Archaeology & Ancient History / Ancient Greece & the Hellenistic World
Format: Paperback
Pages: 216
ISBN: 9781789253023
Pub Date: 31 May 2019
Illustrations: b/w and colour
Description:
Pantalica is a large limestone promontory in southeast Sicily known chiefly for a series of extensive cemeteries comprising thousands of chamber tombs cut out of the rock, dating mainly between the 13th and 7th centuries BCE. A UNESCO World Heritage site and nature reserve, renowned for archaeological remains in a spectacular natural setting, the site gives its name to the Late Bronze and Iron Age “Pantalica culture”, typical of southern Sicily in the period just before Greek colonization. At the time of Greek colonization in southern Sicily (8th c BCE), however, Pantalica was still one of the main indigenous centers of the region, sometimes likened to a chiefdom, dominating a sizeable territory and subsidiary settlements.
The main excavations were undertaken by Paolo Orsi between 1895 and 1910 and mainly comprise information and relatively abundant finds of pottery and bronze artefacts from about 250 chamber tombs. The material is housed in the Archaeological Museum of Syracuse and is crucial for an understanding of local cultural traditions, burial practices and international contacts between Sicily and other areas (Italy, the eastern Mediterranean) in this period. The finds are only known from a small selection published by Orsi in two articles of 1895 and 1912. More than half were never published. The main aim of this volume is to provide a comprehensive study and illustrated catalogue of all the finds from the Pantalica tombs, along with new information from Orsi’s original excavation notebooks about their original context. In addition, the authors present the results of original research on different aspects of the evidence, including topography, funerary architecture (chamber tombs), funerary practices, ceramics, metals and other finds, and chronology. This volume will be an indispensable source of hitherto unpublished information of particular interest to scholars of Mediterranean later prehistory and connections between Greek colonists and native populations in the early historical period. Some new information is also provided about remains of the classical, Hellenistic, late antique and Medieval periods.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 248
ISBN: 9781789251326
Pub Date: 31 Mar 2019
Series: University of Cambridge Museum of Classical Archaeology Monographs
Illustrations: b/w
Description:
Greek Colonization in Local Context takes a fresh look at Greek colonies around Europe and Black Sea. The emphasis is on cultural interaction, transformation and the repercussions and local reactions to colonization in social, religious and cultural terms. Papers examine the archaeological evidence for cultural interaction in a series of case studies from locations around the Mediterranean and Black Sea regions, at a variety of scales.
Contributors consider the effects of colonization on urban life and developments in cities and smaller settlements as well as in the rural landscapes surrounding and supporting them. This collection of new papers by leading scholars reveals fascinating details of the native response to the imposition of Greek rule and the indigenous input into early state development in the Mediterranean and adjacent regions.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 208
ISBN: 9781789250428
Pub Date: 26 Oct 2018
Description:
As the founder of the longest-lasting of all the Hellenistic kingdoms, not only was Ptolemy I an able soldier and ruler, he was also an historian and, in Egyptian eyes, a living god. His own inclination and experience facilitated continuous acts of self-creation in a variety of forms, whether literary, dynastic, artistic, or political. His work on Alexander and his campaigns was used by the later Alexander historians, and was one of Arrian’s major sources for his Anabasis.
In the pages of his own history, Ptolemy constructed a self-portrait characterized by military courage and deep friendship with Alexander. As ruler of the Egyptian kingdom, Ptolemy experienced an elevated model of kingship very different from the Macedonian one: he consciously embraced the divinity of the Pharaoh, a construct that had little to do with the real man who wore the crowns. The chapters in this book, written by field experts in numismatics, gender, warfare, historiography, Egyptology and religion, examine the many ways in which Alexander the Great’s most successful Successor consciously made his own legacy.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 296
ISBN: 9781789250381
Pub Date: 12 Sep 2018
Series: Childhood in the Past Monograph
Description:
Motherhood and childhood are social and cultural constructions that have their origins in prehistoric times and are visible through Greek and Roman discourses in Antiquity. This volume explores various images of maternity and infancy, and the identification of women and womanhood in prehistoric and classic societies. Aspects such as the crucial role of maintenance activities and care, the processes of socialization and learning, the impact of infant death, the figure of the mother queen, the religious discourses about motherhood, the rules on parental rights, the transgressions of traditional motherhood and the emotional aspects of the mother-child relation are analysed.
