Lyvia Morgan0.0 This book presents the results of the study of the wall paintings from the Northeast Bastion at Ayia Irini, situating them within the wider social context of Kea and the Aegean world. Like the spectacularly well-preserved Akrotiri on Thera, with which these paintings are contemporary, Ayia Irini thrived 3,500 years ago. But unlike Akrotiri, Ayia Irini was not protected by a layer of volcanic ash. When the site was excavated in the 1960s-1970s by the University of Cincinnati under the auspices of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, the paintings had long since collapsed, fractured into thousands of small pieces. This study attempts to bring the wall paintings back to life. Within the Northeast Bastion was a miniature frieze and, in the adjacent room, large-scale panels of plants. Human action set within townscapes, landscapes, and the sea presents a vivid account of the social life and environment of the people for whom this harbor town was vital within the trading network of the time. This book explores the social implications of the fascinating and often unique iconography of the paintings whose setting within a fortification wall is quite extraordinary. The volume is profusely illustrated with color drawings, visualizations, and photographs.
Tuna Şare Ağtürk0.0 This ground-breaking volume offers the first publication of a major new monument of Roman power in Asia Minor - sixty-six painted marble frieze panels from the city of Nicomedia with an excellent archaeological and architectural context from the Tetrarchic period. During the rule of Diocletian, Nicomedia was the centre of the Late Roman Empire in the east, and the reliefs of the frieze, which decorate an imperial complex built at this time, represent an astonishing combination of imperial, mythological, and agonistic scenes. The reliefs found in Nicomedia fill an important gap in our knowledge between the Severan and Constantinian periods, and provide the East Roman Empire with a defining monument that can be set beside and in striking counterpoint to - the Arch of Constantine in Rome. Published here in full colour and fully documented, the Nicomedia Frieze is, in this hugely important scholarly monograph, brought to the public for the very first time.
Allison L. C. Emmerson0.0 Defined by borders both physical and conceptual, the Roman city stood apart as a concentration of life and activity that was legally, economically, and ritually divided from its rural surroundings. Death was a key area of control, and tombs were relegated outside city walls from the Republican period through Late Antiquity. Given this separation, an unexpected phenomenon marked the Augustan and early Imperial periods: Roman cities developed suburbs, built-up areas beyond their boundaries, where the living and the dead came together in densely urban environments. Life and Death
in the Roman Suburb examines these districts, drawing on the archaeological remains of cities across Italy to understand the character of Roman suburbs and to illuminate the factors that led to their rise and decline, focusing especially on the tombs of the dead. Whereas work on Roman cities has tended to pass over funerary material, and research on death has concentrated on issues seen as separate from urbanism, Emmerson introduces a new paradigm, considering tombs within their suburban surroundings of shops, houses, workshops, garbage dumps, extramural sanctuaries, and major entertainment
buildings, in order to trace the many roles they played within living cities. Her investigations show how tombs were not passive memorials, but active spaces that facilitated and furthered the social and economic life of the city, where relationships between the living and the dead were an enduring aspect of urban life.
Nicola Terrenato0.0 This book presents a radical new interpretation of Roman expansion in Italy during the fourth and third centuries BCE. Nicola Terrenato argues that the process was accomplished by means of a grand bargain that was negotiated between the landed elites of central and southern Italy, while military conquest played a much smaller role than is usually envisaged. Deploying archaeological, epigraphic, and historical evidence, he paints a picture of the family interactions that tied together both Roman and non-Roman aristocrats and that resulted in their pooling power and resources for the creation of a new political entity. The book is written in accessible language, without technical terms or quotations in Latin, and is heavily illustrated.
John M. Marston0.0 This book publishes the results of 220 botanical samples from the 1993-2002 Gordion excavations directed by Mary Voigt. Together with Naomi Miller's 2010 volume (Gordion Special Studies 5), this book completes the publication of botanical samples from Voigt's excavations. The book aims to reconstruct agricultural decision making using archaeological and paleoenvironmental data from Gordion to describe environmental and agricultural changes at the site.
