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In the past, most studies on Pre-Roman societies in Italy (1st millennium BCE) focused on the elites, their representation and cultural contacts. The aim of this volume is to look at dependent and marginalized social groups, which are less visible and often even difficult to define (slaves, servants, freedmen, captives, 'foreigners', athletes, women, children etc.). The methodological challenges connected to the study of such heterogeneous and scattered sources are addressed. Is the evidence representative enough for defining different forms of dependencies? Can we rely on written and pictorial sources or do they only reflect Greek and Roman views and iconographic conventions? Which social groups can't be traced in the literary and archaeological record? For the investigation of this topic, we combined historical and epigraphical studies (Greek and Roman literary sources, Etruscan inscriptions) with material culture studies (images, sanctuaries, necropoleis) including anthropological and bioarchaeological methods. These new insights open a new chapter in the study of dependency and social inequality in the societies of Pre-Roman Italy.
In Transcending Patterns: Silk Road Cultural and Artistic Interactions through Central Asian Textiles, Mariachiara Gasparini investigates the origin and effects of a textile-mediated visual culture that developed at the heart of the Silk Road between the seventh and fourteenth centuries. Through the analysis of the Turfan Textile Collection in the Museum of Asian Art in Berlin and more than a thousand textiles held in collections worldwide, Gasparini discloses and reconstructs the rich cultural entanglements along the Silk Road, between the coming of Islam and the rise of the Mongol Empire, from the Tarim to Mediterranean Basin. Exploring in detail the iconographic transfer between different...
Twenty-four experts from the fields of Ancient History, Semitic philology, Assyriology, Classical Archaeology, and Classical Philology come together in this volume to explore the role of textiles in ancient religion in Greece, Italy, The Levant and the Near East. Recent scholarship has illustrated how textiles played a large and very important role in the ancient Mediterranean sanctuaries. In Greece, the so-called temple inventories testify to the use of textiles as votive offerings, in particular to female divinities. Furthermore, in several cults, textiles were used to dress the images of different deities. Textiles played an important role in the dress of priests and priestesses, who ofte...
Pindar's victory songs teem with divinity. By exploring them within the lived religious landscapes of the fifth century BCE, Hanne Eisenfeld demonstrates that they are in fact engaged in theological work. Focusing on a set of mythical figures whose identities blur the boundaries between mortality and immortality (Herakles, the Dioskouroi, Amphiaraos, and Asklepios), she newly interprets the value of immortality in the epinician corpus. Pindar's depiction of these figures responds to and shapes contemporary religious experience and revalues mortality as a prerequisite for the glory found in victory. The book combines close reading and philological analysis with religious historical approaches to Pindar's songs and his world. It highlights the inextricability of Greek literature and Greek religion, and models a novel approach to Greek lyric poetry at the intersection of these fields.
Employing frameworks of lived religion and materiality, this book provides the first full-length study of personal religious experience in the Greek Archaic and Classical periods. Rask analyzes archeological, epigraphic, and textual evidence to highlight the role of individuals as vital actors and makers of Greek religion. A range of perspectives, such as those of Archaic mariners and Late Classical weaving women, show that religion infused the daily lives of ancient Greeks. Chapters visit the many spaces where people engaged in religious activities, from household kitchens to international emporia, as well as shrines both large and small. The book also interrogates devotional activities suc...
This volume aims to merge theoretical models with methodological approaches on ceramic technology and artisanal networks in the Classical world. This convergence of analytical frameworks allowed scholars to explore some traditional archaeological topics that usually have a very low-level of visibility, such as the skillful gestures of the craftspeople involved, the organization of the ceramic production, the dynamics of apprenticeship and knowledge transfer as well as intra and inter-regional artisanal mobility, in the Graeco-Roman ‘communities of practice’. The papers promote interdisciplinary dialogues among various fields of study, such as archaeology, archaeometry, anthropology, ethnoarchaeology, experimental archaeology, and digital humanities - such as Social Network Analysis, computational imaging, and big data analysis.
Temples are the most prestigious buildings in the urban landscape of ancient Italy, emerging within a network of centres of the then-known Mediterranean world. Notwithstanding the fragmentary condition of the buildings’ remains, these monuments – and especially their richly decorated roofs – are crucial sources of information on the constitution of political, social and craft identities, acting as agents in displaying the meaning of images. The subject of this volume is thematic and includes material from the Eastern Mediterranean (including Greece and Turkey). Contributors discuss the network between patron elites and specialized craft communities that were responsible for the sophist...
This handbook explores key aspects of art and architecture in ancient Greece and Rome. Drawing on the perspectives of scholars of various generations, nationalities, and backgrounds, it discusses Greek and Roman ideas about art and architecture, as expressed in both texts and images, along with the production of art and architecture in the Greek and Roman world.
The Codrus Painter was a painter of cups and vases in fifth-century B.C.E. Athens with a distinctive style; he is named after Codrus, a legendary Athenian king depicted on one of his most characteristic vases. He was active as an artist during the rule of Pericles, as the Parthenon was built and then as the troubled times of the Peloponnesian War began. In contrast to the work of fellow artists of his day, the vases of the Codrus Painter appear to have been created almost exclusively for export to markets outside Athens and Greece, especially to the Etruscans in central Italy and to points further west. Amalia Avramidou offers a thoroughly researched, amply illustrated study of the Codrus Pa...