The book covers the ancient Mediterranean area, from Mesopotamia to the Iberian Peninsula and from prehistoric communities to classic societies, with Mesopotamian, Phoenician and Iberian examples. A multidisciplinary approach is adopted, analysing material culture, representations and texts to gain a deeper understanding of the plurality of motherhood, and the diversity of women’s agency through history.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 224
ISBN: 9781785708633
Pub Date: 17 Jan 2018
Illustrations: b/w
Description:
Greek scholars have produced a vast body of evidence bearing on nuptial practices that has yet to be mined by a professional economist. By standing on their shoulders, the author proposes and tests radically new interpretations of three important status groups in Greek history: the pallakē, the hetaira, and the nothos. It is argued that legitimate marriage – that is ‘marriage by loan of the bride to the groom’ – was not the only form of legal marriage in classical Athens and the ancient Greek world generally.
Pallakia, that is, ‘marriage by sale of the bride to the groom’, also was legally recognized. The pallakē-wifeship transaction is a sale into slavery with a restrictive covenant mandating the employment of the sold woman as a wife. In this highly original and challenging new book economist Morris Silver proposes and tests the hypothesis that the likelihood of bride sale rises with increases in the distance between the ancestral residence of the groom and the father’s household. The ‘bastard’ (nothoi) children of pallakai lacked the legal right to inherit from their fathers but were routinely eligible for Athenian citizenship. It is argued that the basic social meaning of hetaira (‘companion’) is not ‘prostitute’/’courtesan’ but ‘single woman’ – that is, a woman legally recognized as being under her own authority (kuria). The defensive adaptation of single women is reflected in Greek myth and social practice by their grouping into ‘packs’, most famously the Daniads and Amazons.
Format: Hardback
Pages: 240
ISBN: 9781907427770
Pub Date: 30 Jun 2017
Illustrations: colour illustrations thr40oughout
Description:
In Celebration of Greek Coinage is a readable but scholarly tribute to ancient Greek coins, its origin being a thoughtful study of the author's own collection, acquired over the past seventeen years. Two initial chapters relate the author's devotion to numismatics and his thoughts on Greek coins as art; these are followed by fifty essays inspired by coins in the author's own collection, comprised of articles which mainly first appeared in the Spink Numismatic Circular and its magazine the Insider, revised and updated for this volume. The essays seek to identify the formative geographical, historical, ethnic, political, religious, cultural, artistic, social, economic and commercial influences behind the coins.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 208
ISBN: 9781785706400
Pub Date: 30 Jun 2017
Description:
The interpretation of archaeological remains as farmsteads has met with much debate in scholarship regarding their role, identification, and even their existence. Despite the difficult nature of scholarship surrounding farmsteads, this site type is repeatedly used to describe small sites in the countryside which have varying evidence of domestic, storage, and agricultural activity. The aim of this book is to engage with the archaeological and textual data for farmsteads dating to the Classical–Hellenistic period of mainland Greece, with the purpose of understanding how these sites fulfilled agricultural roles as centres for occupation, storage, and processing for those working the land.
The conclusions reached here stress the connected nature of the agricultural landscape, and demonstrate how farmsteads played a fundamental role in ancient Greek agriculture.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 240
ISBN: 9781785705120
Pub Date: 15 Dec 2016
Description:
When Alexander the Great died in 323 BC without a chosen successor he left behind a huge empire and ushered in a turbulent period, as his generals fought for control of vast territories. The time of the Successors (Diadochi) is usually defined as beginning in 323 BC and ending with the deaths of the last two Successors in 281 BC. This is a major publication devoted to the Successors and contains eighteen papers reflecting current research.