John M. Marston argues that different political and economic systems implemented over time at Gordion resulted in patterns of agricultural decision making that were well adapted to the social setting of farmers in each period, but that these practices had divergent environmental impacts, with some regimes sponsoring sustainable agricultural practices and others leading to significant environmental change. The implications of this book are twofold: Gordion will now be one of the best published agricultural datasets from the entire Near East and, thus, serve as a valuable comparable dataset for regional synthesis of agricultural and environmental change, and the methods the author developed to reconstruct agricultural change at Gordion serves as tools to engage questions about the relationship between social and environmental change at sites worldwide. Other books address similar themes but none in the Near East address these themes in diachronic perspective such as we have at Gordion.
Matthew P. Canepa0.0 The Iranian Expanse explores how kings in Persia and the ancient Iranian world utilized the built and natural environment to form and contest Iranian cultural memory, royal identity, and sacred cosmologies. Investigating over a thousand years of history, from the Achaemenid period to the arrival of Islam, The Iranian Expanse argues that Iranian identities were built and shaped not by royal discourse alone, but by strategic changes to Western Asia’s cities, sanctuaries, palaces, and landscapes. The Iranian Expanse critically examines the construction of a new Iranian royal identity and empire, which subsumed and subordinated all previous traditions, including those of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Anatolia. It then delves into the startling innovations that emerged after Alexander under the Seleucids, Arsacids, Kushans, Sasanians, and the Perso-Macedonian dynasties of Anatolia and the Caucasus, a previously understudied and misunderstood period. Matthew P. Canepa elucidates the many ruptures and renovations that produced a new royal culture that deeply influenced not only early Islam, but also the wider Persianate world of the Il-Khans, Safavids, Timurids, Ottomans, and Mughals.
Gilbert J. Gorski, James E. Packer0.0 The Roman Forum was in many ways the heart of the Roman Empire. Today, the Forum exists in a fragmentary state, having been destroyed and plundered by barbarians, aristocrats, citizens, and priests over the past two millennia. Enough remains, however, for archaeologists to reconstruct its spectacular buildings and monuments. This richly illustrated volume provides an architectural history of the central section of the Roman Forum during the Empire (31 BCE-476 CE), from the Temple of Julius Caesar to the monuments on the slope of the Capitoline hill. Bringing together state of the art technology in architectural illustration and the expertise of a prominent Roman archaeologist, this book offers a unique reconstruction of the Forum, providing architectural history, a summary of each building's excavation and research, scaled digital plans, elevations, and reconstructed aerial images that not only shed light on the Forum's history but vividly bring it to life. With this book, scholars, students, architects, and artists will be able to visualize for the first time since antiquity the character, design, and appearance of the famous heart of ancient Rome.
Michael Jones, Susanna McFadden0.0 "The Luxor Temple of Amun-Re, built to commemorate the divine power of the pharaohs, is one of the iconic monuments of New Kingdom Egypt. In the 4th century C.E., the Roman Imperial government, capitalizing on the site’s earlier significance, converted the temple into a military camp and constructed a lavishly painted cult chamber dedicated to the four emperors of the Tetrarchy. These frescoes provide fascinating insight into the politic ..."
Thomas Tartaron0.0 In this book, Thomas F. Tartaron presents a new and original reassessment of the maritime world of the Mycenaean Greeks of the Late Bronze Age. By all accounts a seafaring people, they enjoyed maritime connections with peoples as distant as Egypt and Sicily. These long-distance relations have been celebrated and much studied; by contrast, the vibrant worlds of local maritime interaction and exploitation of the sea have been virtually ignored. Dr. Tartaron argues that local maritime networks, in the form of "coastscapes" and "small worlds," are far more representative of the true fabric of Mycenaean life. He offers a complete template of conceptual and methodological tools for recovering small worlds and the communities that inhabited them. Combining archaeological, geoarchaeological, and anthropological approaches with ancient texts and network theory, he demonstrates the application of this scheme in several case studies. This book presents new perspectives and challenges for all archaeologists with interests in maritime connectivity.
