Author: Monica De Cesare Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG ISBN: 3110497689 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 609
Book Description
The papers of this volume focus on the sacred landscapes of ancient Sicily. Religious and cultural dimensions of Greek sanctuaries are assessed in light of the results of recent exacavations and new readings of literary sources. The material dimension of cult practices in ancient sanctuaries is the central issue of all contributions, with a focus on the findings from ancient Akragas. Great attention is also paid to past ritual activities, which are framed in three complementary areas of enquiry. Firstly, the architectural setting of sanctuaries is examined beyond temple buildings to assess the wider context of their structural and spatial complexity. Secondly, the material culture of votive deposition and religious feasting is analysed in terms of performative characteristics and through the lens of anthropological approaches. Thirdly, the significance of gender in cultic practice is investigated in light of the fresh data retrieved from the field. The new findings presented in this volume contribute to close the existing research gaps in the study of sanctuaries in Sicily, as well as the wider practice of Greek religion.
Author: Melanie Jonasch Publisher: Oxbow Books ISBN: 1789253594 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 417
Book Description
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 government violence. This book is not concerned with realities from the battlefield or questions of military strategy and tactics, but rather offers a broad collection of archaeological case studies and historical essays that analyze how political competition, strategic considerations, and violent encounters substantially affected rural and urban environments, the island’s heterogeneous communities, and their social practices. These contributions, originating from a workshop in 2018, combine expertise from the fields of archaeology, ancient history, and philology. The focus on a specific time period and the limited geographic area of Greek Sicily allows for the thorough investigation and discussion of various forms of organized societal violence and their consequences on the developments in society and landscape.
Author: Hanne Eisenfeld Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1108924352 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 295
Book Description
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.
Author: Maria G. Spathi Publisher: Archaeopress Publishing Ltd ISBN: 1803277505 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 280
Book Description
The belief in the existence of evil forces was part of ancient everyday life and a phenomenon deeply embedded in popular thought of the Greek world. Stemming from a conference held in Athens in June 2021, this volume addresses the apotropaia and phylakteria from different perspectives: via literary sources, archaeological material, and iconography.
Author: Hans Beck Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1009301837 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 407
Book Description
Which dimensions of the religious experience of the ancient Greeks become tangible only if we foreground its local horizons? This book explores the manifold ways in which Greek religious beliefs and practices are encoded in and communicate with various local environments. Its individual chapters explore 'the local' in its different forms and formulations. Besides the polis perspective, they include numerous other places and locations above and below the polis-level as well as those fully or largely independent of the city-state. Overall, the local emerges as a relational concept that changes together with our understanding of the general or universal forces as they shape ancient Greek religion. The unity and diversity of ancient Greek religion becomes tangible in the manifold ways in which localizing and generalizing forces interact with each other at different times and in different places across the ancient Greek world.
Author: Tyler Jo Smith Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press ISBN: 0812252810 Category : Art Languages : en Pages : 480
Book Description
"An examination of the combined subjects of ancient Greek art and religion, dealing with festivals, performance, rites of passage, and the archaeology of death, to name a few examples, to explore the visual, material, and textual dimensions of ancient Greek religion"--
Author: Mark R. Thatcher Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0197586449 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 337
Book Description
This analysis of the relationship between collective identities and politics in ancient Greece focuses on four key types of identity - polis identity, ethnicity (e.g., Dorian or Achaean), regional, and Greek - and places these multiple and flexible self-perceptions at the center of a new account of politics in the Greek West.
Author: Giovanni Colzani Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG ISBN: 3110741741 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 300
Book Description
Considerations about size and scale have always played a central role within Greek and Roman visual culture, deeply affecting sculptural production. Both Greeks and Romans, in particular, had a clear notion of “colossality” and were able to fully exploit its implications with sculpture in many different areas of social, cultural and religious life. Instead, despite their ubiquitous presence, an equal and contrary categorization for small size statues does not seem to have existed in Greek and Roman culture, leading one to wonder what were the ancient ways of conceptualizing sculptural representations in a format markedly smaller than “life-size.” Even in the context of modern scholarship on Classical Art, few notions appear to be as elusive as that of “small sculpture”, often treated with a certain degree of diffidence well summarized in the formula Klein, aber Kunst? In fact, a large and heterogeneous variety of objects corresponds to this definition: all kinds of small sculpture, from statuettes to miniatures, in a variety of materials including stone, bronze, and terracotta, associated with a great array of functions and contexts, and with extremely different levels of manufacture and patronage. It would be a major misunderstanding to think of these small sculptures in general as nothing more than a cheap and simplified alternative to larger scale statues. Compared with those, their peculiar format allowed for a wider range of choices, in terms, for example, of use of either cheap or extremely valuable materials (not only marble and bronze, but also gold and silver, ivory, hard stones, among others), methods of production (combining seriality and variation), modes of fruition (such as involving a degree of intimacy with the beholder, rather than staging an illusion of “presence”). Furthermore, their pervasive presence in both private and public spaces at many levels of Greek and Roman society presents us with a privileged point of view on the visual literacy of a large and varied public. Although very different in many respects, small-sized sculptures entertained often a rather ambivalent relationship with their larger counterparts, drawing from them at the same time schemes, forms and iconographies. By offering a fresh, new analysis of archaeological evidence and literary sources, through a variety of disciplinary approaches, this volume helps to illuminate this rather complex dynamic and aims to contribute to a better understanding of the status of Greek and Roman small size sculpture within the general development of ancient art.
Author: Diego Elia Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG ISBN: 3111190587 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 753
Book Description
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.
Author: Christopher Prescott Publisher: Oxbow Books ISBN: 1789255929 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 666
Book Description
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 productive methodological, theoretical and interpretative networks were created. Their impact extends far beyond Sicily and Italy. To highlight these networks and their results, the Institutum Romanum Finlandiae, the Swedish Institute in Rome, the Norwegian Institute in Rome, the British School at Rome and the Assessorato dei Beni Culturali of Sicily, with generous support from the Swedish Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, assembled this anthology of papers. The aim is to present a selection of the work of and results from contemporary, multi-national research projects in Sicily. The collaboration between the Sicilian and international partners, often in an interdisciplinary framework, has generated important results and perspectives. The articles in this volume present research projects from throughout the island. The core of the articles is concerned with the Archaic through to the Roman period, but diachronic studies also trace lines back to the Stone Age and up to the contemporary era. A range of methods and sources are explored, thus creating an up-to-date volume that is a referential gateway to contemporary Sicilian archaeology.
Author: Monica De Cesare
Author: Melanie Jonasch
Author: Hanne Eisenfeld
Author: Maria G. Spathi
Author: Hans Beck
Author: Tyler Jo Smith
Author: Mark R. Thatcher
Author: Giovanni Colzani
Author: Diego Elia
Author: Christopher Prescott