Greek Archaeology

From its first adoption of writing at the beginning of the Late Bronze Age, ancient Cyprus was home to distinctive scripts and writing habits, often setting it apart from other areas of the Mediterranean and Near East. This well-illustrated volume is the first to explore the development and importance of Cypriot writing over a period of more than 1,500 years in the second and first millennia BC. Five themed chapters deal with issues ranging from the acquisition of literacy and the adaptation of new writing systems to the visibility of writing and its role in the marking of identities. The agency of Cypriots in shaping the island's literate landscape is given prominence, and an extended consideration of the social context of writing leads to new insights on Cypriot scripts and their users. Cyprus provides a stimulating case to demonstrate the importance of contextualised approaches to the development of writing systems.

Chapter 1 available with open access here: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/284465

A total of 1496 investigated colourless glass analyses have been collected with the aim of achieving a clear geographical, typological, chronological and compositional overview on this particular type of glass. Based on manganese and antimony contents, four main groups were characterised: naturally colourless, Mn-decoloured, Sb-decoloured and Mn/Sb-decoloured. Main achievements relates to the chronological distribution of manganese and antimony technologies, the former being associated to a long lasting technology which culminated during the Late Antique period while the latter being practically absent after the 8 th century AD, being at its acme during the Roman imperial period. Except for naturally colourless glass, glass-making technology mostly implied the use of impure sands and na-tron, relegating the other components to a virtually irrelevant presence, except during the Late Antique and Medieval periods.

Scenes of textile production on Athenian vases are often interpreted as confirming the oppression of women, who many argue were confined to "women's quarters" and exploited as free labor. However, reexamination of the iconography--together with a reconsideration of gender roles and the archaeology of Greek houses dating to the 5th and 4th centuries BC--suggests that these images idealize female contributions to the household in a positive way. The scenes utilize the dual metaphor of weaving and marriage to express the harmonia of oikos and polis, a theme particularly significant under the evolving Athenian democracy.

Discusses the Athenian treasury at Delphi in the context of contemporary Athenian politics, with special reference to sculptural iconography, the meaning of materials (Parian marble) and the relation of the building to architectural imagery in Pindar's 6th Pythian ode, for Megakles of Athens.

This article examines a red-figure pelike made by a previously unknown local workshop that was very likely located in Pella, the capital of the Kingdom of Macedonia. This vessel was in storage in the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki and is one of the best preserved examples from that Macedonian workshop. In shape and decoration it recalls Attic vases of the second half of the fourth century BC, and particularly the work of Group G and the Amazon Painter. The pelike dates from c.320 BC and is attributed to the Pella B Painter.

Lower Paleolithic evidence from the Mediterranean region holds a prominent position in discussions about the earliest peopling of Europe. Most studies examining patterns of human occupation focus on purported behavioral capacity, habitat preference and environmental tolerance of different hominins. This paper employs a geoarchaeological perspective through the examination of landscape dynamics as a complementary approach. In this context, Lower Paleolithic records of the Mediterranean and the Balkans are reviewed with an emphasis on the geomorphological settings of the best-studied sites. Since most of the oldest, well-dated and primary-context material occurs in open-air sites situated in basins, the last part of the paper explores how basin dynamics could have conditioned the preservation and accessibility of artifact-bearing strata. Spain, Italy and Greece are used as case-studies and a conceptual model is proposed as a means to assess possible patterned relationships of site locations. A ‘basin model’ offers a working hypothesis for evaluating site distributions and outlines first steps towards a geosciences-based methodology, which can be used to locate new sites.

