Since its invention by Renaissance humanists, the myth of the "Middle Ages" has held a uniquely important place in the Western historical imagination. Whether envisioned as an era of lost simplicity or a barbaric nightmare, the medieval past has always served as a mirror for modernity. This book gives an eye-opening account of the ways various political and intellectual projects-from nationalism to the discipline of anthropology-have appropriated the Middle Ages for their own ends. Deploying an interdisciplinary toolkit, author K. Patrick Fazioli grounds his analysis in contemporary struggles over power and identity in the Eastern Alps, while also considering the broader implications for scholarly research and public memory.

Ancient Greek buildings were renowned for their terracotta roofs, an invention which may have first occurred in prehistoric times and been rediscovered in the seventh century BC. This is the first book to look in detail at the complex variations in tile shape, technical features, and decorative motifs which occurs across Greece, particularly during the Archaic period. Inscriptions refer to Corinthian and Spartan tiles, and two different types of tiles characterizing the roofs of Corinth and Sparta confirm these nomenclatures. A careful analysis of the preserved elements or roofs found in each major city or district, however, reveals considerably more variation, and shows that there were regional styles which distinguished the roofs of north-western Greece. Arcadia, the Argolid, Central Greece, Attica, and the Aegean islands as well. The importance of this new work is not only that it brings a fresh approach to the topic, revealing the regional styles of roofs as of pottery and sculpture, but also that it shows exactly how ancient roofs were assembled, by providing detailed drawings of several characteristic roofs for each regional system. The book is illustrated with numerous photographs, figures, and maps. It should be invaluable for excavators, surveyors, and architectural historians.

Focusing on the Roman west, this book examines the rituals of cursing, their cultural contexts, and their impact on the lives of those who practised them. A huge number of Roman curse tablets have been discovered, showing their importance for helping ancient people to cope with various aspects of life. Curse tablets have been relatively neglected by archaeologists and historians. This study not only encourages greater understanding of the individual practice of curse rituals but also reveals how these objects can inform ongoing debates surrounding power, agency and social relationships in the Roman provinces. McKie uses new theoretical models to examine the curse tablets and focuses particularly on the concept of 'lived religion'. This framework reconfigures our understanding of religious and magical practices, allowing much greater appreciation of them as creative processes. Our awareness of the lived experiences of individuals is also encouraged by the application of theoretical approaches from sensory and material turns and through the consideration of comparable ritual practices in modern social contexts. These stimulate new questions of the ancient evidence, especially regarding the motives and motivations behind the curses.

Veronique Dasen here examines dwarfs in myth and everyday life in ancient Egypt and Greece. In both cultures physical beauty was highly admired, even to excess. What happened to those whose appearance did not conform to the `ideal proportion'? The spectacular forms of dwarfism were always a focus of interest, and it is the most depicted disorder in antiquity. In this study Dr Dasen brings together for the first time a whole range of mostly unpublished or little known iconographic, epigraphic, literary, and anthropological evidence. She covers areas such as the history of caricature and the portrait; medical history, in particular the development of the perception of congenital disorders; social history; and history of religion, with questions on the magical and ritual efficacy of the malformed in sacred and theatrical contexts. She considers also the complex relations between mythology and ethnography, as shown, for example, in the Greek myth of the Pygmies. This is a fascinating work, with a wealth of insights for anyone interested in the history of medicine or the ancient world.

The Material Culture of the Built Environment in the Anglo-Saxon World, second volume of Daily Living in the Anglo-Saxon World, continues to introduce students of Anglo-Saxon culture to aspects of the realities of the built environment that surrounded Anglo-Saxon peoples through reference to archaeological and textual sources. It considers what structures intruded on the natural landscape the Anglo-Saxons inhabited - roads and tracks, ancient barrows and Roman buildings, the villages and towns, churches, beacons, boundary ditches and walls, grave-markers and standing sculptures - and explores the interrelationships between them and their part in Anglo-Saxon life.

Offers a very compact study on the relationship between geography and history in the ancient Mediterranean, specifically and uniquely focused on how cultural development was shaped by human mobility and interaction with their surroundings.

