is that they were not created before the early medieval period and the Islamic conquest of Mediterranean North Africa. Major claims of this volume are that the ultimate origins of oasis settlements in many parts of the Sahara were considerably earlier, that by the first millennium AD some of these oasis settlements were of a size and complexity to merit the categorisation 'towns' and that a few exceptional examples were focal centres within proto-states or early state-level societies.

Architecture and Politics in Republican Rome is the first book to explore the intersection between Roman Republican building practices and politics (c.509-44 BCE). At the start of the period, architectural commissions were carefully controlled by the political system; by the end, buildings were so widely exploited and so rhetorically powerful that Cassius Dio cited abuse of visual culture among the reasons that propelled Julius Caesar's colleagues to murder him in order to safeguard the Republic. In an engaging and wide-ranging text, Penelope J. E. Davies traces the journey between these two points, as politicians developed strategies to manoeuver within the system's constraints. She also explores the urban development and image of Rome, setting out formal aspects of different types of architecture and technological advances such as the mastery of concrete. Elucidating a rich corpus of buildings that have been poorly understand, Davies demonstrates that Republican architecture was much more than a formal precursor to that of imperial Rome.

Visions of the Roman North: Art and Identity in Northern Roman Britain is the first book to present an analysis of art from the northern frontier zones of Roman Britain and to interpret the meaning and significance of this art in terms of the formation of a regional identity at this time. It argues that a distinct and vibrant visual culture flourished in the north during the Roman period, primarily due to its status as a heavily militarized frontier zone. Artworks from forts and the frontier-works of Hadrian's Wall and the Antonine Wall, along with funerary monuments from military and civilian cemeteries, are analysed and discussed. The book also explores religious sculpture depicting classical deities, Romano-British gods and goddesses and eastern deities such as Mithras in terms of the use of imagery in various belief systems and in terms of the establishment of individual and group identities.

This volume brings together studies of Ephesos--a major city in the Greco-Roman period and a primary center for the spread of Christianity into the Western world--by an international array of scholars from the fields of classics, fine arts, history of religion, New Testament, ancient Christianity, and archaeology. The studies were presented at a spring 1994 Harvard Divinity School symposium on Ephesos, focusing on the results of one hundred years of archaeological work at Ephesos by members of the Austrian Archaeological Institute.

The contributors to this volume discuss some of the most interesting and controversial results of recent investigations: the Processional Way of Artemis, the Hadrianic Olympieion and the Church of Mary, the so-called Temple of Domitian, and the heroa of Androkolos and Arsinoe.

Since very little about the Austrian excavations at Ephesos has been published in English, this volume should prove useful in introducing the archaeology of this metropolis to a wider readership.

It has long been assumed that England lay outside the Western European tradition of castle-building until after the Norman Conquest of 1066. It is now becoming apparent that Anglo-Saxon lords had been constructing free-standing towers at their residences all across England over the course of the tenth and eleventh centuries. Initially these towers were exclusively of timber, and quite modest in their scale, although only a handful are known from archaeological excavation. There followed the so-called 'tower-nave' churches, towers with only a tiny chapel located inside, which appear to have had a dual function as buildings of elite worship and symbols of secular power and authority. For the first time, this book gathers together the evidence for these remarkable buildings, many of which still stand incorporated into the fabric of Norman and later parish churches and castles. It traces their origin in monasteries, where kings and bishops drew upon Continental European practice to construct centrally-planned, tower-like chapels for private worship and burial, and to mark gates and important entrances, particularly within the context of the tenth-century Monastic Reform. Adopted by the secular aristocracy to adorn their own manorial sites, it argues that many of the known examples would have provided strategic advantage as watchtowers over roads, rivers and beacon-systems, and have acted as focal points for the mustering of troops. The tower-nave form persisted into early Norman England, where it may have influenced a variety of high-status building types, such as episcopal chapels and monastic belltowers, and even the keeps and gatehouses of the earliest stone castles. The aim of this book is to finally establish the tower-nave as an important Anglo-Saxon building type, and to explore the social, architectural, and landscape contexts in which they operated.

