North Pontic Archaeology

North Pontic Archaeology
Author: G.R. Tsetskhladze
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 552
Release: 2021-11-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004497234

This volume deals with the classical archaeology of the northern Black Sea littoral, discussing excavations and studies conducted by Russian, Ukrainian, German, Czech and British archaeologists and classicists over the last 10-12 years. It presents the results of excavations of such sites as Berezan, Nikonion, the chora of Olbia, the chora of Chersonesus, rural settlements of the European Bosporus, sites on the Taman Peninsula, etc. Several articles discuss the Scythians and other local peoples, as well as particular objects. This 6th volume of Colloquia Pontica publishes much previously unknown material, and gives a clear picture of the achievements of scholarship in the study of the North Pontic Region. Included are book reviews and an eloborate listing of new publications. The book is very richly illustrated.

The Archaeology of Imperial Landscapes

The Archaeology of Imperial Landscapes
Author: Bleda S. Düring
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 385
Release: 2018-03-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107189705

This book examines the poorly understood transformations in rural landscapes and societies that formed the backbone of ancient empires.

Greeks on the Black Sea

Greeks on the Black Sea
Author: Anna A. Trofimova
Publisher: Getty Publications
Total Pages: 328
Release: 2007
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780892368839

The ancient Greeks traveled widely by sea and founded colonies in far-flung locations. On the north coast of the Black Sea were a number of such Greek settlements, places where the Greeks made contact with the local Scythian population. Greek goods were traded extensively throughout the region, and many of these often-luxurious articles eventually made their way into tombs. From its wealth of such Greek finds from the Black Sea, the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg has lent some 175 Greek objects to an exhibition at the J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Villa. This richly illustrated catalogue to the exhibition presents nine essays on the archaeology of the northern Black Sea region and its history, culture, and art, including sculpture, pottery, gems, and jewelry. Written by curators at the State Hermitage Museum, Greeks on the Black Sea presents an intriguing world at once Greek and barbarian.

The Scythians

The Scythians
Author: Barry Cunliffe
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2019-10-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0192551876

Brilliant horsemen and great fighters, the Scythians were nomadic horsemen who ranged wide across the grasslands of the Asian steppe from the Altai mountains in the east to the Great Hungarian Plain in the first millennium BC. Their steppe homeland bordered on a number of sedentary states to the south - the Chinese, the Persians and the Greeks - and there were, inevitably, numerous interactions between the nomads and their neighbours. The Scythians fought the Persians on a number of occasions, in one battle killing their king and on another occasion driving the invading army of Darius the Great from the steppe. Relations with the Greeks around the shores of the Black Sea were rather different - both communities benefiting from trading with each other. This led to the development of a brilliant art style, often depicting scenes from Scythian mythology and everyday life. It is from the writings of Greeks like the historian Herodotus that we learn of Scythian life: their beliefs, their burial practices, their love of fighting, and their ambivalent attitudes to gender. It is a world that is also brilliantly illuminated by the rich material culture recovered from Scythian burials, from the graves of kings on the Pontic steppe, with their elaborate gold work and vividly coloured fabrics, to the frozen tombs of the Altai mountains, where all the organic material - wooden carvings, carpets, saddles and even tattooed human bodies - is amazingly well preserved. Barry Cunliffe here marshals this vast array of evidence - both archaeological and textual - in a masterful reconstruction of the lost world of the Scythians, allowing them to emerge in all their considerable vigour and splendour for the first time in over two millennia.

The Danubian Lands between the Black, Aegean and Adriatic Seas

The Danubian Lands between the Black, Aegean and Adriatic Seas
Author: Gocha R. Tsetskhladze
Publisher: Archaeopress Publishing Ltd
Total Pages: 583
Release: 2015-11-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1784911933

Proceedings of the Fifth International Congress on Black Sea Antiquities (Belgrade - 17-21 September 2013). The theme of the congress included archaeological, historical, linguistic, anthropological, geographical and other investigations across the huge area through which the Argonauts passed in seeking to return from Colchis.

