This volume provides a thorough conspectus of the field of Graeco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek studies, mixing theoretical and historical surveys with critical and thought-provoking case studies in archaeology, history, literature and art. The chapters from this international group of experts showcase innovative methodologies, such as archaeological GIS, as well as providing accessible explanations of specialist techniques such as die studies of coins, and important theoretical perspectives, including postcolonial approaches to the Greeks in India. Chapters cover the region's archaeology, written and numismatic sources, and a history of scholarship of the subject, as well as culture, identity and interactions with neighbouring empires, including India and China. The Graeco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek World is the go-to reference work on the field, and fulfils a serious need for an accessible, but also thorough and critically-informed, volume on the Graeco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek kingdoms. It provides an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the Hellenistic East.

This book examines the ways in which lived religion in Roman Italy involved personal and communal experiences of the religious agency generated when ritualised activities caused human and more-than-human things to become bundled together into relational assemblages. Drawing upon broadly posthumanist and new materialist theories concerning the thingliness of things, it sets out to re-evaluate the role of the material world within Roman religion and to offer new perspectives on the formation of multi-scalar forms of ancient religious knowledge. It explores what happens when a materially informed approach is systematically applied to the investigation of typical questions about Roman religion such as: What did Romans understand 'religion' to mean? What did religious experiences allow people to understand about the material world and their own place within it? How were experiences of ritual connected with shared beliefs or concepts about the relationship between the mortal and divine worlds? How was divinity constructed and perceived? To answer these questions, it gathers and evaluates archaeological evidence associated with a series of case studies. Each of these focuses on a key component of the ritualised assemblages shown to have produced Roman religious agency - place, objects, bodies, and divinity - and centres on an examination of experiences of lived religion as it related to the contexts of monumentalised sanctuaries, cult instruments used in public sacrifice, anatomical votive offerings, cult images and the qualities of divinity, and magic as a situationally specific form of religious knowledge. By breaking down and then reconstructing the ritualised assemblages that generated and sustained Roman religion, this book makes the case for adopting a material approach to the study of ancient lived religion.

This book is a first presentation of pottery samples from el-Balu' in the northern Ard el-Kerak, the ancient Moabitis which today is Central Jordan. The forms presented here are dating from the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age down to the Persian periods of occupation of the site of el-Balu'. The book does not discuss the pottery in the wider context of Jordanian or Palestinian ceramics; however, the intention was to present pottery from the hitherto only sparsely published Iron Age pottery of the region. With this documentation scholars of the Archaeology of Jordan are invited to work on the ceramics excavated in the Areas A, B, C, D, E, and G of el-Balu'.

Often viewed as self-sufficient, Roman farmers actually depended on markets to supply them with a wide range of goods and services, from metal tools to medical expertise. However, the nature, extent, and implications of their market interactions remain unclear. This monograph uses literary and archaeological evidence to examine how farmers - from smallholders to the owners of large estates - bought and sold, lent and borrowed, and cooperated as well as competed in the Roman economy. A clearer picture of the relationship between farmers and markets allows us to gauge their collective impact on, and exposure to, macroeconomic phenomena such as monetization and changes in the level and nature of demand for goods and labor. After considering the demographic and environmental context of Italian agriculture, the author explores three interrelated questions: what goods and services did farmers purchase; how did farmers acquire the money with which to make those purchases; and what factors drove farmers' economic decisions? This book provides a portrait of the economic world of the Roman farmer in late Republican and early Imperial Italy.

In recent years scholars have re-evaluated the "parting of the ways" between Judaism and Christianity, reaching new understandings of the ways shared origins gave way to two distinct and sometimes inimical religious traditions. But this has been a profoundly textual task, relying on the writings of rabbis, bishops, and other text-producing elites to map the terrain of the "parting." This book takes up the question of the divergence of Judaism and Christianity in terms of material--the stuff made, used, and left behind by the persons that lived in and between these religions as they were developing. Considering the glass, clay, stone, paint, vellum, and papyrus of ancient Jews and Christians, this book maps the "parting" in new ways, and argues for a greater role for material and materialism in our reconstructions of the past.