The aim of this study is to place the inscriptions found on Athenian vases in the context of the early development of writing in Athens from the time of the invention of the alphabet in the eighth century BC to the early fourth, when the local alphabet had been supplanted by the common Ionic script. Other sources include the inscriptions on stone, both public and private, scratched inscriptions on pottery, among them the political ostraca, and some inscriptions on lead tablets; they are, however, insufficient to give a full picture of actual writing practices in a period from which we have no papyri. Although the vase inscriptions are brief, they number in the thousands, and being autographs of the period, they give a more accurate picture of the art of writing and the state of literacy in the Classical period. This book presents a selection of inscriptions, with many illustrations, that will help students of ancient vase painting to properly appreciate the individuality, writing competence, and level of education of the members of the pottery workshops, and epigraphists to get a better feel for the different styles of the well-known stone inscriptions. Professor Immerwahr has been working for many years on a complete collection of the inscriptions on Attic pottery, which he hopes will help contribute to a wide-ranging study of aspects of ancient life.

This book transforms archaeological knowledge of Nazareth by publishing over 80 years of archaeological work at the Sisters of Nazareth convent, including a detailed re-investigation in the early twenty-first century under the author's direction. Although one of the world's most famous places and of key importance to understanding early Christianity, Nazareth has attracted little archaeological attention. Following a chance discovery in the 1880s, the site was initially explored by the nuns of the convent themselves - one of the earliest examples of a major programme of excavations initiated and directed by women - and then for decades by Henri Senes, whose excavations (like those of the nuns) have remained almost entirely unpublished. Their work revealed a complex sequence, elucidated and dated by twenty-first century study, beginning with a partly rock-cut Early Roman-period domestic building, followed by Roman-period quarrying and burial, a well-preserved cave-church, and major surface-level Byzantine and Crusader churches. The interpretation and broader implications of each phase of activity are discussed in the context of recent studies of Roman-period, Byzantine, and later archaeology and contemporary archaeological theory, and their relationship to written accounts of Nazareth is also assessed. The Sisters of Nazareth Convent provides a crucial archaeological study for those wishing to understand the archaeology of Nazareth and its place in early Christianity and beyond.

Cave and Worship in Ancient Greece brings together a series of stimulating chapters contributing to the archaeology and our modern understanding of the character and importance of cave sanctuaries in the fi rst millennium BCE Mediterranean. Written by emerging and established archaeologists and researchers, the book employs a fascinating and wide range of approaches and methodologies to investigate, and interpret material assemblages from cave shrines, many of which are introduced here for the fi rst time. An introductory section explores the emergence and growth of caves as centres of cult and religion. The chapters then probe some of the meanings attached to cave spaces and votive materials such as terracotta fi gurines, and ceramics, and those who created and used them. The authors use sensory and gender approaches, discuss the identity of the worshippers, and the contribution of statistical analysis to the role of votive materials. At the heart of the volume is the examination of cave materials excavated on the Cycladic islands and Crete, in Attika and Aitoloakarnania, on the Ionian islands and in southern Italy. This is a welcome volume for students of prehistoric and classical archaeology,enthusiasts of the history of caves, religion, ancient history, and anthropology.

This is the only modern work to survey in depth the inscriptions of Greece before 403 BC. Since its first publication in 1961, the body of material available for study has increased substantially, and the size of the Supplement in this reissue is a clear measure of that growth. The new pages are partly the work of Anne Jeffery, and partly that of her pupil Alan Johnston. The original text attempts to reconstruct, for Greek inscriptions from the eighth to the fifth centuries BC, a chronological system (divided tentatively into twenty-five year periods) similar to those already generally accepted for Greek sculpture and pottery. It includes surveys of the origin and dissemination of the alphabet among the city states, the development and content of early inscriptions, and the techniques of the craftsmen, followed by a discussion of the inscriptions of each state. Each section contains a list, with bibliography, of all significant inscriptions, while numerous photographs and facsimiles of the inscriptions provide an important instrument of control. The approach is primarily archaeological, but account is taken also of the many historical, philological, and artistic problems involved. `This is a monumental, an altogether superb, book ... It is a book worth waiting for, a major work for reading and for reference, in its field incomparable, and a contribution to the history of our civilization.' Classical World

