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Amber and the Ancient World
"Amber has fascinated mankind since the Palaeolithic era. This book examines the myths and legends woven around amber - its employment in magic and medicine, its transport and carving, and its incorporation into jewellery, amulets, and other objects of prestige"--Publisher's description.
Household Gods
Daily religious devotion in the Greek and Roman worlds centered on the family and the home. Besides official worship in rural sacred areas and at temples in towns, the ancients kept household shrines with statuettes of different deities that could have a deep personal and spiritual meaning. Roman houses were often filled with images of gods. Gods and goddesses were represented in mythological paintings on walls and in decorative mosaics on floors, in bronze and marble sculptures, on ornate silver dining vessels, and on lowly clay oil lamps that lit dark rooms. Even many modest homes had one or more religious objects that were privately venerated. Ranging from the humble to the magnificent, t...
Letter and Report on the Discoveries at Herculaneum
This new translation brings to light the early days of scientific archaeology and the unearthing and study of Herculaneum and Pompeii as observed by the erudite and acerbic art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717-1768). His Letter, published in German in 1762, displays his extensive knowledge of geology, ancient literature, and art while offering a scathing critique of the Spanish Bourbon excavations around the Bay of Naples and of the officials involved. He further discusses these topics in his equally controversial Report of 1764. The introduction describes the context in which these texts were written, identifies various politicians, academics, and collectors, and elucidates topics of particular interest to Winckelmann, from artifacts to local customs to the contents of ancient papyri. The illustrations, particularly those from the Bourbon publication--Le Antichità di Ercolano (1757-92)--illuminate how these monuments influenced contemporary perception of the ancient world.
The Return of Proserpina
Sicily and the strategies of empire in the poetic imagination of classical and medieval Europe In the first century BC, Cicero praised Sicily as Rome’s first overseas province and confirmed it as the mythic location for the abduction of Proserpina, known to the Greeks as Persephone, by the god of the underworld. The Return of Proserpina takes readers from Roman antiquity to the late Middle Ages to explore how the Mediterranean island offered authors a setting for forces resistant to empire and a location for displaying and reclaiming what has been destroyed. Using the myth of Proserpina as a through line, Sarah Spence charts the relationship Western empire held with its myths and its own p...
Imperialism, Cultural Politics, and Polybius
Addressing central problems in the development of Roman imperialism in the 3rd and 2nd century BC, topics in this volume include the author Polybius, the characteristics of Roman power and imperial ambition, and the mechanisms used by Rome in creating and sustaining an empire in the East.
From Pompeii
The calamity that proved lethal for Pompeii inhabitants preserved the city for centuries, leaving behind a snapshot of Roman daily life that has captured the imagination of generations, including Renoir, Freud, Hirohito, Mozart, Dickens, Twain, Rossellini, and Ingrid Bergman. Interwoven is the thread of Ingrid Rowland's own impressions of Pompeii.
Cultural Memories in the Roman Empire
Memory studies — one of the most vibrant research fields of the present day — brings together such diverse disciplines as art and archaeology, history, religion, literature, sociology, media studies, and neuroscience. In scholarship on ancient Rome, studies of social and cultural memory complement traditional approaches, opening up new horizons as we contemplate the ancient world. The fifteen essays presented here explore memory in the Roman Empire, addressing a wide spectrum of cultural phenomena from a range of approaches. Ancient Rome was a memory culture par excellence and memory pervades all aspects of Roman culture, from literature and art to religion and politics. This volume is the first to address the cultural artifacts of Rome through the lens of memory studies. An essential guide to the material culture of Rome, this book brings important new concepts to the fore for both scholars of the ancient world and those of social and cultural memory throughout human history.
Unframing and Reframing Mediterranean Spaces and Identities
Reconsidering the Mediterranean, appreciating and demarginalizing the peoples and cultures of this vast region, while considering the affinities and differences, is a valuable part of the process of unframing and reframing the concept of the Mediterranean. The authors of this volume follow Franco Cassano’s refusal of a sort of prêt-à-porter reality of cohabitation of cultures, introducing instead un’alternativa mediterranea, a world of multiple cultures that entails an ongoing learning and experiencing. The volume’s contributors use an interdisciplinary approach that mirrors the hybridity of the area and of the discipline, that is much more introspective and humanistic, more contemporary and inclusive.
Dangerous Perfection
In 2008, the Berlin Antikensammlung initiated a project with the J. Paul Getty Museum to conserve a group of ancient funerary vases from southern Italy. Monumental in scale and richly decorated, these magnificent vessels were discovered in hundreds of fragments in the early nineteenth century at Ceglie, near Bari. Acquired by a Bohemian diplomat, they were reconstructed in the Neapolitan workshop of Raffaele Gargiulo, who was considered one of the leading restorers of antiquities in Europe. His methods exemplify what was referred to as “une perfection dangereuse,” an approach to reassembly and repainting that made it difficult to distinguish what was ancient and what was modern. Bringing...
Textiles in Motion
Dress is at the core of dance. It adorns dancers, defines various roles and forms symbolic expressions that, for example, either bind people together or opposes them. It is a communicative tool that gives crucial information for understanding the dance as well as the culture and the sociological effects of a group of people. As such, dress transcends how it is seen visually to address what is being communicated. Nonetheless, studies in ancient dance have rarely taken clothing into consideration. Therefore, this publication gathers articles that give new perspectives and insights on ancient dances and their ancient textiles. Comprehension of ancient dance benefits from investigations undertak...