Human beings have speculated about whether or not there is life after death, and if so, what form that life might take, for centuries. What did people in the ancient world think the next life would hold, and did they imagine there was a chance for a relationship between the living and the dead? How did people in the ancient world keep their dead loved ones alive through memory, and were they afraid the dead might return and haunt the living in another form? What sort of afterlife did the ancient Greeks and Romans imagine for themselves? This volume explores these questions and more. While individual representations of the afterlife have often been examined, few studies have taken a more general view of ideas about the afterlife circulating in the ancient world. By drawing together current research from international scholars on archaeological evidence for afterlife belief, chiefly from funerary sites, together with studies of works of literature, this volume provides a broader overview of ancient ideas about the afterlife than has so far been available. Imagining the Afterlife in the Ancient World explores these key questions through a series of wide-ranging studies, taking in ghosts, demons, dreams, cosmology, and the mutilation of corpses along the way, offering a valuable resource to those studying all aspects of death in the ancient world

The Etruscans and the History of Dentistry offers a study of the construction and use of gold dental appliances in ancient Etruscan culture, and their place within the framework of a general history of dentistry, with special emphasis on appliances, from Bronze Age Mesopotamia and Egypt to modern Europe and the Americas. Included are many of the ancient literary sources that refer to dentistry - or the lack thereof - in Greece and Rome, as well as the archaeological evidence of ancient dental health. The book challenges many past works in exposing modern scholars' fallacies about ancient dentistry, while presenting the incontrovertible evidence of the Etruscans' seemingly modern attitudes to cosmetic dentistry.

Herod: King of the Jews and Friend of the Romans examines the life, work, and influence of this controversial figure, who remains the most highly visible of the Roman client kings under Augustus. Herod's rule shaped the world in which Christianity arose and his influence can still be seen today. In this expanded second edition, additions to the original text include discussion of the archaeological evidence of Herod's activity, his building program, numismatic evidence, and consideration of the roles and activities of other client kings in relation to Herod. This volume includes new maps and numerous photographs, and these coupled with the new additions to the text make this a valuable tool for those interested in the wider Roman world of the late first century BCE at both under- and postgraduate levels. Herod remains the definitive study of the life and activities of the king known traditionally as Herod the Great.

Since Sir Arthur Evans rediscovered the Minoans in the early 1890s, the people of Bronze Age Crete have become a fixture in European prehistory. We have defined a whole string of cultural traits that make the `Minoan' personality: elegant, graceful, lithe and athletic, these refined aesthetes surrounded themselves with sophisticated architecture and beautiful objects. Nature lovers, lovers of peace, the inhabitants of each city-state lived in harmony with their neighbours, while their fleets ruled the seas around Crete. This, at least, is the popular view of the Minoans. But how far does the later work of archaeologists in Crete support this view? In Minoans: Life in Bronze Age Crete, Rodney Castleden uses the results of recent archaeological research to produce a comprehensive new vision of the peoples of Minoan Crete.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203135814

This book explores a new perspective for understanding the Roman world, using connectivity as a major point of departure. Globalisation is apparent in increased flows of objects, people and ideas and in the creation of translocal consciousness in everyday life. Based on these criteria, there is a case for globalisation in the ancient Roman world. Essential for anyone interested in Romanisation, this volume provides the first sustained critical exploration of globalisation theories in Roman archaeology and history. It is written by an international group of scholars who address a broad range of subjects, including Roman imperialism, economics, consumption, urbanism, migration, visual culture and heritage. The contributors explore the implications of understanding material culture in an interconnected Roman world, highlighting several novel directions for future research.

This volume gathers together selected contributions which were originally presented at the conference 'Greek Art in Context' at the University of Edinburgh in 2014. Its aim is to introduce the reader to the broad and multifaceted notion of context in relation to Greek art and, more specifically, to its relevance for the study of Greek sculpture and pottery from the Archaic to the Late Classical periods. What do we mean by 'context'? In which ways and under what circumstances does context become relevant for the interpretation of Greek material culture? Which contexts should we look at - viewing context, political, social and religious discourse, artistic tradition . . .? What happens when there is no context? These are some of the questions that this volume aims to answer. The chapters included cover current approaches to the study of Greek sculpture and pottery in which the notion of 'context' plays a prominent role, offering new ways of looking at familiar issues. It gathers leading scholars and early career researchers from different backgrounds and research traditions with the aim of presenting new insights into archaeological and art historical research. Their chapters contribute to showcase the vitality of the discipline and will serve to stimulate new directions for the study of Greek art.