The Mycenaean World belonged to the legendary heroes who conquered Troy and stand at the heart of Greek identity. This new book brings their culture and society to life with wit and elegance. Since the discovery of the remains of the civilization of Mycenae in the 1870s, knowledge of these Bronze Age Greeks has increased dramatically. This text is a major new contribution to our understanding of this crucial period.. Stepping into the place of the collapsed civilization of Minoan Crete and the Peloponnese (the subject of Castleden's earlier bestselling study, Minoans), the Mycenaeans dominated mainland Greece and the Greek islands from about 1600-1250 BC. Their exploits became the subject of the legends that were immortalized by Homer. In lively prose informed by the latest research, this vivid study delivers the fundamentals of Mycenaean civilization, its hierarchy, economy, religion and arts. Controversially, Castleden interprets the well-known palaces of Mycenae, Tiryns, Pylos and elsewhere as temples. Their sea empire and their relations with other peoples of the Bronze Age world, including the Hittites, the Egyptians and the Trojans, receive full attention. book is an indispensable starting point for the study of the Greek Bronze Age. Full bibliography and copious illustrations support this comprehensive interpretation of a civilization whose legend still lives on.

The visual image of the ruler, particularly in sculpture, played an important role in expressing the character of the new, distinctive style of monarchy brought to Greece and the East by Alexander and the Hellenistic kings. Royal portraits survive on coins and in sculpture, and we read about them in inscriptions and literature - evidence that is here combined to give an historical interpretation of the royal image from Alexander to Kleopatra. Part I looks at the historical setting of royal portrait statues, which functioned as an important medium of exchange between the king and the Greek cities. They gave a visual presentation of royal ideology and expressed the basis of the king's power in a personal godlike charisma. Part II collects together and analyses the major surviving portraits, grouped broadly by time and place, and Part III sets them in the wider political context of the period. The dated coin portraits are used to show broad changes in the royal image and how it responded to the major political challenges from Parthia to the East and Rome to the West.

Roman Domestic Medical Practice in Central Italy examines the roles that the home, the garden and the members of the household (freeborn, freed and slave) played in the acquisition and maintenance of good physical and mental health and well-being. Focussing on the period from the middle Republic to the early Empire, it considers how comprehensive the ancient Roman general understanding of health actually was, and studies how knowledge regarding various aspects of health was transmitted within the household. Using literary, documentary, archaeological and bioarchaeological evidence from a variety of contexts, this is the first extended volume to provide as comprehensive and detailed a reconstruction of this aspect of ancient Roman private life as possible, complementing existing works on ancient professional medical practice and existing works on domestic medical practice in later historical periods. This volume offers an indispensable resource to social historians, particularly those that focus on the ancient family, and medical historians, particularly those that focus on the ancient world.

In the time of Herodotus and Thucydides, the island city of Samos was a leading Greek community, and under the later Hellenistic kingdoms its reputation remained high. Despite its importance, however, this is the first comprehensive study since sustained archaeological investigation began in the 1960s. In reconstructing social and economic trends as well as political and military events, Shipley balances archaeological and geographical evidence with the equally important written sources, including inscriptions and coins. He isolates relatively constant factors in Samos's history (such as its strategic location and its plentiful natural resources) and sets these against substantive developments (such as the loss of independence after Alexander and the decisive influence of Samian emigres on Alexandrian intellectual culture) to provide a broader perspective on the history of Samos.

The establishment of large-scale water infrastructure is a defining aspect of the process of urbanisation. In places like Britain, the Roman period represents the first introduction of features that can be recognised and paralleled to our modern water networks. Writers have regularly cast these innovations as markers of a uniform Roman identity spreading throughout the Empire, and bringing with it a familiar, modern, sense of what constitutes civilised urban living. However, this is a view that has often neglected to explain how such developments were connected to the important symbolic and ritual traditions of waterscapes in Iron Age Britain. Water and Urbanism in Roman Britain argues that the creation of Roman water infrastructure forged a meaningful entanglement between the process of urbanisation and significant local landscape contexts. As a result, it suggests that archetypal Roman urban water features were often more related to an active expression of local hybrid identities, rather than alignment to an incoming continental ideal. By questioning the familiarity of these aspects of the ancient urban form, we can move away from the unhelpful idea that Roman precedent is a central tenet of the current unsustainable relationship between water and our modern cities. This monograph will be of interest to academics and students studying aspects of Roman water management, urbanisation in Roman Britain, and theoretical approaches to landscape. It will also appeal to those working more generally on past human interactions with the natural world.

