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Trinacria, the ancient name for Sicily extending back to Homeric Greek, has understandably been the focus of decades of archaeological research. Recognizing Sicily’s rich prehistory and pivotal role in the history of the Mediterranean, Sebastiano Tusa - professor, head of heritage agencies and councillor for Cultural Heritage for the Sicilian Region - promoted the exploration of the island’s heritage through international collaboration. His decades of fostering research initiatives not only produced rich archaeological results spanning the Palaeolithic to the modern era but brought scholars from a range of schools and disciplines to work together in Sicily. Through his efforts, uniquely ...
Trinacria, the ancient name for Sicily extending back to Homeric Greek, has understandably been the focus of decades of archaeological research. Recognizing Sicily’s rich prehistory and pivotal role in the history of the Mediterranean, Sebastiano Tusa - professor, head of heritage agencies and councillor for Cultural Heritage for the Sicilian Region - promoted the exploration of the island’s heritage through international collaboration. His decades of fostering research initiatives not only produced rich archaeological results spanning the Palaeolithic to the modern era but brought scholars from a range of schools and disciplines to work together in Sicily. Through his efforts, uniquely ...
Africa encompasses a multitude of environments and biomes that require specific scientific strategies – from desktop studies to field research to laboratory analysis – to tackle research questions that may range from the emergence of early humans to the ethnoarchaeological investigation. In several areas, turmoil, social instability and security constraints hamper or limit field activities and long-term funded programs. The kidnapping of German colleagues and the tragic death of two local collaborators in Nigeria urge to rethink our agenda and challenge our view of current research practice. This 1st Workshop on “Archaeology in Africa”, organized by Sapienza University of Rome, convened several researches from Italy or Italy-based researchers. The aim was to present and discuss theoretical, methodological and financial problems for Africanist researchers today. In a global perspective, the synergy between research groups is crucial. The need to intensify the national and international cooperation is also an essential step. This book collects a selection of the different perspectives presented to the workshop, mostly focussing from North Africa and East Africa.
Contributions in this volume demonstrate how, across the ancient Mediterranean and over hundreds of years, women’s rituals intersected with the political, economic, cultural, or religious spheres of their communities in a way that has only recently started to gain sustained academic attention. The volume aims to tease out a number of different approaches and contexts, and to expand existing studies of women in the ancient world as well as scholarship on religious and social history. The contributors face a famously difficult task: ancient authors rarely recorded aspects of women’s lives, including their songs, prophecies, and prayers. Many of the objects women made and used in ritual wer...
This book addresses a variety of topics within the growing discipline of Archaeoastronomy, focusing especially on Archaeoastronomy in Sicily and the Mediterranean and Cultural Astronomy. A further priority is discussion of the astronomical and statistical methods used today to ascertain the degree of reliability of the chronological and cultural definition of sites and artifacts of archaeoastronomical interest. The contributions were all delivered at the XVth Congress of the Italian Society of Archaeoastronomy (SIA), held under the rubric "The Light, the Stones and the Sacred" – a theme inspired by the International Year of Light 2015, organized by UNESCO. The full meaning of many ancient ...
The Age of Titans examines how heavy warships crewed by thousands of men developed from the agile triremes so popular during the Greek Classical Age. Following Alexander the Great, a new focus on naval siege warfare explains the rise in popularity of big ship navies and defines the model of naval power they made possible.
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...
This volume presents a comprehensive overview of gender archaeology, both theory and practice, and contributes a substantial and definitive reference work by bringing together state-of-the-art research, theoretical overviews, and the latest debates in the field. Responding to the shifts in the theoretical landscape and the societal and political frameworks within which we produce our knowledge, chapters create both a solid theoretical baseline which help readers grasp the significance of gender in archaeology as well as offer perspectives on how to engender produced knowledge about the past. In line with recent focus on the shortcomings of gender and archaeological representation, chapters a...
The island of Sicily was a highly contested area throughout much of its history. Among the first to exert strong influence on its political, cultural, infrastructural, and demographic developments were the two major decentralized civilizations of the first millennium BCE: the Phoenicians and the Greeks. While trade and cultural exchange preceded their permanent presence, it was the colonizing movement that brought territorial competition and political power struggles on the island to a new level. The history of six centuries of colonization is replete with accounts of conflict and warfare that include cross-cultural confrontations, as well as interstate hostilities, domestic conflicts, and g...
The Greek Bronze Age, roughly 3000 to 1000 BCE, witnessed the flourishing of the Minoan and Mycenean civilizations, the earliest expansion of trade in the Aegean and wider Mediterranean Sea, the development of artistic techniques in a variety of media, and the evolution of early Greek religious practices and mythology. The period also witnessed a violent conflict in Asia Minor between warring peoples in the region, a conflict commonly believed to be the historical basis for Homer's Trojan War. The Oxford Handbook of the Bronze Age Aegean provides a detailed survey of these fascinating aspects of the period, and many others, in sixty-six newly commissioned articles. Divided into four sections...