American Journal of Archaeology

Thanks to the critical mass of recent archaeological discoveries from the deeper layers of Rome, the latest systematic studies in early Roman architecture are transforming the field, pushing for a shared agenda to reassess, and at times challenge, architectural production in relation to salient historical processes affecting Rome’s urbanization in the long term (e.g., J.N. Hopkins, The Genesis of Roman Architecture [New Haven 2016]).

In the first chapter of this rich and thought-provoking collection, historian Ivantchik argues that until around the middle of the seventh century B.C.E. the Greeks saw the Black Sea as an extension of the circling ocean—part of the terrifying unknown at the edge of the world, on the far shore of which the land of the dead might plausibly be located.

While updated overviews of Greek architecture have recently appeared in French and Italian, comparable reference books in English date from the 1950s, although Tomlinson published his revised edition of Lawrence’s Greek Architecture (Baltimore 1957) in 1996. Over the last six decades, new findings and approaches have greatly expanded our knowledge of Greek architecture, and increasing attention has been devoted to the Archaic and Hellenistic phases.

This volume publishes some of the papers from the Greek Art in Context international conference held at the University of Edinburgh in 2014. “‘Context’ has become a buzzword,” Rodríguez Pérez notes in her introduction (1), and both the conference and the volume aimed to explore its many facets. With the study of Greek art, Rodríguez Pérez advocates for the melding of art history and classical archaeology over any divide between these disciplines, with material culture studies added for good measure.

Not since Sir John Beazley’s Der Berliner Maler (Berlin 1930) has there been a monograph devoted to the works of the Berlin Painter, an Athenian vase painter decorating vessels between 505 and 460 B.C.E. The catalogue under review, a published account of the 2017 exhibition hosted by the Princeton University Art Museum and the Toledo Museum of Art, bears a familiar title for many readers. Indeed, it derives from the first exhibit concentrating on a single vase painter, “The Amasis Painter and His World” (1985), which produced an informative catalogue (D.

As new discoveries and new technologies rapidly expand the ways in which archaeologists can interrogate data and the scope and sophistication of the questions we pose about ancient societies, it can be equally fruitful to step back and take stock of the data we have and the veracity of the assumptions generated over decades of research.

The contemporary urban landscape of New Orleans might not seem professionally relevant to archaeologists of the ancient Mediterranean, but Dawdy’s nuanced survey of patina in the city both before and after the  Katrina in 2005, offers a compelling offers a compelling consideration of the intersection of archaeology and modernity. For Dawdy, patina is more than simply the mud left behind on buildings in the aftermath of the hurricane; it is a part of the past-in-the-present that saturates the historical fabric of the city itself.

Fagan outlines the history of civilization through human settlement and subsistence patterns demonstrating the significance of fish and other marine products. Animal scavenging and plant foraging evolved into hunting and plant gathering, while fish catching, initially, was only a stopgap (x). An example of such hominin “opportunistic eating” (21) is evidenced at Olduvai Gorge sites of 1.75 million years ago, where catfish and animal bones are intermingled with stone artifacts.

The aim of this attractive new volume is to present results of ongoing studies of the archaeological evidence for violence and warfare in the past and to contribute to the development of method and theory for future work on the subject. The 19 papers are disparate, ranging from a study of wounds on bones of the Neolithic period to details of the distribution of Roman weapons on historically documented battle sites.

Thirty-five years ago, while I was completing an essay concerning Bronze Age Crete, a passage in V.G. Childe’s What Happened in History? (Harmondsworth 1942: 172) made an indelible impression on me: “The princes owed their power and wealth to a monopoly of new implements of war—long rapiers of costly bronze, huge shields and light horse-drawn chariots. . . .