Elspeth R.M. Dusinberre0.0 The Achaemenid Persian Empire (550-330 BCE) was a vast and complex sociopolitical structure that encompassed much of modern-day Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Israel, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan, and included two dozen distinct peoples who spoke different languages, worshiped different deities, lived in different environments, and had widely differing social customs. This book offers a radical new approach to understanding the Achaemenid Persian Empire and imperialism more generally. Through a wide array of textual, visual, and archaeological material, Elspeth R. M. Dusinberre shows how the rulers of the empire constructed a system flexible enough to provide for the needs of different peoples within the confines of a single imperial authority and highlights the variability in response. This book examines the dynamic tensions between authority and autonomy across the empire, providing a valuable new way of considering imperial structure and development.
Bryan E. Burns0.0 The impact of long-distance exchange on the developing cultures of Bronze Age Greece has been a subject of debate since Schliemann's discovery of the Shaft Graves at Mycenae. In Mycenaean Greece, Mediterranean Commerce, and the Formation of Identity, Bryan E. Burns offers a new understanding of the effects of Mediterranean trade on Mycenaean Greece by considering the possibilities represented by the traded objects themselves in their Mycenaean contexts. He argues that the consumption of exotic items enabled the formation of alternate identities and the resistance of palatial power.
Kathleen M. Lynch0.0 This book presents the first well-preserved set of sympotic pottery which served a Late Archaic house in the Athenian Agora. The deposit contains household and fine-ware pottery, nearly all the figured pieces of which are forms associated with communal drinking. Since it comes from a single house, the pottery also reflects purchasing patterns and thematic preferences of the homeowner. The multifaceted approach adopted in this book shows that meaning and use are inherently related, and that through archaeology one can restore a context of use for a class of objects frequently studied in isolation.
Michael Dietler0.0 This book presents a theoretically informed, up-to-date study of interactions between indigenous peoples of Mediterranean France and Etruscan, Greek, and Roman colonists during the first millennium BC. Analyzing archaeological data and ancient texts, Michael Dietler explores these colonial encounters over six centuries, focusing on material culture, urban landscapes, economic practices, and forms of violence. He shows how selective consumption linked native societies and colonists and created transformative relationships for each. Archaeologies of Colonialism also examines the role these ancient encounters played in the formation of modern European identity, colonial ideology, and practices, enumerating the problems for archaeologists attempting to re-examine these past societies.
Peter G. Stone, Joanne Farchakh Bajjaly0.0 Winner of the 2011 James R. Wiseman Book Award. Discussion of the issues surrounding the destruction of cultural property in times of conflict has become a key issue for debate around the world. This book provides an historical statement as of 1st March 2006 concerning the destruction of the cultural heritage in Iraq. In a series of chapters it outlines the personal stories of a number of individuals who were - and in most cases continue to be - involved. These individuals are involved at all levels, and come from various points along the political spectrum, giving a rounded and balanced perspective so easily lost in single authored reports. It also provides the first views written by Iraqis on the situation of archaeology in Iraq under Saddam and an overview and contextualisation of the issues surrounding the looting, theft and destruction of the archaeological sites, the Iraqi National museum and the libraries in Baghdad since the war was launched in 2003. Beyond this, it examines our attitudes towards the preservation of cultural and heritage resources and, in particular, the growing political awareness of their importance. Although related to a single conflict, taking place at a specific time in history, the relevance of this work goes far beyond these self-imposed boundaries. PETER STONE is Professor of Heritage Studies and Head of School of Arts and Cultures at Newcastle University; JOANNE FARCHAKH BAJJALY is a Lebanese archaeologist and Middle East correspondent for the French magazine Archeologia.