Pottery in the Archaeological Record

Pottery in the Archaeological Record
Author: Mark L. Lawall
Publisher: Aarhus Universitetsforlag
Total Pages: 168
Release: 2011-12-31
Genre: Art
ISBN: 8771240888

Archaeologist are increasingly focusing on the transformation of artifacts from their use in the past to their appearance in the archaeological record, trying to identiy the natural and cultural processes that created the archaeological record we study today. In Classical Archaeology, attention to these processes received an impetus by J. Theodore Pena's 2007 monograph, Roman Pottery in the Archaeological Record, which considered how ceramic vessels were made, used and stayed in use serving various secondary purposes, before finally being discarded. Pena relied mainly on evidence from Roman Italy, which raises the question of the impact of similar cultural forces on pottery from other periods and places. His work accentuates the need to continue the process of building and developing explicit interpretive models of ceramic life-histories in Mediterranean archeology. With a view to beginning to address these challenges, the editors invited a group of specialists in the pottery of Greece and the rest of the Eastern Mediterranean to a colloquium in Athens in June 2008, asking the contributors to recondiser Pena's general models, approaches and examples from their own particular geographic and cultural perspectives. This publication constitutes the proceedings of this colloquium.

Prehistoric Mobility and Diet in the West Eurasian Steppes 3500 to 300 BC

Prehistoric Mobility and Diet in the West Eurasian Steppes 3500 to 300 BC
Author: Claudia Gerling
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 569
Release: 2015-07-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 3110388383

Questions concerning mobility and migration as well as subsistence strategies of past societies have always been of major importance in archaeological research. The West Eurasian steppes in the Eneolithic, the Early Bronze and the Iron Age were largely inhabited by cultural communities believed to show an elevated level of spatial mobility, often linked to their subsistence economy. In this volume, questions concerning the mobility and potential migration as well as the diet and economy of the West Eurasian steppes communities during the 4th, the 3rd and the 1st Millennia BC are approached by applying isotope analysis, specifically 87Sr/86Sr, δ18O, δ15N and δ13C analyses. Adapting a combination of different isotopic systems to a study area of vast spatial and chronological dimension allowed a wide variety of questions to be answered and establishes the beginning of a database of biogeochemical data for the West Eurasian steppes. Besides the characterisation of mobility and subsistence patterns of the archaeological communities under discussion, attempts to identify possible Early Bronze Age migrations from the steppes to the steppe-like plains in parts of Eastern Europe were made, alongside an evaluation of the applicability of isotope analysis to this context.

Blood of the Celts: The New Ancestral Story

Blood of the Celts: The New Ancestral Story
Author: Jean Manco
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2015-10-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 0500772967

From prehistory to the present day, an unrivaled look deep into the contentious origins of the Celts Blood of the Celts brings together genetic, archaeological, and linguistic evidence to address the often-debated question: who were the Celts? What peoples or cultural identities should that term describe? And did they in fact inhabit the British Isles before the Romans arrived? Author Jean Manco challenges existing accounts of the origins of the Celts, providing a new analysis that draws on the latest discoveries as well as ancient history. In a novel approach, the book opens with a discussion of early medieval Irish and British texts, allowing the Celts to speak in their own words and voices. It then traces their story back in time into prehistory to their deepest origins and their ancestors, before bringing the narrative forward to the present day. Each chapter also has a useful summary in bullet points to aid the reader and highlight the key facts in the story.

The Bioarchaeology of Classical Kamarina

The Bioarchaeology of Classical Kamarina
Author: Carrie L. Sulosky Weaver
Publisher: University Press of Florida
Total Pages: 365
Release: 2015-09-23
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0813055547

Choice Outstanding Academic Title Sicily was among one of the first areas settled during the Greek colonization movement, making its cemeteries a popular area of study for scholars of the classical world. Yet these studies have often considered human remains and burial customs separately. In this seminal work, Carrie Sulosky Weaver synthesizes skeletal, material, and ritual data to reconstruct the burial customs, demographic trends, state of health, and ancestry of Kamarina, a city-state in Sicily. Using evidence from 258 recovered graves from the Passo Marinaro necropolis, Sulosky Weaver suggests that Kamarineans--whose cultural practices were an amalgamation of both Greek and indigenous customs--were closely linked to their counterparts in neighboring Greek cities The orientations of the graves, positions of the bodies, and the types of items buried with the dead--including Greek pottery--demonstrate that Kamarineans were full participants in the mortuary traditions of Sicilian Greeks. Likewise, cranial traits resemble those found among other Sicilian Greeks. Interestingly, evidence of cranial surgery, magic, and necrophobic activities also appeared in Passo Marinaro graves--another example of how Greek culture influenced the city. An overabundance of young adult skeletal remains, combined with the presence of cranial trauma and a variety of pathological conditions, indicates the Kamarineans may have been exposed to one or more disruptive events, such as prolonged wars and epidemic outbreaks. Despite the tumultuous nature of the times, the resulting portrait reveals that Kamarina was a place where individuals of diverse ethnicities and ancestries were united in life and death by shared culture and funerary practices.

Ancient West & East

Ancient West & East
Author: G.R. Tsetskhladze
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 247
Release: 2021-11-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004496440