Take a cast of archaeologists and historians who inhabit different worlds. Add a medieval king who died in battle, and was revived by Shakespeare as the ultimate anti-hero. Throw in a forensic quest with almost unbelievable twists, and a theatrical modern burial with no parallel, and you have the material for an irresistible story for our times. In the hands of a leading archaeologist and award-winning journalist, the search for a king's grave becomes the page-turning, entertaining, informed narrative that makes Digging for Richard III the must-read title on the most sensational archaeological find for generations.

The Visions of Amram (4Q543-547), five copies of an Aramaic text found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, stems from the pre-Hasmonean period and provides evidence of a highly variegated society in early Judaism. In this book, Robert R. Duke offers a new reading of all the fragments and an in-depth discussion of their significance, illuminating a time period in Jewish history that needs more understanding and culminating in a suggested social location for its production. Duke concludes that 4Q543-547 was written by a disenfranchised group of priests who resided in Hebron. The importance of the patriarchal burials, chronology, endogamy, the figure of Moses, and angelology argue for a priestly group, whose members were also influenced by apocalyptic thinking. The suggestion of Hebron as the geographical location for this group is based on the theories of George Nickelsburg's and David Suter's work on 1 Enoch. Pre-Hasmonean Judaism was an intense time of dialogue and disagreement, and 4Q543-547 is one more item to consider in reconstructing these social realities.

The rediscovery of the Roman cities overwhelmed by the rage of Vesuvius is one of history's most extraordinary adventure stories. Pompeii Awakened revels in that adventure, and tells of the re-emergence of a long-vanished cosmopolis which profoundly inspired a later age - from its arts and architecture to its science, sex and religion. When Herculaneum, Pompeii' s sister in disaster, was located in 1709, that first discovery launched a frenzied scramble for buried treasure. Then in 1755 Pompeii too rose from its crust of volcanic rock, and the science of archaeology was born. Whereas Herculaneum had artistic, political and philosophical impact, the later discoveries at Pompeii spoke rather of domesticity - of cuisine and household architecture, tools, gardens and religion. To this day it is the only site to show what daily life was like in antiquity. However, the full story of Pompeii consists not just in its uniquely preserved classical villas and votives, but in the powerful response it evoked in the European cultural imagination. Here are the English, whose wealth, wet weather and classical education fostered a passion for Naples and its rediscovered cities. We read of Sir William Hamilton discussing priapic cults with his near neighbour, the dilettante Richard Payne Knight, and of how the famous love affair of Emma Hamilton and Admiral Nelson saved the Heculaneum papyri from the French. Here too are the hosts who arrived from across Europe, and then from America - engineers and artists, dreamers and poets, photographers and cinematographers, whose reconstructions and remembrances of Pompeii have never ceased to resonate. Judith Harris brings the doomed city vibrantly to life. Pompeii breathes again through her account of the diverse people who sifted through its remains to catch a glimpse of themselves in the past. From the poetic souls who found a majestic melancholy in Pompeii's shatttered walls , to the tub-thumping Victorian preachers who denounced the city as akin to Sodom and Gomorrah, Pompeii Awakened uncovers many fascinating stories - of sex, science, love and death. The author has spoken to experts on three continents, flown over Pompeii in a hot-air balloon, delved into ancient diaries and descended deep underground to assess the latest discoveries of a lost world . As the sleeping city re-awakens in her hands, Pompeii casts its spell once more, bewitching those who seek to unearth its buried secrets.

Greek pottery was exported around the ancient world in vast quantities over a period of several centuries. This book focuses on the Greek pottery consumed by people in the western Mediterranean and trans-Alpine Europe from 800-300 BCE, attempting to understand the distribution of vases, and particularly the reasons why people who were not Greek decided to acquire them. This new approach includes discussion of the ways in which objects take on different meanings in new contexts, the linkages between the consumption of goods and identity construction, and the utility of objects for signaling positive information about their owners to their community. The study includes a database of almost 24,000 artifacts from more than 230 sites in Portugal, Spain, France, Switzerland, and Germany. This data was mapped and analyzed using geostatistical techniques to reveal different patterns of consumption in different places and at different times. The development of the new approaches explored in this book has resulted in a shift away from reliance on the preserved fragments of ancient Greek authors' descriptions of western Europe, remains of monumental buildings, and major artworks, and toward investigation of social life and more prosaic forms of material culture. ADDITIONAL E-RESOURCES FOR THIS BOOK ARE AVAILABLE: https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/art_data/1/

