Addressing topics ranging from production and distribution to iconography and museum collections, "Vessels and Variety" sheds new light on perspectives in the fields of ancient pottery studies. The contributors cover a wide span of time from the Geometric period to the Roman period, exploring both new materials from recent excavations in the Mediterranean--from southern Italy to the Black Sea--as well as new methodological approaches. With richly illustrated articles, this volume provides an important contribution to the ongoing debates on the role of pottery in ancient societies.

This lavishly illustrated book takes readers from prehistoric Santorini to Late Antique Rome to analyze the role of tradition in the transmission of culture and the creation, maintenance, and negotiation of identity in the ancient world. Covering a wide array of subjects, including cultic rituals and the use of magical objects and symbols, votive traditions in Greek sanctuaries, funerary portraits, and Iron Age pottery, Tradition reveals how culture inheres in each, and how actions and objects alike play a role in culture s continuation and change. With its thoroughly interdisciplinary...