McKenzie Judith0.0 This masterful history of the monumental architecture of Alexandria, as well as of the rest of Egypt, encompasses an entire millennium – from the city's founding by Alexander the Great in 331 B. C. to the years just after the Islamic conquest of A. D. 642. Long considered lost beyond recall, the architecture of ancient Alexandria has until now remained mysterious. But here Judith McKenzie shows that it is indeed possible to reconstruct the city and many of its buildings by means of meticulous exploration of archaeological remains, written sources, and an array of other fragmentary evidence. The book approaches its subject at the macro- and the micro-level: from city-planning, building types, and designs to architectural style. It addresses the interaction between the imported Greek and native Egyptian traditions; the relations between the architecture of Alexandria and the other cities and towns of Egypt as well as the wider Mediterranean world; and Alexandria's previously unrecognized role as a major source of architectural innovation and artistic influence. Lavishly illustrated with new plans of the city in the Ptolemaic, Roman, and Byzantine periods; reconstruction drawings; and photographs, the book brings to life the ancient city and uncovers the true extent of its architectural legacy in the Mediterranean world.
Joan Breton Connelly0.0 In this sumptuously illustrated book, Joan Breton Connelly gives us the first comprehensive cultural history of priestesses in the ancient Greek world. Connelly presents the fullest and most vivid picture yet of how priestesses lived and worked, from the most famous and sacred of them--the Delphic Oracle and the priestess of Athena Polias--to basket bearers and handmaidens. Along the way, she challenges long-held beliefs to show that priestesses played far more significant public roles in ancient Greece than previously acknowledged.
Connelly builds this history through a pioneering examination of archaeological evidence in the broader context of literary sources, inscriptions, sculpture, and vase painting. Ranging from southern Italy to Asia Minor, and from the late Bronze Age to the fifth century A.D., she brings the priestesses to life--their social origins, how they progressed through many sacred roles on the path to priesthood, and even how they dressed. She sheds light on the rituals they performed, the political power they wielded, their systems of patronage and compensation, and how they were honored, including in death. Connelly shows that understanding the complexity of priestesses' lives requires us to look past the simple lines we draw today between public and private, sacred and secular.
The remarkable picture that emerges reveals that women in religious office were not as secluded and marginalized as we have thought--that religious office was one arena in ancient Greece where women enjoyed privileges and authority comparable to that of men. Connelly concludes by examining women's roles in early Christianity, taking on the larger issue of the exclusion of women from the Christian priesthood. This paperback edition includes additional maps and a glossary for student use.
Sheila Dillon0.0 This book offers a new approach to the history of Greek portraiture by focusing on portraits without names. Sheila Dillon considers the few original bronze and marble portrait statues preserved from the Classical and Hellenistic periods together with the large number of Greek portraits known only through Roman copies. This study calls into question two basic tenets of Greek portraiture: first, that it was only in the late Hellenistic period, under Roman influence, that Greek portraits exhibited a wide range of styles, including descriptive realism; and second, that in most cases, one can easily tell a subject's public role from the visual traits used in this portrait. The sculptures studied here instead show that the proliferation of portrait styles takes place much earlier, in the late Classical period, and that the identity expressed by these portraits is much more complex and layered than has previously been realized.
Lynne Lancaster0.0 Concrete Vaulted Construction in Imperial Rome examines the methods and techniques that enabled builders to construct some of the most imposing monuments of ancient Rome. Focusing on structurally innovative vaulting and the factors that influenced its advancement, Lynne Lancaster also explores a range of related practices. Lancaster also examines construction techniques in relation to the social, economic, and political contexts of Rome, in an effort to draw connections between changes in the building industry and the events that shaped Roman society from the early empire to late antiquity.
