Apptetitive: Punic War Remnants

According to Italy Magazine, archaeologists have discovered large anchors and the remains of a ship's cargo off the coast of Sicily. They believe that these are vestiges from the Punic War that the Carthaginians left behind when quickly abandoning a hotly contested strategic position. The underwater excavation is ongoing.

Appetitive: A New Temple

A while ago, Egnatius sent me this exciting article about a new temple. Interestingly, this site was discovered in 1995, but it wasn't excavated until recently. It must be pretty nice for Xeni Arapogianni, the person who found the site, that she should be able to investigate it all these years later.

I haven't been able to blog for a while. Things are a bit hectic as I'm in school and applying to programs. My writing sample is proving to be hurdle. However, it has allowed me to do a bunch of great research filling in the gaps. Right now I'm reading The Play of Character in Plato's Dialogues. It's wonderful.  I just wish I didn't have to do quite so much other work at the same time. I should be really working on it right now. I may be posting very little for the next few weeks.

Appetitive: Want to Try 2,000 Year Old Food?

Want to try 2,000 year old food? Well, you're chance just came up. According to the Daily Mail, a roman shipwreck has been discovered that is so well preserved, there is still food in the jars. It sounds absolutely amazing. Maybe this is one archaeological report I will actually read.

Appetitive: Minoan Archaeology

From Wikimedia Commons.

The newest In Our Time podcast is on the Minoans. Melvyn Bragg gathers a group of scholars to discuss Minoan archaeology and culture. I am acquainted with Minoan archaeology, but I have not studied it in depth. I know enough to admire the beautiful murals, many of which depict sea life (being primarily an island people) and their interesting fashion sense (half-full skirts, tiny waists, and very low necklines) and that they held snakes and bulls in some significance, but I know little beyond that. The podcast was great. The scholars provided a basic understanding and some interesting insights. For example, I always assumed that Minoan palace culture implied a traditional monarchical hierarchy, but one of the scholars argued that the art and archaeological evidence does not support this claim and the "palaces" may have been more of religious or civic centers that did not require a king or queen.

Appetitive: POTSHERD

Being a Time Team (BBC) geek, a recent post from AWOL got my attention. POTSHERD is a project which crated an Atlas of Roman archaeology-- specifically ceramics and pottery. There is an introduction to archaeology created by University of Newcastle Upon Tyne which looks pretty cool as well as the Atlas, which can be searched by type of item (class) or area of discovery (source). Pretty awesome.

Appetitive: Ara Pacis: Pictures, Diagrams, Maps, etc

One of the things that I remember most vividly from the second semester of my freshman year survey of the ancient Mediterranean was the art history day on the Ara Pacis. The Ara Pacis was lost for years until it was pulled out of a bog. It provides a reminder that Rome used to be a boggy landscape before it was drained and built. I found a large selection of pictures and diagrams on AWOL.

Appetitive: Follow-up on Tablets Near Pylos

I wanted to post a follow-up for my previous post "Appetitive: Tablets Near Pylos." Apparently, an archaeologist working on the project wrote a note on the contents of the tablet, which was posted on Rogue Classicism. As I suspected, it is a list, and probably a personnel list (according to the article).

Appetitive: Archaeologists on Strike?

I had no idea we lived in a world where archaeologists could go on strike. Apparently, this is actually something that can happen in Egypt. According to Egyptology News, in responses to a mass of looting, archaeologists might be striking in protest against the failure of the new government to appoint a minister to handle archaeological affairs. I think it's great that archaeologists have this power (although, obviously the looting is unfortunate).

More to come. I have a great old friend in town and I still have a lot of Medea to read...

Appetitive: The Restoration of the Parthenon

This is a PBS special on the restoration of the Parthenon. Although the narration is a little melodramatic in places, it shows some incredible features of the restoration of the Parthenon and of the architectural structure of the Parthenon itself.






Unfortunately, there are some commercials in this, but it's pretty cool that PBS put the special on youtube.

The final (for now) installment of "Dates in the Platonic Corpus" will be up soon.

Appetitive: Herodotus and Ancient Temples

So I checked my twitter this morning and reaffirmed my reason for having a twitter (no matter how stupid Cerinthus and his parents think it is).

First, I happened upon (through Marathon 2500's twitter) an online version of Herodotus with facing Greek on sacred-texts.com. Unlike the Perseus version, this does not have a built in dictionary, but it is a clean format for browsing the English and Greek.

Second, I came upon a Huffington Post slideshow of Ancient Greek and Roman temples in Europe and the Middle East. The pictures are not fabulous (many of Cerinthus' pictures are better), but they show a number of temples in France and the Middle East that I had not seen before.

Acropolis, from Cerinthus' photos

This is not Cerinthus' best photo, but I thought I would include something of the pictures that he took and there are a few thousand of them so I thought I would just pick one I liked. More on Plato coming soon.