Several papers attempt to unravel the source history of the very limited remaining narrative accounts, and add additional materials through cuneiform and Byzantine texts. Specific historical issues addressed include the role of so-called royal flatterers and whether or not Alexander's old guard did continue to serve into their sixties and seventies. Three papers reflect the recent conscious effort by many to break away from the Hellenocentric view of the predominantly Greek sources, by examining the role of the conquered, specifically the prominent roles played by Iranians in the administration and military of Alexander and his Successors, pockets of Iranian resistance which eventually blossomed into Hellenistic kingdoms ruled by sovereigns proclaiming their direct connection to an Iranian past and a continuation of Iranian influence through an examination of the roles played by certain of the Diadochis Iranian wives. The papers in the final section analyse the use of varying forms of propaganda. These include the use of the concept of Freedom of the Greeks as a means of manipulating opinion in the Greek world; how Ptolemy used a snake cult associated with the foundation of Alexandria in Egypt to link his kingship with that of Alexander; and the employment of elephant images to advertise the authority of particular rulers.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 288
ISBN: 9781842173343
Pub Date: 15 Nov 2016
Illustrations: 41 b/w illus
Description:
Pamphylia, in modern Turkey, was a Greek country from the early Iron Age until the Middle Ages. In that land there were nine cities which can be described more or less as Greek, and this book is an investigation of their history. This was a land at the margins of other great empires - Hellenistic, Roman, Arab and Byzantine - and is still off the beaten track, though Aspendos, Perge and Phaselis are all visited for their archaeology.
Only one ancient source, Strabo, discusses the area at any length, and John Grainger therefore has to bring together a wide variety of exiguous and fragmentary sources to tell the cities' story. His focus is not only regional - he is interested in the impact of outside forces on a particular civic culture. He considers the processes of city foundation, settlement, urbanisation and evolution, and the cities' mutual relations. Coastal piracy drew Pamphylia into the Roman empire, and finally, in the seventh century AD, the Arabs destroyed the cities in their wars with the Byzantine empire.
Format: Hardback
Pages: 2100
ISBN: 9788393842582
Pub Date: 22 Aug 2016
Imprint: Journal of Juristic Papyrology
Series: JJP Supplements
Illustrations: 50
Description:
Proceedings of the 27th International Congress of Papyrology, Warsaw 29.07—3.08 2013: 3 Volumes:Vol.
I: Literary Papyri: Texts and studiesVol. II: Subliterary papyri. Documentary papyri. Scribal practices, linguistic mattersVol. III: Studying papyri
Format: Hardback
Pages: 300
ISBN: 9788393842568
Pub Date: 29 Feb 2016
Imprint: Journal of Juristic Papyrology
Series: JJP Supplements
Description:
The book is depicting the Jewish Diaspora in the Roman Imperial period
The Past in the Present
The Collection of Classical & Near Eastern Antiquities in the National Museum of Denmark
Format: Paperback
Pages: 166
ISBN: 9788789438092
Pub Date: 31 Dec 2015
Illustrations: illus
Description:
The past is inextricably embeded in the present – whether we are aware of it or not. The present was shaped by the thoughts and deeds of those who went before, and our daily life largely plays out on a stage set by our ancestors. The seven contributors to this volume have taken their cue from ancient artefacts of the cultures of the Mediterranean and Near East that are kept in the National Museum of Denmark.
The authors explain how these items were gathered in the first place at their remote places of origin, and why the collectors deemed the objects so important that they were willing to go through considerable trouble and expense to bring them to Denmark. Also, the demonstrate how the interpretation and perceived significance, thereby sketching important stages in the formative history of the National Museum.
Format: Hardback
Pages: 168
ISBN: 9781782979234
Pub Date: 12 Mar 2015
Illustrations: b/w illustrations
Description:
This book contains a collection of papers related to the history and historiography of Warfare, Politics and Power in the Ancient Mediterranean world. The contributions, written by 19 recognized experts from a variety of methodological and evidentiary perspectives, show how ancient peoples considered war and conflict at the heart of social, political and economic activity. Though focusing on a single theme – war – the papers are firmly based in the context of the wider social and literary issues of Ancient Mediterranean scholarship and as such, consider war and conflict as part of a complex matrix of culture in which historical actors articulate their relationships with society and historical authors articulate their relationships with history.
The result is a rich understanding of Ancient World history and history-writing. The volume is presented in honour of Waldemar Heckel, a foremost scholar of Alexander the Great and Ancient Warfare.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 176
ISBN: 9781782979821
Pub Date: 26 Feb 2015
Illustrations: 8p col pls
Description:
The papers in this volume were presented at an international conference organised in Athens (May 11-14, 2004) and focus on the study of the Panathenaic Games, a Panhellenic athletic event that lasted for nearly a millennium. An international assembly of archaeologists, art historians, ancient historians, epigraphists and classical scholars contributed to the discussion of the origins and the historical development of the Panathenaic Games in general and of individual contests in particular. The role of royal and other patrons in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, as well as the form and meaning of victory dedications and other monuments generated by the games were also examined, making this a truly interdisciplinary study into this fascinating event.