Bruce G. Trigger0.0 Arising independently in various parts of the world, early civilizations--the first class-based societies in human history--are of importance to social scientists interested in the development of complexity, while their cultural productions fascinate both humanists and the general public. This book offers the first detailed comparative study of the seven most fully documented early civilizations: ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, Shang China, the Aztecs and their neighbors, the Classic Maya, the Inca, and the Yoruba. Unlike previous studies, equal attention is paid to similarities and differences in their sociopolitical organization, their economic systems, and their religious beliefs, knowledge, art, and values. Many of this study's findings are surprising and provocative. They challenge not only current understandings of early civilizations but also the theoretical foundations of modern archaeology and anthropology. Rival cultural and ecological approaches are demonstrated to be complimentary to one another, while a comprehensive understanding of human behavior is shown to require that more attention be paid to psychology and the neurosciences. Bruce G. Trigger is James McGill Professor in the Department of Anthropology at McGill University. He received his PhD from Yale University and has carried out archaeological research in Egypt and the Sudan. His current interests include the comparative study of early civilizations, the history of archaeology, and archaeological and anthropological theory. He has received various scholarly awards, including the Prix Leon-Gerin from the Quebec government, for his sustained contributions to the social sciences. He is an honarary fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland and an honarary member of the Prehistoric Society (U.K.). His numerous books include Sociological Evolution (Blackwell, 1998), Early Civilizations: Ancient Egypt in Context (Amer. Univ in Cairo, 1993), A History of Archaeological Thought (Cambridge, 1989), and The Children of Aataentsic: A History of the Huron People to 1660 (McGill-Queens Univ., 1976).
Tony J. Wilkinson0.0 Many fundamental studies of the origins of states have built upon landscape data, but an overall study of the Near Eastern landscape itself has never been attempted. Spanning thousands of years of history, the ancient Near East presents a bewildering range of landscapes, the understanding of which can greatly enhance our ability to infer past political and social systems.Tony Wilkinson now shows that throughout the Holocene humans altered the Near Eastern environment so thoroughly that the land has become a human artifact, albeit one that retains the power to shape human societies. In this trailblazing book—the first to describe and explain the development of the Near Eastern landscape using archaeological data—Wilkinson identifies specific landscape signatures for various regions and periods, from the early stages of complex societies in the fifth to sixth millennium B.C. to the close of the Early Islamic period around the tenth century A.D.
From Bronze Age city-states to colonized steppes, these signature landscapes of irrigation systems, tells, and other features changed through time along with changes in social, economic, political, and environmental conditions. By weaving together the record of the human landscape with evidence of settlement, the environment, and social and economic conditions, Wilkinson provides a holistic view of the ancient Near East that complements archaeological excavations, cuneiform texts, and other conventional sources.
Through this overview, culled from thirty years' research, Wilkinson establishes a new framework for understanding the economic and physical infrastructure of the region. By describing the basic attributes of the ancient cultural landscape and placing their development within the context of a dynamic environment, he breaks new ground in landscape archaeology and offers a new context for understanding the ancient Near East.
Gloria Ferrari0.0 Over the past two hundred years, thousands of ancient Greek vases have been unearthed. Yet these artifacts remain a challenge: what did the images depicted on these vases actually mean to ancient Greek viewers? In this long-awaited book, Gloria Ferrari uses Athenian vases, literary evidence, and other works of art from the Archaic and Classical periods (520-400 B.C.) to investigate what these items can tell us about the ancient Greeks—specifically, their notions of gender.
Ferrari begins by developing a theoretical perspective on visual representation, arguing that artistic images give us access to how their subjects were imagined rather than to the way they really were. For instance, Ferrari's examinations of the many representations of women working wool reveal that these images constitute powerful metaphors—metaphors, she argues, which both reflect and construct Greek conceptions of the ideal woman and her ideal behavior.
From this perspective, Ferrari studies a number of icons representing blameless femininity and ideal masculinity to reevaluate the rites of passage by which girls are made ready for marriage and boys become men. Representations of the nude male body in Archaic statues known as kouroi, for example, symbolize manhood itself and shed new light on the much-discussed institution of paiderastia. And, in Ferrari's hands, imagery equating maidens with arable land and buried treasure provides a fresh view of Greek ideas of matrimony.