Reasoning: Greek History Review #6

I've been organizing my Greek History studying in order to put it into a coherent pattern and create a "syllabus" [1]. In tracing the history, I am not focusing on the Minoan and Mycenean developments because I although I have some interest in archaeology, it is not my primary interest nor something about which I have a lot of background. Some of this I have related before, but not in an organized fashion.

So here is my reading for Greek History from c.2000-600 BCE [2]:

Minoans, Myceneans, Early Dark Ages, and Sources:

Secondary Sources (General background on Early Greece)

• Early Greece by Oswyn Murray, chapters 1-2 (pages 1-34)
• Ancient Greece: A Political, Social, and Cultural History by Pomeroy et al, chapter 1 (pages 1-40)
• The Art and Culture of Early Greece, 1100-480 B.C.by Jeffrey Hurwit chapter 1 (pages 15-32)
• Archaic and Classical Greek Art by Robin Osborne chapter 1 (pages 1-21)
• "The Emergence of the State in the Prehistoric Aegean" [3] by John F. Cherry. 

Primary Sources (The Greeks on their own early history)

•  Histories by Herodotus 1.56, 2.53
• The History of the Peloponnesian Wars by Thucydides 1.1-8, 1.12

The Dark Age (c.1100-750): 

Primary Sources (Possible evidence for Dark Age aristocracy and politics)

•  Odyssey by Homer, Books 1-19 (I will read through 24 in order to check it off my reading list)
• Agamemnon by Aeschylus. Lines 1-907.

Secondary Sources (The Dark Age and Homer as a Historical Source)

• Early Greece by Oswyn Murray, chapters 3-4 (pages 35-68)
• Ancient Greece: A Political, Social, and Cultural History by Pomeroy et al, chapter 2 (pages 41-81)
• The Art and Culture of Early Greece, 1100-480 B.C.by Jeffrey Hurwit, chapters 2-3 (pages 33-125)
• Archaic and Classical Greek Art by Robin Osborne chapter 2 (pages 23-41)
• Sons of the Gods, Children of Earth by Peter Rose, chapter 1-3 (pages 43-130) [4]
• "The Use and Abuse of Homer" Ian Morris (JSTOR)

The Early Archaic Age (c.750-600): 

Primary Sources (Early Archaic politics and the beginnings of the polis)

•  The Works and Days by Hesiod

Secondary Sources (Politics in the Early Archaic and the Influence of Trade)

• Early Greece by Oswyn Murray, chapters 4-5
• Ancient Greece: A Political, Social, and Cultural History by Pomeroy et al, chapter 3 (pages 82-130)
• The Art and Culture of Early Greece, 1100-480 B.C.by Jeffrey Hurwit, chapter 4 (pages 125-202)
• Archaic and Classical Greek Art by Robin Osborne chapter 2 (pages 21-40) 
  
• "Hesiod and His World" [3] by Paul Millett
  

Endnotes

1. I borrowed significantly from the Greek History syllabus from the class I took in Fall 2008. My own additions primarily are the art and archaeology sources (some of which I borrowed from my classical world survey course), and some textbook background on Greek History. I also changed many of the translations used either because I liked the editions or translations better, or they were more easily accessible.
2. These dates are going to overlap a lot, and each of the articles and chapters deal with different eras. I am going to go by the traditional dates of the Mycenean's arriving in Greece c.2000 and the Dark Age beginning c.1100.
3. I realize that this literary analysis-- and specifically an unorthodox Marxist literary analysis-- is a bizarre choice for a history reading list. However, I really like Rose's work and his methodology, and I think that his readings try to situate the reader in the culture of the period, and specifically in terms of what relations between ruling groups.
4. The Cambridge Philosophical Journal: The Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society (1984). I happened upon this article when I was looking for the Hesiod article and I ended up enjoying it.

Reasoning: Google Will Provide Access to the Dead Sea Scrolls

The Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered in a cave in the 1940s, provide vital documentary evidence for life in Biblical times and the advent of Christianity. Previously, the access to these scrolls was restricted, but now Google is partnering with the Israel Antiquities Authority to upload clear photographs of the scrolls as well as an English translation that will be accessible for free online.

From the Yahoo! News article

Read the article here.

Reasoning: A Crisis in Archaeology?

Back to typing up the notes from Shapiro's lecture tomorrow. However, yesterday I found something fascinating in the free journals that were posted on The Ancient World Online. When I think of the economic crisis, I certainly thing of people losing their jobs. Yet, my first thought did not go to archaeologists. I should have made this connection, but it simply did not occur to me.

A recent(ish) issue of the of the European Archaeologist (Summer 2009), featured three pieces in a series called "A Crisis in Archaeology?" which talks about the effects of the economic changes on archaeology, including the jobs lost by archaeologists (especially in the UK) and the impact on funding and public relations. I think this is an important issue for the continuation of classics.

