You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
A new look at the Cult of the Saints in late antiquity: Did it really dominate Christianity in late antique Rome?
The exhibition "Beyond Babylon : Art, Trade, and Diplomacy in the Second Millennium B.C.," held in 2008 - 2009 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, demonstrated the cultural enrichment that emerged from the intensive interaction of civilizations from western Asia to Egypt and the Aegean in the Middle and Late Bronze Ages. During this critical period in human history, powerful kingdoms and large territorial states were formed. Rising social elites created a demand for copper and tin, as well as for precious gold and silver and exotic materials such as lapis lazuli and ivory to create elite objects fashioned in styles that reflected contacts with foreign lands. This quest for metals--along with ...
This book traces the socioeconomic and political development of the Galatas area and its relations with other areas of Crete during the Neolithic-Ottoman periods. Two powerful rival centers in Crete, Knossos/Herakleion and Kastelli/Lyttos, brought the Galatas area under their control at various times in history. The changes in local socioeconomic and political conditions are documented as Galatas came under the direct control of states elsewhere in Crete and overseas.
From basic needs, such as lighting, heating or cooking, to symbolic or ritual engagement, hearths in indoor contexts serve as a focal point. This is especially evident, both spatially and architecturally, in structures containing central hearths. In assessing any gathering around a hearth, the types of social groups involved need to be determined and their interactions clearly assessed in each specific case. Beyond clearly domestic contexts, many rooms or buildings have been deemed religious or cultic places often based solely on the presence of a hearth, despite other possible interpretations. This volume appraises and contextualises diversity in practice centering on the hearth in the Aege...
The Plain of Phaistos presents the results on an interdisciplinary regional field project (1984-1987) carried out on the island Of Crete. This volume traces the changing patterns of settlement and cycles of social complexity from the Late Neolithic period to the present day within the heartland of the state of Phaistos. The authors and contributors publish geological, archaeological, environmental, botanical, historical and ethnographic studies that establish the regional identity of the Western Mesara. Using a combination of empirical, processual and post-processual theoretical approaches, the volume investigates a central problem - how and why did the Bronze Age and Classical states arise at Phaistos?
Archaeologists have focused a great deal of attention on explaining the evolution of village societies and the transition to a ‘Neolithic’ way of life. Considerable interest has also concentrated on urbanism and the rise of the earliest cities. Between these two landmarks in human cultural development lies a critical stage in social and political evolution. Throughout world, at various points in time, people living in small, dispersed village communities have come together into larger and more complex social formations. These community aggregates were, essentially, middle-range; situated between the earliest villages and emergent chiefdoms and states. This volume explores the social proc...
House X is by far the largest and best appointed of the Minoan houses excavated at Kommos in south-central Crete, a Minoan harbor and settlement that later became the site of a Greek sanctuary. Situated on the seacoast of the western Mesara Plain, Kommos faces west toward the Libyan Sea. House X stands on the southern edge of the Minoan town, separated by a large slab-paved road from the monumental civic buildings built and used between the Protopalatial and Postpalatial periods. The description of the stratigraphic excavation of this elite house is published with numerous architectural plans along with the cataloged small finds and tables of data on the floral and faunal materials. The exca...
The essays in this volume are united by their attention to the many ways in which residents of Greece's southern Argolid peninsula—the focus of more ethnographic and ethnohistorical study than any other comparable region of Greece—have attempted to shelter, feed, and advance the economic situation of their families over the last three centuries.
Kommos, located on the south coast of Crete, is widely known for its important sanctuary of the Greek period. and for its earlier role as a major Minoan harbortown. Volumes II and III of this series on the results of the major excavations there have already been published. Now Part I of Volume I offers a general introduction to the site with chapters on the history and character of its excavation seen within the context of earlier archaeological exploration of the Mesara Plain and specifically in the Kommos area (Joseph W. Shaw) and studies on the geomorphology (John A. Gifford), the flora (C. Thomas Shay and Jennifer M. Shay, with Katherine A. Frego and Janusz Zwiazek) and the fauna (David ...
Contributions by 37 scholars are brought together here to create a volume in honor of the long and fruitful career of Costis Davaras, former Ephor of Crete and Professor Emeritus of Minoan Archaeology at the University of Athens. Articles pertain to Bronze Age Crete and include mortuary studies, experimental archaeology, numerous artifactual studies, and discussions on the greater Minoan civilization.