Material Culture and Social Identities in the Ancient World

ISBN-13: 9780521767743 / Angielski / Twarda / 2009 / 358 str.

Shelley Hales

Opis

Recent studies have highlighted the diversity, complexity, and plurality of identities in the ancient world. At the same time, scholars have acknowledged the dynamic role of material culture, not simply in reflecting those identities but their role in creating and transforming them. This volume explores and compares two influential approaches to the study of social and cultural identities, the model of globalization and theories of hybrid cultural development. In a series of case studies, an international team of archaeologists and art historians considers how various aspects of material culture can be used to explore complex global and local identity structures across the geographical and chronological span of antiquity. The essays examine the civilizations of the Greeks, Romans, Etruscans, Persians, Phoenicians, and Celts. Reflecting on the current state of our understanding of cultural interaction and antiquity, they also dwell on contemporary thoughts of identity, cultural globalization, and resistance that shape and are shaped by academic discourses on the cultural empires of Greece and Rome.

Recenzje

'The volume as a whole is a very useful - and up-to-date - discussion on current issues broadly relating to identity. The editors have successfully managed to bring together a very diverse set of papers and to link general discussions and theoretical frameworks to well-expounded and specific case studies.' The Ancient History Bulletin

Spis treści

Part I. Theoretical Frameworks: 1. Local and global perspectives in the study of social and cultural identities Tamar Hodos; 2. (Re)defining ethnicity: culture, material culture, and identity Carla M. Antonaccio; 3. Cultural diversity and unity: empire and Rome Richard Hingley; Part II. Case Studies: 4. Ingenious inventions: welding ethnicities east and west Corinna Riva; 5. Shaping Mediterranean economy and trade: Phoenician cultural identities in the Iron Age Michael Sommer; 6. Samothrace: Samo- or Thrace? Petya Ilieva; 7. The big and beautiful women of Asia: ethnic conceptions of ideal beauty in Achaemenid-period seals and gemstones Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones; 8. Unintentionally being Lucanian: dynamics beyond hybridity Elena Isayev; 9. Tricks with mirrors: remembering the dead of Noricum Shelley Hales; 10. Neutral bodies? Female portrait statue types from the Late Republic into the 2nd century CE Annetta Alexandridis; Part III. Afterword: 11. Cultural crossovers: global and local identities in the classical world David Mattingly.