When does a continuum become a divide? This book investigates the genetic relationship between Linear A and Linear B, two Bronze Age scripts attested on Crete and Mainland Greece and understood to have developed one out of the other. By using an interdisciplinary methodology, this research integrates linguistic, epigraphic, palaeographic and archaeological evidence, and places the writing practice in its sociohistorical setting. By challenging traditional views, this work calls into question widespread assumptions and interpretative schemes on the relationship between these two scripts, and opens up new perspectives on the ideology associated with the retention, adaptation and transmission of a script, and how identity was negotiated at a moment of closer societal interaction between Cretans and Greek-speaking Mainlanders in the Late Bronze Age. By delving deeper into the structure and inner workings of these two writing systems, this book will make us rethink the relationship between Linear A and B.

This unique book provides the student of Roman history with an accessible and detailed introduction to Roman and provincial coinage in the late Republic and early Empire in the context of current historical themes and debates. Almost two hundred different coins are illustrated at double life size, with each described in detail, and technical Latin and numismatic terms are explained. Chapters are arranged chronologically, allowing students to quickly identify material relevant to Julius Caesar, the second triumvirate, the relationship between Antony and Cleopatra, and the Principate of Augustus. Iconography, archaeological contexts, and the economy are clearly presented. A diverse array of material is brought together in a single volume to challenge and enhance our understanding of the transition from Republic to Empire.

Early in the archaic period of Greek history, Messenia was annexed and partially settled by its powerful neighbour, Sparta. Achieving independence in the fourth century BC, the inhabitants of Messenia set about trying to forge an identity for themselves separate from their previous identity as Spartan subjects, refunctionalising or simply erasing their Spartan heritage. Professor Luraghi provides a thorough examination of the history of Messenian identity and consequently addresses a range of questions and issues whose interest and importance have only been widely recognised by ancient historians during the last decade. By a detailed scrutiny of the ancient written sources and the archaeological evidence, the book reconstructs how the Messenians perceived and constructed their own ethnicity at different points in time, by applying to Messenian ethnicity insights developed by anthropologists and early medieval historians.

As president of the Italian Liberal Party, Benedetto Croce was one of the most influential intellectuals involved in Italian public affairs after the fall of Mussolini. Placing Croce at the centre of historical events between 1943 and 1952, this book details his participation in Italy's political life, and his major contributions to the rebirth of Italian democracy. Drawing on a great amount of primary material, including Croce's political speeches, correspondences, diaries, and official documents from post-war Italy, this book illuminates the dynamic and progressive nature of Croce's liberalism and the shortcomings of the old Liberal leaders. Providing a year-by-year account of Croce's initiatives, author Fabio Fernando Rizi fills the gap in Croce's biography, covering aspects of his public life often neglected, misinterpreted, or altogether ignored, and restores his standing among the founding fathers of modern Italy.

The Merovingian era is one of the best studied yet least well known periods of European history. From the fifth to the eighth centuries, the inhabitants of Gaul (what now comprises France, southern Belgium, Luxembourg, Rhineland Germany, and part of modern Switzerland), a mix of Gallo-Roman inhabitants and Germanic arrivals under the political control of the Merovingian dynasty, sought to preserve, use, and reimagine the political, cultural, and religious power of ancient Rome while simultaneously forging the beginnings of what would become medieval European culture. The forty-six essays included in this volume highlight why the Merovingian era is at the heart of historical debates about what happened to Western Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire. The essays demonstrate that the inhabitants of the Merovingian kingdoms in these centuries created a culture that was the product of these traditions and achieved a balance between the world they inherited and the imaginative solutions they bequeathed to Europe. The Handbook highlights new perspectives and scientific approaches that shape our changing view of this extraordinary era by showing that Merovingian Gaul was situated at the crossroads of Europe, connecting the Mediterranean and the British Isles with the Byzantine empire, and it benefited from the global reach of the late Roman Empire. It tells the story of the Merovingian world through archaeology, bio-archaeology, architecture, hagiographic literature, history, liturgy, visionary literature and eschatology, patristics, numismatics, and material culture.