This paper investigates changing patterns of maritime small-world networks among the Cycladic islands of the southern Aegean Sea in the context of two climate disasters in the Bronze Age (ca. 3200 BCE-1100 BCE): the 4.2 ka event at the end of the Early Bronze Age and the eruption of Thera in the late 17th century BCE in the Late Bronze Age. The 4.2 ka event is a period where changing environmental conditions-including landscape degradation, deforestation, and increased drought-correlate with drastically reduced maritime connectivity and increased settlement isolation. Previous archaeological study of the eruption of the Theran volcano (San-torini) has shown the persistence of regional-scale communication networks for a period of up to a century after the eruption. This paper examines the effect of the eruption on local-scale maritime networks. The archaeological study of both climate events is complicated by chronological discrepancies and, in the case of the 4.2 ka event, reliance on indirect environmental data. This paper addresses the questions: a) what effect did these two climate disasters have on small-world maritime networks in the Bronze Age Cyclades, and b) how did the island inhabitants adapt within a context of disruptive environmental phenomena? GIS modeling reveals that small-world networks in the Early Bronze Age Cyclades were substantially altered in the face of the 4.2 ka climate event, while in response to the eruption of Thera, small-world networks were resilient. Variables influencing the differing network responses include the temporality of the climate disasters, the availability of the sail as a technology of resilience, and varying environmental and social vulnerabilities.

The Hellenistic, Parthian, and Roman site of Dura–Europos (or simply “Dura”), dubbed the “Pompeii of the Syrian Desert” by Yale historian and archaeologist Michael Rostovtzeff, was jointly excavated by Yale University and the French Academy of Inscriptions and Letters from 1928 to 1937. Given the outstanding preservation of art and architecture at Dura, it is not surprising that four obsidian artifacts have escaped attention, despite evidence that stone tools – including obsidian ones – continued to be used into and after the Iron Age in the Eastern Mediterranean. After more than eight decades, the character of Dura's connections to the Classical world remains a matter of debate. Pottery includes not only local ceramic wares but also North African and Aegean ones. Our nondestructive pXRF testing establish that the Dura artifacts match the three most widely used Eastern Anatolian obsidian sources: Nemrut Dağ volcano as well as the Bingöl A and B sources. If indeed obsidian arrived at Dura via long-standing mechanisms of Mesopotamian exchange, these Eastern Anatolian obsidians would be expected. Unfortunately, the artifacts' precise locations at Dura are unclear, the excavations lacked stratigraphic con- straints, and Near Eastern obsidian distribution patterns have been rarely studied beyond the Early Bronze Age. Keeping in mind these limitations, our findings are most consistent with past suggestions regarding the im- portance of local Mesopotamian influences and resources at the site.

The article puts forward a new hypothesis concerning the origin of the goddess of Ekron, mentioned in Ekron's royal dedicatory inscription from the early 7th century . Contrary to a widely held view, it is suggested that the origin of the Philistine Goddess of Ekron should not be sought in the Aegean world but rather in northern Syria.

Hellenism is one of those overarching, ever-changing narratives always subject to historical circumstances, intellectual fashions and political needs. Conversely, it is fraught with meaning and conditioning powers, enabling and constraining imagination and practical life. In this essay I tease out the hold that the idea of Hellas has had on post-war Greece and I explore the ways in which the American anti-communist rhetoric and discussions about political and economic stabilization appropriated and rearticulated Hellenism. Central to this history of transformations are the archaeologists; the archaeologists as intellectuals, as producers of culture who, while stepping in and out of their disciplinary boundaries, rewrote and legitimized the new ideological properties of Hellenism while tapping into the resources of their profession.

Human remains have been found in many settlements and fortiiied settlements of the Scythian period in the forest-steppe zone of the Ukraine. Yet there are substantial differences between the nature of the nds and the circumstances of their positioning in the various settlements concerned. At some sites whole skeletons or parts of skeletons have been found in pits and in habitation levels. At others mainly (and sometimes even exclusively) human skulls or their fragments have been found. A picture of this kind was recorded, in particular, at the fortiiied settlement of Knÿshovskoe. This article examines the places where human skulls and fragments of the latter were found in the context of cultic and domestic buildings within the Knÿshovskoe settlement. Research was focused speciiically on the positions of clay altars and the link between