Despite the fact that Athenians consumed great quantities of manufactured goods, and around half of the residents of classical Athens can be shown to have been more or less dependent for survival on manufacturing in some form, this subject has been almost completely neglected by historians. Poiesis brings together ancient texts and inscriptions, recent scholarly analysis, archaeological finds, and the expertise of modern craftsmen to investigate every known facet of Athens' manufacturing activities. Authored by a management consultant and a recent PhD in Ancient History, the book presents the information in terms of contemporary business principles, drawing on supply and demand and risk-return analysis to explain events and choices. Manufacturing operations are classified in a novel framework based on competitive advantage and barriers to entry, concepts previously absent from ancient history. The framework explains why certain segments were suited to the sole craftsman and others to teams of slaves, and deduces earnings potential based upon competitive differentiation. The result is a new angle on how Athenian society operated; in particular it shows how fragmented industry structures, often the result of primitive technology, were fundamental to the workings of the Athenian democracy by enabling citizens to supplement their income through casual manufacturing activity. The book explains how manufacturing for sale emerged from autarchic peasant households, explores whether any of the industries examined changed to any great extent in Hellenistic and Roman times, and shows how some were transformed by the Industrial Revolution. It includes a methodology for quantifying the demographics of participation in manufacturing. By presenting a new paradigm of historical analysis, one complementing political, military, and literary perspectives, the book will be valuable to classicists and ancient and economic historians while remaining accessible to the general reader.

The 2-volume handbook is dedicated to one of the most significant processes in the history of ancient Greece - colonisation. Greeks set up colonies and other settlements in new environments, establishing themselves in lands stretching from the Iberian Peninsula in the west to North Africa in the south and the Black Sea in the north east. In this colonial world Greek and local structures met, influenced and enriched each other. The handbook brings together historians and archaeologists, all world experts, to present the latest ideas and evidence. The principal aim is to present and update the general picture of this phenomenon, showing its importance in the history of the whole ancient world, including the Near East. The work is dedicated to Prof. A.J. Graham. This first volume gives a lengthy introduction to the problem, including methodological and theoretical issues. The chapters cover Mycenaean expansion, Phoenician and Phocaean colonisation, Greeks in the western Mediterranean, Syria, Egypt and southern Anatolia, etc. The volume is richly illustrated.

This book examines the remarkable Velestino hoard, found in Thessaly in the 1920s, and analyses the light that this collection of artifacts sheds on a poorly studied period of Byzantine history, and on largely neglected aspects of Byzantine civilization. Many collections of Byzantine gold- and silverware, such as Vrap and Seuso, have been surrounded by controversy. None, however, has been under more suspicion than the Velestino hoard, particularly with regards to its authenticity. The hoard contains no gold and no silver, and is in fact a collection of bronze and leaden plaques, some with human, and others with animal or geometric representations. The authors examine three distinct aspects of the hoard: the iconography of its components, the method of its production, and the function of those components. The conclusions that they reached provide valuable new insights into eighth-century Byzantine culture. The book explores the Byzantine cultural and political context of the Velestino hoard and will appeal to historians and art historians of early Byzantium, as well as archaeologists and historians of early medieval technologies.

This volume is the third in the Advances in Archaeological and Museum Science series sponsored by the Society for Archaeological Sciences (SAS). The purpose of this series is to provide summaries of advances in various topics in ar chaeometry, archaeological science, environmental archaeology, preservation technology, and museum conservation. The SAS exists to encourage interdisciplinary collaboration between archaeologists and colleagues in the natural and physical sciences. SAS mem bers are drawn from many disciplinary fields. However, they all share a common belief that physical science techniques and methods constitute an essential component of contemporary archaeological field and laboratory studies. The series editors wish to thank the reviewers of each of the chapters in this volume for their excellent comments and suggestions. We also wish to thank Chriss jones for her invaluable assistance in the preparation of the texts for submission to the publisher. xi Preface As noted in the introductory chapter, this volume is the second major review of research progress in the study of archaeological obsidian. An earlier book, Advances in Obsidian Glass Studies: Archaeological and Geochemical Perspectives, appeared in 1976. A comparison of the treatment of topics reflected in this earlier work and that contained in this volume not only highlights important advances in the quality and depth of research on archaeological obsidian over more than a quarter of a century but also illustrates more generally some characteristics of developments in the archaeological science field in general."