Reasoning: The Iconography of Greek Theater #3, Ralf Krumeich

My mom took this picture in the gardens.

Ralf Krumeich spoke first, after Mary Louise Hart's introduction. I had not heard of him, because it appears that he writes only in German, but he is Privatdozent (which I assume is like a professor) of classical archaeology in at the Universitat Bonn and writes on archaeology, satyr plays, and the relationship between classical monuments in Athens and Delos as conceived by different cultures in the Hellenistic and Imperial periods.

Krumeich was a fascinating character. He was immediately likable and charismatic. His English was fabulous, although heavily accented. It made me realize how differently the Germans pronounce Greek names like Atreus (he said "aahh-traus"). He was perfectly understandable, and oddly enough when he was answering questions his English was better and more fluid than when he was reading his presentation. I want to be able to do that in German, someday.

Ralf Krumeich's ideas were also rich and well-explicated. He created a system for categorizing pottery and its relationship to theater and mythology:

1. Images which explicitly show Athenians (or those from South Italy or Sicily) in or around the performance of a tragedy/satyr play/comedy.
2. Mythological images which can be connected with theatrical performance through visual tropes such as masks, costumes, aulos players, etc.
3. Myths where a character or characters are portrayed in theatrical costume. One of the main features that places a pot in this category is the lack of masks, as well as only some rather than all of the characters in theatrical dress.

He explained that a large portion of evidence about theater is tainted because it blurs these barriers. Most of the evidence that he problematized is scholars using pieces of pottery from the last two categories in order to make suppositions about the plot or staging of plays which remain only as fragments or titles.

From this information and these categories, he draws two interrelated conclusions. First,Theater, including rehearsals, and those who participated in theater (actors and dancers) have a social and religious significance which made them common themes. But second, although there are many images which incorporate the iconic tropes of theater, most of them are mythological paintings with a gesture toward theatrical performance and its cultural significance in the mythic narrative rather than any specific portrayal of theater or a theatrical performance.

I thought the paper provided valuable insights on the missteps of scholarship in equating art too closely with potential instances of theater. It also seemed to me that the three-level categorization was clear and useful. Overall, Ralf gave a great talk, accompanied by a wide variety of pictures of the different types of potter of which he spoke.

Appetitive: Reconstruction of Rome, 320 CE

I am sure that most classics geeks have already found this by now. Google Earth has put up a virtual reconstruction of Rome in 320 CE. I have not downloaded it, but the video tutorial on the webpage is pretty cool.




Once again, I am not an archaeology person, and this part of the Roman Empire is not anywhere close to my usual field of study, so I am not sure how accurate this is. However, it looks pretty cool. Maybe they'll do 5th century Athens sometime. That would be awesome...

Reasoning: Technological and Non-Technological Innovations in Archaeology

Although I truly appreciate and love archaeology, it is not my field. Ever since I was a kid I have been watching the wonderful (albeit controversial) British series Time Team. Of course classics as a discipline relies upon archaeology. However, I, in general, am very much a text person and have no idea what the new developments in archaeology are or how to find out.

In the last few weeks, two archaeology-related pieces in the New York Times have caught my attention (both of which I was referred to by my mom).

MEGA

The first was an incredible piece on new computer technology in archaeology. Apparently, the Getty has set up a system for Jordan (called MEGA), in conjunction with Google Earth, in order to mark on a database and monitor ancient sites:

"These let users find any of Jordan’s more than 10,000 sites, from the ancient city of Petra to tiny unearthed remnants from antiquity, like wine presses, threshing floors and burial grounds dating to the Neolithic period." (see article)

The database functions in both English and Arabic and should help authorities prevent grave robbery and other problems by allowing them to efficiently distribute their resources based on the information.

The system was originally intended for Iraq, where the monitoring is desperately needed, but it was difficult to get the technology there and ensure that it was set up. There are, according to the article, possible plans for expanding to Iraq in the future.

Desert Roads

The second piece that caught my attention focuses on two archaeologists, the Darnells, who worked on the Theban Desert Road Survey. According to the article, this type of surveying focuses on the importance of old caravan trails for finding archaeological remains of settlements. The Darnells discovered a Persian settlement from the 6th century, which lead them to much earlier material:

"Zahi Hawass, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said the archaeologists had uncovered extensive remains of a settlement — apparently an administrative, economic and military center — that flourished more than 3,500 years ago in the western desert 110 miles west of Luxor and 300 miles south of Cairo. No such urban center so early in history had ever been found in the forbidding desert." (see article)

The Darnells say in the article that this provides an explanation for the rise of Thebes as an important center in Egypt.

A picture from the NY Times of the bakery at the dig site