| 020904 |
Mapping Politics: An Investigation of Deme
Theatres in the Fifth and Fourth Centuries
B.C.E. |
|
Jessica Paga, Princeton University |
 |
Abstract - Deme theatres, or theatral areas,
dot both the countryside of Attika and our epigraphic
sources. This paper examines the evidence for nineteen
deme theatres in Attika during the fifth and fourth
centuries, in conjunction with an exploration of the
festival of the Rural Dionysia. The overarching goals
are to identify the distribution, shape, and functions
of the deme theatral areas, while noting the
ramifications of these elements for the administrative
and organizational structures of the Athenian
democracy. |
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| 090701 |
Pharaonic Egypt and the Ara Pacis in Augustan
Rome |
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Jennifer Trimble, Stanford University |
|
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Abstract - This paper explores processes of
cultural appropriation, and specifically Augustan
visual receptions of pharaonic Egypt. As a test case, I
consider the possibility of Egyptianizing precedents
for the Ara Pacis, including the architecture of Middle
and New Kingdom jubilee chapels. This requires looking
at the Augustan interventions into the traditional
temple complexes of Egypt, the transmission of imperial
ideas about pharaonic Egypt to Rome, their uses there,
and the role of pharaonic appropriations within a
broader landscape of Aegyptiaca in Rome. |
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| 070705 |
Narratives of Roman Syria: a historiography of
Syria as a province of Rome |
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Lidewijde de Jong, Stanford University |
|
|
Abstract: In this paper I examine the
scholarship of Roman Syria and the history of research
on this province. The scholarly narrative of Roman
Syria revolves around strong Greek influence and little
impact of Roman rule, which has resulted in studying
Syria as a unique and distinct entity, separated from
Rome. In light of new archaeological finds and a
re-evaluation of older evidence, I argue that these
assumptions of deep hellenization and shallow Roman
impact need to be abandoned. Using models coming out of
research in other provinces of the Roman empire and
anthropological studies of colonialism and material
culture, I propose a set of different narratives about
Roman Syria. This paper is the first chapter of my
dissertation: Becoming a Roman province: An analysis
of funerary practices in Roman Syria in the context of
empire. |
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| 120518 |
Map Resources for Roman North Africa |
|
Brent D. Shaw, Princeton University |
|
Abstract - This is the early draft of a
collation of the map resources that are available for
the study of Roman North Africa. It is hoped that, even
in this early stage of presentation, it will be of some
use to those who are seeking cartographic resources for
research on the region. |
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| 120510 |
The collapse and regeneration of complex society
in Greece, 1500-500 BC |
|
Ian Morris, Stanford University |
|
|
Abstract - Greece between 1500 and 500 BC is
one of the best known examples of the phenomenon of the
regeneration of complex society after a collapse. I
review 10 core dimensions of this process (urbanism,
tax and rent, monuments, elite power, information-
recording systems, trade, crafts, military power,
scale, and standards of living), and suggest that
punctuated equilibrium models accommodate the data
better than gradualist interpretations. |
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| 120509 |
The growth of Greek cities in the first
millennium BC |
|
Ian Morris, Stanford University |
|
|
Abstract - In this paper I trace the growth
of the largest Greek cities from perhaps 1,000- 2,000
people at the beginning of the first millennium BC to
400,000-500,000 at the millennium’s end. I
examine two frameworks for understanding this growth:
Roland Fletcher’s discussion of the interaction
and communication limits to growth and Max
Weber’s ideal types of cities’ economic
functions. I argue that while political power was never
the only engine of urban growth in classical antiquity,
it was always the most important motor. The size of the
largest Greek cities was a function of the population
they controlled, mechanisms of tax and rent, and
transportation technology. |
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| 120507 |
The eighth-century revolution |
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Ian Morris, Stanford University |
|
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Abstract - Through most of the 20th century
classicists saw the 8th century BC as a period of major
changes, which they characterized as
“revolutionary,” but in the 1990s critics
proposed more gradualist interpretations. In this paper
I argue that while 30 years of fieldwork and new
analyses inevitably require us to modify the framework
established by Snodgrass in the 1970s (a profound
social and economic depression in the Aegean c.
1100-800 BC; major population growth in the 8th
century; social and cultural transformations that
established the parameters of classical society), it
nevertheless remains the most convincing interpretation
of the evidence, and that the idea of an 8th-century
revolution remains useful |
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| 120506 |
Troy and Homer |
|
Ian Morris, Stanford University |
|
|
Abstract - This is a review of Joachim
Latacz’s book Troy and Homer: Towards a
Solution of an Old Mystery (2004), focusing on the
archaeological issues. |
|
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| 120503 |
Review of Joachim Latacz’s 'Troy and
Homer: Towards a Solution of an Old Mystery' |
|
Joshua Katz, Princeton University |
|
Abstract - In this book, a translation of a
German bestseller, the most vigorous proponent of the
view that the Iliad is a reliable source of
information about the city of Troy in the Late Bronze
Age, presents the evidence from two very different
fields: archaeology and linguistics/philology. Though
especially sympathetic to the idea that certain
significant details in Homer reflect society as it was
long before the eighth century B.C., in a shared
Greco-Anatolian setting, this reviewer, a
linguist/philologist, is nevertheless dismayed by
Latacz’s presentation of the evidence. To take
just one egregious example of bias disguised as
fact—a “fact” that certain colleagues
are unfortunately already citing as gospel—there
is, pace Latacz and Frank Starke, no
evidence for the claim that an actual Hittite
document reveals as a forebear of the king of Ahhiyawa
(~ Achaia) a man by the name of Kadmos. |
|
This has been published in Journal of the
American Oriental Society 125 (2005), pp.
422-25. |
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