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*A BBC RADIO 4 Book of the Week* 'A fantastic achievement' Peter Frankopan, author of The Silk Roads 'Bright, expansive, and iconoclastic, this deliciously witty book has the potential to upset the applecart of "Western Civilisation" itself... Magnificent' Prof. Suzannah Lipscomb _________________ A radical new account of how the idea of the West has shaped our history, told through the stories of fourteen fascinating lives. We tend to imagine Western Civilisation as a golden thread stretching from classical antiquity to the countries of the modern Western world. But what if this is wrong? Told through the lives of fourteen fascinating historical figures - including a formidable Roman matriarch, an unconventional Islamic scholar, an enslaved African American poetess and a British prime minister with Homeric aspirations – archaeologist and historian Naoíse Mac Sweeney charts how the idea of the West was invented, how it has been used to justify imperialism and racism, and why it is no longer ideologically fit for purpose today. The result is a bold and empowering new story of the people and ideas who made us who we are today.
Prize-winning historian Naoíse Mac Sweeney delivers a captivating exploration of how “Western Civilization”—the concept of a single cultural inheritance extending from ancient Greece to modern times—is a powerful figment of our collective imagination. An urgently needed emergent voice in big history, she offers a bold new account of Western history, real and imagined, through the lives of fourteen remarkable individuals. In this groundbreaking, story-driven retelling of Western history, Naoíse Mac Sweeney debunks the myths and origin stories that underpin the history we thought we knew. Told through fourteen figures who each played a role in the creation of the Western idea—from ...
As one of the earliest and most intensively excavated sites of the pre-Classical period in Anatolia and the Aegean, Troy is of major archaeological and historical significance. But it is also of wider cultural significance, beyond the confines of archaeology and ancient history. Stories of the Trojan War and abstract metaphors relating to Troy abound in the present day, as they have since antiquity. From movies to computer viruses, from condom branding to reggae records, Troy is a word to conjure with. This book explores the significance of Troy in three areas: the archaeological, the disciplinary, and the cultural, and highlights the continuing importance of the site today. Including a surv...
This book examines foundation myths told about the Ionian cities during the archaic and classical periods. It uses these myths to explore the complex and changing ways in which civic identity was constructed in Ionia, relating this to the wider discourses about ethnicity and cultural difference that were current in the Greek world at this time. The Ionian cities seem to have rejected oppositional models of cultural difference which set in contrast East and West, Europe and Asia, Greek and Barbarian, opting instead for a more fluid and nuanced perspective on ethnic and cultural distinctions. The conclusions of this book have far-reaching implications for our understanding of Ionia, but also challenge current models of Greek ethnicity and identity, suggesting that there was a more diverse conception of Greekness in antiquity than has often been assumed.
Exploring the notion of community identity in an archaeological context
In this new volume, Jan Haywood and Naoíse Mac Sweeney investigate the position of Homer's Iliad within the wider Trojan War tradition through a series of detailed case studies. From ancient Mesopotamia to twenty-first century America, these examples are drawn from a range of historical and cultural contexts; and from Athenian pot paintings to twelfth-century German scholarship, they engage with a range of different media and genres. Inspired by the dialogues inherent in the process of reception, the book adopts a dialogic structure. In each chapter, paired essays by Haywood and Mac Sweeney offer contrasting authorial voices addressing a single theme, thereby drawing out connections and dissonances between a diverse suite of classical and post-classical Iliadic receptions. The resulting book offers new insights, both into individual instances of Iliadic reception in particular historical contexts, but also into the workings of a complex story tradition. The centrality of the Iliad within the wider Trojan War tradition is shown to be a function of conscious engagement not only with Iliadic content, but also with Iliadic status and the iconic idea of the Homeric.
Throughout the ancient world, origin stories were told across the ancient world in many different ways: through poetry, prose, monumental and decorative arts, and performance in civic and religious rituals. Foundation myths, particularly those about the beginnings of cities and societies, played an important role in the dynamics of identity construction and in the negotiation of diplomatic relationships between communities. Yet many ancient communities had not one but several foundation myths, offering alternative visions and interpretations of their collective origins. Seeking to explain this plurality, Foundation Myths in Ancient Societies explores origin stories from a range of classical ...
"This book presents a new model for the cluster of ancient kingdoms that clustered around the northeast corner of the Mediterranean Sea during the Iron age, ca. 1200-600 BCE. Rather than presenting them as ancient versions of the modern nation-state, characterized by homogenous ethnolinguistic communities like "the Aramaeans" or "the Luwians" living in neatly bounded territories, this book sees these polities as being fundamentally diverse and variable, distinguished by demographic fluidity and cultural mobility. This conclusion is reached via an examination of a host of evidentiary sources, including site plans, settlement patterns, visual arts, and historical sources. Together, these lines of evidence lead to the awareness that this time and place consists of a complex fusion of cultural traditions that is nevertheless distinctly recognizable unto itself. This book thus proposes a new term to encapsulate that diversity: the Syro-Anatolian Culture Complex"--
"This is a book that scholars will read with pleasure, and a book from which advanced undergraduates and graduates will gain a sense of what Sparta was like as a culture, and (just as important) the nature and state of play of contemporary Spartan studies. And it will be accessible for the well informed lay reader as well."—Josiah Ober, author of Political Dissent in Democratic Athens "Paul Cartledge's aim, in this powerful collection of essays, is to shed light in dark places, to demythicize... Cartledge is shrewd, realistic, and far from starry-eyed. Over a quarter-century's exhaustive research, now updated, has gone into these densely documented and tightly argued essays. These Spartans, in the last resort, are exploitative slave-drivers, obsessed with keeping their serfs down (by annually killing off any resisters, among other things)... Modern idealizers of cold baths, black broth, mindless discipline and long route marches should read this book and, hopefully, have second thoughts."—Peter Green, author of Alexander to Actium
For many, “Greece” is synonymous with “ancient Greece,” the civilization that gave us much that defines Western culture today. But, how did Greece come to be so powerfully attached to the legacy of the ancients in the first place and then define an identity for itself that is at once Greek and modern? This book reveals the remarkable achievement, during the last three hundred years, of building a modern nation on the ruins of a vanished civilization—sometimes literally so. This is the story of the Greek nation-state but also, and more fundamentally, of the collective identity that goes with it. It is not only a history of events and high politics; it is also a history of culture, o...