Uncovering the Germanic Past brings to light an unexpected side-effect of France's nineteenth-century Industrial Revolution. While laying tracks for new rail lines, quarrying for stone, and expanding lands under cultivation, French labourers uncovered bones and artefacts from long-forgotten cemeteries. Although their original owners were unknown, research by a growing number of amateur archaeologists of the bourgeois class determined that these were the graves of Germanic 'warriors', and their work, presented in provincial learned societies across France, documented evidence for significant numbers of Franks, Burgundians, and Visigoths in late Roman Gaul. They thus challenged prevailing views in France of the population's exclusively Gallic ancestry, contradicting the influential writings of Parisian historians like Augustin Thierry and Numa-Denis Fustel de Coulanges. Although some scholars drew on this material evidence to refine their understanding of the early ancestors of the French, most ignored, at their peril, inconvenient finds that challenged the centrality of the ancient Gauls as the forebears of France. Crossing the boundaries of the fields of medieval archaeology and history, nineteenth-century French history, and the history of science, Effros suggests how the slow progress and professionalization of Merovingian (or early medieval) archaeology, a sub-discipline in the larger field of national archaeology in France, was in part a consequence of the undesirable evidence it brought to light.

This volume is a study of the religious system of Mithraism, one of the "mystery cults" popular in the Roman Empire contemporary with early Christianity. Roger Beck describes Mithraism from the point of view of the initiate engaging with the religion and its rich symbolic system in thought, word, ritual action, and cult life. He employs the methods of anthropology of religion and the new cognitive science of religion to explore in detail the semiotics of the Mysteries' astral symbolism, which has been the principal subject of his many previous publications on the cult.

In this book, Kramer-Hajos examines the Euboean Gulf region in Central Greece to explain its flourishing during the post-palatial period. Providing a social and political history of the region in the Late Bronze Age, she focuses on the interactions between this 'provincial' coastal area and the core areas where the Mycenaean palaces were located. Drawing on network and agency theory, two current and highly effective methodologies in prehistoric Mediterranean archaeology, Kramer-Hajos argues that the Euboean Gulf region thrived when it was part of a decentralized coastal and maritime network, and declined when it was incorporated in a highly centralized mainland-looking network. Her research and analysis contributes new insights to our understanding of the mechanics and complexity of the Bronze Age Aegean collapse.

Slavery is a word heavy with emotional and political overtones - to be owned by another person and treated as a commodity is the ultimate injustice. But this was the fate of a substantial percentage of the population of the ancient world. Slavery was essential to their societies; thus slavery is necessarily a core topic in the study of classical civilisation. Most previous studies of ancient slavery have grown out of historical and literary research. In the flood of books and papers on the subject, the archaeological evidence has often been ignored. This book fills the gap by confronting, for the first time, the archaeological evidence for slavery.This evidence is used to build up a picture of rich complexity, drawing both on historical sources or inscriptions and on archaeological studies of the development of technology and the economy. The book covers topics as diverse as the source of slaves, the nature of the slave trade, and the use of slave-labour in agriculture, mines and quarries, corn and weaving mills, and water-lifting. It concludes with chapters on restraint and slave revolts. This comprehensive and masterful book will be used both as a source of evidence and as a starting point for future research but by anyone studying the topic of slavery in any age.

Christopher Loveluck's study explores the transformation of Northwest Europe (primarily Britain, France and Belgium) from the era of the first post-Roman 'European Union' under the Carolingian Frankish kings to the so-called 'feudal' age, between c. AD 600 and 1150. During these centuries radical changes occurred in the organisation of the rural world. Towns and complex communities of artisans and merchant-traders emerged and networks of contact between northern Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Middle and Far East were redefined, with long-lasting consequences into the present day. Loveluck provides the most comprehensive comparative analysis of the rural and urban archaeological remains in this area for twenty-five years. Supported by evidence from architecture, relics, manuscript illuminations and texts, this book explains how the power and intentions of elites were confronted by the aspirations and actions of the diverse rural peasantry, artisans and merchants, producing both intended and unforeseen social changes.