Innovative, thought-provoking, and insightful throughout, Figures of Speech is a powerful demonstration of how the study of visual images as well as texts can reshape our understanding of ancient Greek culture.
Сиприан Бродбенк0.0 This book uses comparative island archaeology to reinterpret a vital phase in early Aegean history. Cyprian Broodbank presents the first modern analysis of Cycladic culture, tracing the development of Neolithic and Early Bronze Age societies in these islands from first colonisation through to incorporation, three millennia later, in the world system of the Minoan palaces and the wider Near East. The archaeology of this region is rich and well documented, and allows Dr Broodbank to reformulate early Cycladic history and to deploy detailed examples that challenge established approaches to island archaeology. He shows that islanders can actively define their cultural space and environments, and that their communities are linked by complex relations to the non-insular world. This book provides fresh perspectives and challenges for island archaeologists and Mediterranean specialists.
Lynn E. Roller0.0 This book examines one of the most intriguing figures in the religious life of the ancient Mediterranean world, the Phrygian Mother Goddess, known to the Greeks and Romans as Cybele or Magna Mater, the Great Mother. Her cult was particularly prominent in central Anatolia (modern Turkey), and spread from there through the Greek and Roman world. She was an enormously popular figure, attracting devotion from common people and potentates alike. This book is the first comprehensive assembly and discussion of the entire extant evidence concerning the worship of the Phrygian Mother Goddess, from her earliest appearance in the prehistoric record to the early centuries of the Roman Empire.
Lynn E. Roller presents and analyzes literary, historiographic, and archaeological data with equal acuity and flair. While previous studies have tended to emphasize the more outrageous aspects of the Mother Goddess's cult, such as her orgiastic rituals and the eunuch priests who attended her, this book places a special focus on Cybele's position in Anatolia and the ways in which the identity of the goddess changed as her cult was transmitted to Greece and Rome. Roller gives a detailed account of the growth, spread, and evolution of her cult, her ceremonies, and her meaning for her adherents.
This book will introduce students of Classical antiquity to many aspects of the Great Mother which have been previously unexamined, and will interest anyone who has ever been piqued by curiosity about the Mother Goddess of the ancient Western world.
Graeme Barker0.0 The desert margins of North Africa are extremely rich in archaeological ruins of the Roman period, evidence of dense settlement 2,000 years ago in what are now arid and hostile environments. Historians, geographers and archaeologists have long debated the significance of these sites, explaining the 'Greening of the Desert' variously in terms of environmental change, colonization, external market forces or combinations of factors. The debate so far has been characterized by the lack of scientific data from any one region concerning, on the one hand, the nature of settlement, society and land-use and, on the other, the contemporary climate and environment; this has made it impossible to compare rigorously the strengths and weaknesses of the alternative theories.
The two volumes of Farming the Desert present the results of the alternative approach taken by the UNESCO Libyan Valleys Archaeological Survey: a detailed inter-disciplinary study by archaeologists, geographers and historians of a single region, i.e. the basins of the Wadis Sofeggin and ZemZem in Tripolitania, northwest Libya. The project's methodologies for studying the archaeology of arid-zone agriculture have been recognized internationally, and the results of their application to the study area have transformed our understanding of how the desert margins of North Africa were farmed in antiquity, with important implications for modern agricultural planning.
'A particular triumph. It marshals a wide variety of skills and techniques, transforms our understanding of ancient pre-desert farming, and is as vital a contribution to modern needs as it is to scholarship.' (Tim Potter, British Museum)
Joseph Coleman Carter0.0 This study provides a complete record of the necropolis of the ancient Greek colony of Metaponto in southern Italy. It sets 400 burials dating from the 6th to the 3rd centuries BC into tographical, historical and cultural contexts. Specialist studies deal with ceramic and other finds, especially bronze mirrors and vases. There is also in-depth study of the human remains.
