Urban life as we know it in the Mediterranean began in the early Iron Age: settlements of great size and internal diversity appear in the archaeological record. This collection of essays offers for the first time a systematic discussion of the beginnings of urbanization across the Mediterranean, from Cyprus through Greece and Italy to France and Spain. Leading scholars in the field look critically at what is meant by urbanization, and analyze the social processes that lead to the development of social complexity and the growth of towns.
The introduction to the volume focuses on the...

This volume is a successor to the second volume of M. N. Tod's Selection of Greek Historical Inscriptions (OUP, 1948). It provides an up-to-date selection--with introduction, Greek texts, English translations, and commentaries which cater to the needs of today's students--of inscriptions which are important for the study of Greek history in the fourth century BC. The texts chosen illuminate not only the mainstream of Greek political and military history, but also institutional, social, economic, and religious life.

Demos is a study of a classical city-state. It is the first attempt to provide an integrated account which gives due attention to the countryside as well as the urban areas of a polis. Concentrating on classical Athens, for which the literary and archaeological evidence is richest, Dr Osborne establishes the nature of settlement in the countryside and explores how this relates to the farming of the land, the exploitation of mineral resources, and the nature of political participation in both local and central politics. Further studies reveal the way in which the countryside was structured by...

These new and especially commissioned essays discuss the ways in which performance is central to the practice and ideology of democracy in classical Athens. From theater to law court to gymnasium to symposium, performance is a basic part of Athenian society; how do these different areas interrelate and inform the politics and culture of the democratic city? Drama, rhetoric, philosophy, literature and art are all discussed by leading scholars in this interdisciplinary volume.

Demos is a study of a classical city-state. It is the first attempt to provide an integrated account which gives due attention to the countryside as well as the urban areas of a polis. Concentrating on classical Athens, for which the literary and archaeological evidence is richest, Dr Osborne establishes the nature of settlement in the countryside and explores how this relates to the farming of the land, the exploitation of mineral resources, and the nature of political participation in both local and central politics. Further studies reveal the way in which the countryside was structured by...

Originally published in Past and Present, this collection of papers includes some of the most innovative history written about Greece and Rome over twenty years. It offers a convenient guide to current issues and topics in Greek and Roman history. The volume's contributors are among the most influential ancient historians active over the last twenty-five years. An introduction by the editor prefaces papers ranging from Greek warfare to early Christian martyr stories.

From the time of the Roman Empire onwards, fifth- and fourth-century Greece have been held to be the period and place in which civilization as the West knows it developed. Classical scholars have sought to justify these claims in detail by describing developments in fields such as democratic politics, art, rationality, historiography, literature, philosophy, medicine and music, in which classical Greece has been held to have made a revolutionary contribution. In this volume a distinguished cast of contributors offers a fresh consideration of these claims, asking both whether they are well...

Whatever aspect of Athenian culture one examines, whether it be tragedy and comedy, philosophy, vase painting and sculpture, oratory and rhetoric, law and politics, or social and economic life, the picture looks very different after 400 BC from before 400 BC. Scholars who have previously addressed this question have concentrated on particular areas and come up with explanations, often connected with the psychological effect of the Peloponnesian War, which are very unconvincing as explanations for the whole range of change. This book attempts to look at a wide range of evidence for cultural...

Art's Agency and Art History re-articulates the relationship of the anthropology of art to key methodological and theoretical approaches in art history, sociology, and linguistics.

• Explores important concepts and perspectives in the anthropology of art
  
• Includes nine groundbreaking case studies by an internationally renowned group of art historians and art theorists
  
• Covers a wide range of periods, including Bronze-Age China, Classical Greece, Rome, and Mayan, as well as the modern Western world
  
• Features an...

Art's Agency and Art History re-articulates the relationship of the anthropology of art to key methodological and theoretical approaches in art history, sociology, and linguistics.

• Explores important concepts and perspectives in the anthropology of art
  
• Includes nine groundbreaking case studies by an internationally renowned group of art historians and art theorists
  
• Covers a wide range of periods, including Bronze-Age China, Classical Greece, Rome, and Mayan, as well as the modern Western world
  
• Features an...