The majority of literature about the Viking period, based on artefacts or written sources, covers battles, kings, chiefs and mercenaries, long distance travel and colonisation, trade, and settlement. Less is said about the life of those that stayed at home, or those that immigrated into Scandinavia, whether voluntarily or by force. This book uses results from the examination of a substantial corpus of Swedish osteological material to discuss aspects of demography and health in the Viking period face=Calibri>- those which would have been visible and recognisable in the faces or physical appearances of the individuals concerned. It explores the effects of migration, from the spread of new diseases such as leprosy to patterns of movement and integration of immigrants into society. The skeletal material also allows the study of levels of violence, attitudes towards disablement, and the care provided by Viking communities. An overview of the worldwide phenomenon of modified teeth also gives insight into the practice of deliberate physical embellishment and body modification. The interdisciplinary approach to questions regarding ordinary life presented here will broaden the knowledge about society during the Viking Age. The synthesis of the Swedish unburnt human skeletal remains dated to the Viking age will be a valuable resource for future research, and provides an in-depth view on Viking age society.

No one disputes the centrality of cult activity in the lives of individuals and communities in ancient Greece. The significance of where people worshipped their gods has been far less acknowledged. In 1884 Francois de Polignac argued that the placing of cult centres played a major part in establishing the concept of the city-state in archaic Greece. The essays in this collection, headed by that of de Polignac himself in which he re-assesses his position, critically examine the social and political importance of sanctuary placement, not only by re-examining the case of the archaic Greece discussed by de Polignac, but by extending analysis both back to Mycenaean times and onwards to Greece under Roman occupation. These essays reveal something of the complexity of relations between religion and politics in ancient Greece, demonstrating how vital factors such as tradition, gender relations, and cult identity were in creating and maintaining the religious mapping of the Greek countryside.

Parks were prominent and, indeed, controversial features of the medieval countryside, but they have been unevenly studied and remain only partly understood. Stephen Mileson provides the first full-length study of the subject, examining parks across the country and throughout the Middle Ages in their full social, economic, jurisdictional, and landscape context. The first half of the book investigates the purpose of these royal and aristocratic reserves, which have been variously claimed as hunting grounds, economic assets, landscape settings for residences, and status symbols. An emphasis on the aristocratic passion for the chase as the key motivation for park-making provides an important challenge to more recent views and allows for a deeper appreciation of the connection between park-making and the expression of power and lordship. The second part of the volume examines the impact of park creation on wider society, from the king and aristocracy to peasants and townsmen. Instead of the traditional emphasis on the importance of royal regulation, greater attention is paid to the effects of lordly park-making on other members of the landed elite and ordinary people. These widespread enclosures interfered with customary uses of woodland and waste, hunting practices, roads, and farming; not surprisingly, they could become a focus for aristocratic feud, popular protest, and furtive resistance. Combining historical, archaeological, and landscape evidence, this ground-breaking work provides fresh insight into contemporary values and how they helped to shape the medieval landscape.

A dramatic archaeological find at Windsor Castle reveals Edward III's 'House of the Round Table', designed to show off Edward's power and prestige at a crucial moment in his attempts to lay claim to the throne of France. NEW LOWER PRICE The image of King Arthur's Round Table is well-known, both as Thomas Malory's portrayal of a fellowship of knights dedicated to the highest ideals of chivalry, and as the great wooden table at Winchester castle. Now a dramatic archaeological find at Windsor castle sheds new light on the idea of a round table as a gathering: the 'House of the Round Table' which Edward III ordered to be constructed at the conclusion of his Windsor festival of 1344. The discovery of the foundation trench of a great building two hundred feet in diameter in the Upper Ward of Windsor castle, allows the reconstruction of that building's appearance and raises the question of itspurpose. Chronicles, building materials inventories from the royal accounts, medieval romances, and earlier descriptions of round table festivals all confirm the archaeological evidence: at a time when secular orders of knighthood were almost unknown, Edward declared his intention to found an Order of the Round Table with three hundred knights. This grand building, and the Arthurian entertainments he planned for it, would bind his nobles to his cause ata crucial point in his progress to claiming the throne of France. His ambitious scheme, however, was overtaken by events. Victory at Crecy in 1346 confirmed Edward's reputation, and the order which he founded in 1348 was themuch more exclusive Order of the Garter, rewarding those commanders who had helped him to win the Crecy campaign. His reputation was assured, the omens for his reign were auspicious; he had the loyalty of his knights and magnates.The Round Table building was abandoned, and eventually pulled down in the 1360s. Thus a major plank in the strategic thinking of one of England's greatest kings almost became a footnote in history. Time Team discovered .there [are] indeed foundations of a massive round building in Windsor Castle's upper ward. A splendidly produced volume, which gives full credit both to the history and to the archaeology: analysis of the chivalric background, archaeological analysis, discussion of the probable form of the building [and] the early history of Windsor Castle as well as the types of stone used by Edward III's masons. The book is attractively illustrated, and its appendicesprovide a full text in Latin, with translation, of the building accounts, as well as translations of many of the relevant chronicle extracts. MICHAEL PRESTWICH, THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT

This interdisciplinary collection of essays explores the use and manipulation of ancient textual sources from different settings across the ancient Mediterranean as a key to understanding the dissemination of religious and mythological knowledge in different historical contexts. In a series of case studies focusing on texts and artifacts from ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Israel, Greece, and Rome, and their ancient as well as modern reuse, this volume displays multiple approaches to and perspectives on strategies of incorporation of derivative materials in antiquity and beyond. Contributors: Ilaria Andolfi, Heike Behlmer, Francesca Boldrer, Laura Carlson Hasler, Michael Chen, Silvia Gabrieli, Szilvia Jaka-Soevegjarto, Gina Konstantopoulos, Chiara Meccariello, Tonio Mitto, So Miyagawa, Dustin Nash, Przemyslaw Piwowarczyk, Jennifer Singletary, Georgios Vassiliades, Nereida Villagra, Mathias Winkler, David P. Wright, Marie Young, Carlos Gracia Zamacona

In Destinations in Mind, Kimberly Cassibry asks how objects depicting different sites helped Romans understand their vast empire. At a time when many cities were written about but only a few were represented in art, four distinct sets of artifacts circulated new information. Engraved silver cups list all the stops from Spanish Cadiz to Rome, while resembling the milestones that helped travelers track their progress. Vivid glass cups represent famous charioteers and gladiators competing in circuses and amphitheaters, and offered virtual experiences of spectacles that were new to many regions. Bronze bowls commemorate forts along Hadrian's Wall with colorful enameling typical of Celtic craftsmanship. Glass bottles display labeled cityscapes of Baiae, a notorious resort, and Puteoli, a busy port, both in the Bay of Naples. These artifacts and their journeys reveal an empire divided not into center and periphery, but connected by roads that did not all lead to Rome. They bear witness to a shared visual culture that was divided not into high and low art, but united by extraordinary craftsmanship. New aspects of globalization are apparent in the multi-lingual placenames that the vessels bear, in the transformed places that they visualize, and in the enriched understanding of the empire's landmarks that they impart. With in-depth case studies, Cassibry argues that the best way to comprehend the Roman Empire is to look closely at objects depicting its fascinating places.

This book explores the experiences of rural communities who lived between the seventh and ninth centuries in central and eastern England. Combining archaeology with documentary, place-name and topographic evidences, it shows the way in which the settlements in which people lived provide a unique insight into social, economic and political conditions in 'Middle Saxon' England. The material derived from excavations within currently-occupied rural settlements represents a particularly informative dataset, and when combined with other evidence illustrates that the seventh to ninth centuries was a period of fundamental social change that impacted rural communities in significant and lasting ways. The transformation of settlement character was part of a more widespread process of landscape investment during the 'Middle Saxon' period, as rapidly stratifying social institutions began to manifest power and influence through new means. Such an analysis represents a significant departure from the prevailing scholarly outlook of the early medieval landscape, which continues to posit that the countryside of England remained largely unchanged until the development of historic villages from the ninth century onward. In this regard, the evidence presented by this book from currently-occupied rural settlements provides substantial backing to the idea that many historic villages emerged as part of a two-stage process which began during the 'Middle Saxon' period. Whilst it was only following subsequent change that recognisable later village plans began to take shape, key developments between the seventh and ninth centuries helped articulate the form and identity of rural centres, features that in many instances persisted throughout the medieval period and into the present day.

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.

Henry Hunter Calvert died at his family house at Cannakale in 1880 a few months after escaping from the rioting in Alexandria where he was British consul. The consulate was sacked and his collections destroyed. He had however sent an annotated list of his Greek amphora stamps to the British Museum, presumably to Charles Newton, with whom he and his brother Frank had frequent correspondence. This list was forgotten until the present writer 'found' it in a box-file in the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities (its title at the time). Henry Hunter Calvert's Collection of Amphora Stamps and that of Sidney Smith Saunders publicly presents that material.