Twilight of Empire is the first book in English to examine the Brest-Litovsk Peace Conference during the later stages of World War I with the use of extensive archival sources. Two separate peace treaties were signed at Brest-Litovsk - the first between the Central Powers and Ukraine and the second between the Central Powers and Bolshevik Russia. Borislav Chernev, through an insightful and in-depth analysis of primary sources and archival material, argues that although its duration was short lived, the Brest-Litovsk settlement significantly affected the post-Imperial transformation of East Central Europe. The conference became a focal point for the interrelated processes of peacemaking, revolution, imperial collapse, and nation-state creation in the multi-ethnic, entangled spaces of East Central Europe. Chernev's analysis expands beyond the traditional focus on the German-Russian relationship, paying special attention to the policies of Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and Ukraine. The transformations initiated by the Brest-Litovsk conferences ushered in the twilight of empire as the Habsburg, Hohenzollern, and Ottoman Empires all shared the fate of their Romanov counterpart at the end of World War I.

Future Thinking in Roman Culture is the first volume dedicated to the exploration of prospective memory and future thinking in the Roman world, integrating cutting edge research in cognitive sciences and theory with approaches to historiography, epigraphy, and material culture. This volume opens a new avenue of investigation for Roman memory studies in presenting multiple case studies of memory and commemoration as future-thinking phenomena. It breaks new ground by bringing classical studies into direct dialogue with recent research on cognitive processes of future thinking. The thematically linked but methodologically diverse contributions, all by leading scholars who have published significant work in memory studies of antiquity, both cultural and cognitive, make the volume well suited for classical studies scholars and students seeking to explore cognitive science and philosophy of mind in ancient contexts, with special appeal to those sharing the growing interest in investigating Roman conceptions of futurity and time. The chapters all deliberately coalesce around the central theme of prospection and future thinking and their impact on our understanding of Roman ritual and religion, politics, and individual motivation and intention. This volume will be an invaluable resource to undergraduate and postgraduate students of classics, art history, archaeology, history, and religious studies, as well as scholars and students of memory studies, historical and cultural cognitive studies, psychology, and philosophy.

In England in Europe, Elizabeth Tyler focuses on two histories: the Encomium Emmae Reginae, written for Emma the wife of the thelred II and Cnut, and The Life of King Edward, written for Edith the wife of Edward the Confessor. Tyler offers a bold literary and historical analysis of both texts and reveals how the two queens actively engaged in the patronage of history-writing and poetry to exercise their royal authority. Tyler's innovative combination of attention to intertextuality and regard for social networks emphasizes the role of women at the centre of Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman court literature. In doing so, she argues that both Emma and Edith's negotiation of conquests and factionalism created powerful models of queenly patronage that were subsequently adopted by individuals such as Queen Margaret of Scotland, Countess Adela of Blois, Queen Edith/Matilda, and Queen Adeliza. England in Europe sheds new lighton the connections between English, French, and Flemish history-writing and poetry and illustrates the key role Anglo-Saxon literary culture played in European literature long after 1066.

For centuries, archaeologists have excavated the soils of Britain to uncover finds from the early medieval past. These finds have been used to reconstruct the alleged communities, migration patterns, and expressions of identity of coherent groups who can be regarded as ethnic 'Anglo-Saxons'. Even in the modern day, when social constructionism has been largely accepted by scholars, this paradigm still persists. This book challenges the ethnic paradigm. As the first historiographical study of approaches to ethnic identity in modern 'Anglo-Saxon' archaeology, it reveals these approaches to be incompatible with current scholarly understandings of ethnicity. Drawing upon post-structuralist approaches to self and community, it highlights the empirical difficulties the archaeology of ethnicity in early medieval Britain faces, and proposes steps toward an alternative understanding of the role played by the communities of lowland Britain - both migrants from across the North Sea and those already present - in transforming the Roman world.

This volume uses the travels of Roman governors to explore how authority was defined in and by the public places of Greek cities. By demonstrating that the places where imperial officials and local notables met were integral to the strategies by which they communicated with one another, Greek Cities and Roman Governors sheds new light on the significance of civic space in the Roman provinces. It also presents a fresh perspective on the monumental cityscapes of Roman Asia Minor, epicenter of the greatest building boom in classical history. Though of special interest to scholars and students of Roman Asia Minor, Greek Cities and Roman Governors offers broad insights into Roman imperialism and the ancient city.