Two papers are in Greek.
Format: Hardback
Pages: 447
ISBN: 9780905205571
Pub Date: 01 Jan 2015
Imprint: Francis Cairns Publications
Description:
PROFESSOR E. KERR BORTHWICK (1925–2008) studied Classics at Aberdeen University and at Christ’s College Cambridge before being appointed Lecturer, first at the University of Leeds and then, in 1955, at Edinburgh University, where he remained for the rest of his career. He headed the Greek Department at Edinburgh from 1980 until his retirement in 1989 and was appointed to a Personal Chair in Greek in 1983.
Ancient music and Greek drama were the main focuses of E.K. Borthwick’s academic output, and he had a particular flair for pinpointing, elucidating, and solving textual difficulties. But his interests ranged much further, as the works collected in this volume demonstrate; and his papers intrigue and entertain where a less lively pen might have made the points at issue seem dry and abstruse. Taken together, his articles constitute a stellar example of what a classicist with professional training as a philologist, an enquiring mind, an exact eye for detail, and the ability to communicate enthusiasm, can achieve in a life’s work.The volume opens with Professor Borthwick’s inaugural lecture on Homer, ‘Odyssean Elements in the Iliad’ (Edinburgh, 1983). The editor, Dr. Calum Maciver, has then arranged Borthwick’s 63 scholarly articles, published between 1959 and 2003, thematically under six headings: Ancient Music, The Pyrrhic Dance, Drama, Zoologica, Ancient Sport, Miscellanea. The volume includes a consolidated bibliography of all works cited, a general index, an index of Greek words, and an index locorum. A selection of the titles under each of the headings indicates the range and variety of Kerr Borthwick’s scholarship:Ancient Music: Κατάληψις – a Neglected Technical Term in Greek MusicNotes on the Plutarch De Musica and the Cheiron of Pherecrates‘Music While You Work’ in Philodemus De Musica,The Pyrrhic Dance: Trojan Leap and Pyrrhic Dance in Euripides’ AndromacheThe Dances of Philocleon and the Sons of Carcinus in Aristophanes’ WaspsP. Oxy. 2738: Athena and the Pyrrhic Dance;Drama: Two Scenes of Combat in EuripidesA Phyllobolia in Aristophanes’ Clouds?Euripides Erotodidaskalos? A Note on Aristophanes Frogs 957Zoologica: A Grasshopper’s Diet – Notes on an Epigram of Meleager and a Fragment of EubulusLimed Reeds in Theocritus, Aristophanes, and PropertiusSeeing Weasels: The Superstitious Background of the Empusa Scene in the FrogsStarting a Hare: A Note on Machon, Fr. 15Bee Imagery in PlutarchBees and Drones in Aristophanes, Aelian and EuripidesAncient Sport: The Gymnasium of Bromius – a Note on Dionysius Chalcus, Fr. 3Death of a Fighting CockThe Cynic and the StatueMiscellanea: Notes on “The Superstitious Man” of TheophrastusDio Chrysostom on the Mob at AlexandriaThe Scene on the Panagjurischte Amphora: A New SolutionA Note on Some Unusual Greek Words for EyesAristophanes and Agathon: A Contrast in Hair StylesA ‘Not Too Severe’ Epigram of GaetulicusSocrates, Socratics, and the Word Βλεπεδαίμων
Format: Paperback
Pages: 248
ISBN: 9781782977391
Pub Date: 16 Oct 2014
Illustrations: b/w illus
Description:
This volume presents the proceedings of a conference hosted by the American School of Classical Studies, Athens and the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Athens in 2004. There are additional contributions from Patricia Butz, Robin Osborne, Katherine Schwab, Justin St. P.
Walsh, Hilda Westervelt and Lorenz Winkler-Horacek. The contents are divided into four sections I. Structure and Ornament; II. Technique and Agency; III. Myth and Narrative and IV. Diffusion and Influence. Highlights include Robin Osbornes discussion of What you can do with a chariot but can't do with a satyr on a Greek temple; Ralf von den Hoffs consideration of the Athenian treasury at Delphi; and Katherine Schwabs presentation of New evidence for Parthenon east metope 14. The papers not only cover a great variety of issues in architectural sculpture but also present a range of case studies from all over the Greek world. The result is an important collection of current research.