As an effect of intensive agricultural development of the steppes of the northern Black Sea coast, the finds of postantique agricultural landscapes that preserve relic elements of ancient land-use infrastructure are extremely rare. To these belongs the uniquely preserved ancient Greek land division system on the Tarkhankut Peninsula (north-western Crimea), which was studied using the methods of soil science and biomorphic analysis. is paper explores ancient land-use practices in order to reconstruct the original parameters of the land division system, as well as agricultural techniques employed. For postantique agricultural landscapes, an integrated geoarchaeological approach that includes GIS and remote sensing methodologies, in-field study of microrelief and soil registrograms, pedochronological dating technique, and physicochemical, geochemical, and biomorphic soil analyses has been developed and tested. e soil-geomorphological reconstruction shows that the Hellenistic land division system included a 4.5-4.9 m wide strip of land bordered by a 4.1-4.7 m wide (at the base) and c. 0.2 m high wall and a c. 2 m wide and over 15 cm deep trench, which controlled surface runoff and erosion. Ancient agricultural practices of slope farming resembled the modern ones. Surface runoff and soil erosion were controlled by dividing the catchment area into narrow plots, the borders of which on arable land were marked by simple earthen structures (low walls with shallow trenches). e biomorphic analysis of soil sampled atop these structures indicates that in ancient times, these earthen walls were not cultivated. e study of conservative properties preserved in pedomemory of postagrogenic soils provided valuable evidence of agricultural techniques used in the palaeogeographic conditions of the 4 th and 3 rd centuries BC.

The current distribution of radiocarbon dates for the Neolithic in the Anatolian peninsula indicates a significant time lag, of up to 2,000 calibrated years at two standard deviations, between the start of Neolithic occupation on the central Anatolian plateau and in the Aegean basin. This chronological discrepancy appears to match that existing between later aceramic societies in Central Anatolia and Early Neolithic societies in Greece—suggesting that the region now referred to as Western Anatolia, including the Pisidian Lake District, the Eastern Marmara and the Aegean coast, was part of a much broader horizon of Neolithic expansion, extending across the whole of the Aegean basin up to Thrace. This article provides a graphical simulation of the chronological imbalance in the radiometric dates, based on a sample of 848 uniformly recalibrated 14C dates from 59 sites. The evidence supports a model in which the westward spread of farming was punctuated by major ‘halts’, one of which occurred in the highlands of Anatolia.

Photogrammetry has become increasingly popular as a low-cost method for documenting cultural heritage and archaeological excavations. However, we have yet to establish best practices for its implementation at the site, or methods for assessing the accuracy of the resulting 3D measurements. This article presents a recent study of the Temple of Hera at Olympia, where a 25 x 55 m area was recorded at 1 mm resolution using photogrammetry both for survey and 3D reconstruction. Coded targets were set up throughout the site, which was then photographed in two phases. First, a site-wide survey established the locations of the network of targets. Second, sets of close-up photographs for detailed 3D reconstruction of the site were registered to the global survey via the targets. This technique developed at Olympia improves measurement accuracy by an order of magnitude compared to previous implementations, with a precision of at least 1 part in 50,000, and 95% of the surfaces located accurately within 2-3 mm.

Debate has long raged over the nature and extent of contact and cooperation between the Greeks and the Levantines at the site of Pithekoussai on the Tyrrhenian coast of Italy. The native Italic population, however, has been largely overlooked or viewed as a marginal or fringe element. Italic fibula types, which are found extensively in the cemetery, have been traditionally interpreted as evidence for the intermarriage of Italic females into the colonial settlement. This concept has limited our understanding of the role or impact of the Italic population at the site, effectively obscuring any more nuanced or balanced interpretations of their activity. A detailed analysis of several tombs from Pithekoussai, which contained iron tools or instruments, indicates that the Italic population was more actively involved in the creation of material culture at the site than has previously been supposed. Parallels for the practice are found widely on the Italic mainland and have often been associated with elite customs or funerary rituals. The presence of such practices at the site of Pithekoussai indicates the active impact of the native Italic population and the dynamic effect that diverse members of the community had on the creation and promulgation of a uniquely Pithekoussan identity.