American Journal of Archaeology

The Agora Bone Well presents the study of more than 460 humans (mostly newborn infants) and 150 dogs, along with the artifacts deposited in a well near the Athenian Agora. Dorothy B. Thompson excavated the well more than 80 years ago. It has remained largely forgotten, except for an occasional suggestion that its assemblage represented plague, human sacrifice, or large-scale infanticide. The nuanced analysis of the evidence from this cold case tells a heartbreaking tale of all-too-ordinary life and death in ancient Greece.

Most Rhodian transport amphoras had a stamp on each handle; one named the annually chang­ing eponym priest of Halios and the other an individual, in one instance called ergasteriarchas, whose role is disputed, and whom archae­ologists commonly refer to as fabricants or “pro­ducers.” The eponym stamps in particular are of vital im­portance to the chronology of the Rhodian amphoras and the contexts in which they occur and, by implication, for mapping the fluctuations of the amphora-borne trade of Hellenistic Rhodes.

Though we possess a general picture regarding the Peloponnesian peninsula for the period this book describes, between the Battle of Chaironeia and the Macedonian defeat against the Romans in the Battle of Kynoskephalai, “the present study examines an under-researched topic” (1). The conventional picture of the Early Hellenistic Peloponnese Shipley alludes to is that of a region oppressed by the Macedonian kings, ruined by warfare and tyranny.

Scholarly books dedicated exclusively to Greek art of the fourth century B.C.E. are few in number. Prior to the current volume’s publication, those most recent and widely known focus on sculpture—original and copy, architectural, and relief. This emphasis is not surprising given that no original painted panels survive, although publications on the tomb paintings from late fourth-century Macedonia discovered since the 1970s have significantly amplified the study of painting of that period and beyond.

Voigts’ book, the revision of a dissertation accepted at the Technical University of Munich in 2011, contains a detailed architectural study of sixth- and fifth-century B.C.E. monumental altars in the urban sanctuaries of Selinus, followed by general discussion of the architectural development of monumental altars in Sicily and Magna Graecia, including the altars in the extra-urban sanctuaries of Selinus.

“We live our lives surrounded by text,” writes Bennet in his thought-provoking concluding commentary to this volume (247). He also observes that ours is a “hybrid world where verbal and non-verbal visual communication exist side-by-side” (248). Case in point and much to my chagrin, my own phone texts are increasingly punctuated by emojis.[[AU: Correct to edit this to say your own texts? or did you mean those you receive?]] This volume is an exploration of the hybridity of communication in the ancient eastern Mediterranean.

This edited volume brings together international scholars working on a wide range of topics and perspectives relating to the Greek Neolithic. The variable archaeological record and the localized trajectories characteristic of this period are celebrated by collaborative and multidisciplinary contributions that touch on many, but not all, regions of Greece. The volume provides an updated account of Neolithic research in Greece and outlines successfully the multitude of methodological and theoretical underpinnings that currently shape its agenda.

While study of historic periods continues to dominate much of the literature on the archaeology of Greece, work on the Neolithic period has advanced along many fronts in terms of the number of sites investigated, the depth of analysis, and the range of interdisciplinary activities, bringing the prehistoric landscape into clearer focus. The contributors to this volume on Alepotrypa Cave provide a comprehensive view of activities in the cave over a number of millennia, with evidence particularly abundant for the Late and Final Neolithic phases.

For as long as humans have been constructing monuments, the product (whether a tomb, palace, temple, memorial, or other) has held a place not only within the physical landscape but also as a part of the social, political, and economic environment of the culture in which it was built. This book examines how the archaeological record may be utilized to interpret how monuments reflected their respective societies, not only in the physicality of the structure in its environs but also in the processes, via material and human resources, of construction.

Horn and Kristiansen’s volume Warfare in Bronze Age Society presents the revised contributions to a conference held at the University of Gothenburg in 2012. The book has 15 chapters, including an introduction by the editors, a short scene-setting chapter, and a conclusion. The chapters vary in their geographical focus and in the types of evidence they interrogate, achieving impressive coverage.