This ground breaking volume brings together contributions from scholars across a range of disciplines (including literary studies, history, geography and archaeology) to investigate questions of space, place and identity in the medieval city. Using Chester as a case study - with attention to its location on the border between England and Wales, its rich multilingual culture and surviving material fabric - the essays recover the experience and understanding of the urban space by individuals and groups within the medieval city, and offer new readings from the vantage-point of twenty-first century disciplinary and theoretical perspectives.

From Zeus and Europa, to Diana, Pan, and Prometheus, the myths of ancient Greece and Rome seem to exert a timeless power over us. But what do those myths represent, and why are they so enduringly fascinating? Why do they seem to be such a potent way of talking about our selves, our origins, and our desires? This imaginative and stimulating Very Short Introduction goes beyond a simple retelling of the stories to explore the rich history and diverse interpretations of classical myths. It is a wide-ranging account, examining how classical myths are used and understood in both high art and popular culture, taking the reader from the temples of Crete to skyscrapers in New York, and finding classical myths in a variety of unexpected places: from arabic poetry and Hollywood films, to psychoanalysis, the bible, and New Age spiritualism. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

How do regions form and evolve? What are the human and geographical factors which help to unify a region, and what are the political considerations which limit integration and curtail co-operation between a region's communities? Through a diverse series of case studies focusing on the regional history of Lesbos and the Troad from the seventh century BC down to the first century AD, The Kingdom of Priam offers a detailed exploration of questions about regional integration in the ancient world. Drawing on a wide range of evidence - from the geography of Strabo and the botany of Theophrastos, to the accounts of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century travellers and the epigraphy, numismatics, and archaeology of the region - these case studies analyse the politics of processes of regional integration in the Troad and examine the insular identity of Lesbos, the extent to which the island was integrated into the mainland, and the consequences of this relationship for its internal dynamic. Throughout it is argued that although Lesbos and the Troad became ever more economically well-integrated over the course of this period, they nevertheless remained politically fragmented and were only capable of unified action at moments of severe crisis. These regional dynamics intersected in complex and often unexpected ways with the various imperial systems (Persian, Athenian, Macedonian, Attalid, Roman) which ruled over the region and shaped its internal dynamics, both through direct interventions in regional politics and through the pressures and incentives which these imperial systems created for local communities.

The frontiers of the Roman empire together form the largest monument of one of the world's greatest states. They stretch for some 7,500km through 20 countries which encircle the Mediterranean Sea. The remains of these frontiers have been studied by visitors and later by archaeologists for several centuries. Many of the inscriptions and sculpture, weapons, pottery and artefacts created and used by the soldiers and civilians who lived on the frontier can be seen in museums. Equally evocative of the lost might of Rome are the physical remains of the frontiers themselves. The aim of this series of books is not only to inform the interested visitor about the history of the frontiers but to act as a guidebook as well. The Roman military remains of Egypt are remarkable in their variety and in their state of preservation. They deserve to be better known. They include forts, quarries under the authority of the army and whose materials were used in the monumental buildings of Rome, as well as the roads which crossed the desert landscape and brought the Mediterranean into contact with the Indian Ocean. It is hoped that each reader of this book will enjoy learning more about the remarkable Roman inheritance of Egypt. The full text is presented side-by-side dual-language in English and French.

Neopalatial Crete - the 'Golden Age' of the Minoan Civilization - possessed palaces, exquisite artefacts, and iconography with pre-eminent females. While lacking in fortifications, ritual symbolism cloaked the island, an elaborate bureaucracy logged transactions, and massive storage areas enabled the redistribution of goods. We cannot read the Linear A script, but the libation formulae suggest an island-wide koine. Within this cultural identity, there is considerable variation in how the Minoan elites organized themselves and others on an intra-site and regional basis. This book explores and celebrates this rich, diverse and dynamic culture through analyses of important sites, as well as Minoan administration, writing, economy and ritual. Key themes include the role of Knossos in wider Minoan culture and politics, the variable modes of centralization and power relations detectable across the island, and the role of ritual and cult in defining and articulating elite control.