American Journal of Archaeology

In the latest volume in the Morgantina Studies series, Stone presents a meticulously constructed typology of the Hellenistic and Roman tablewares from Morgantina. It is a beautiful book of a type that we are not likely to see published for much longer. The binding, paper, illustrations, and photographs are all excellent, and their styles look back to another era of academic publication. In this regard, the book is reminiscent of the Athenian Agora series, after which it is partly modeled, as Stone tells us in the preface.

Although many deposits with terracotta figurines have been brought to light at various sites in Lakonia, the publication of assemblages of terracottas remains exceptional. Because of this, the study of the terracotta relief plaques from the Sanctuary of Agamemnon and Kassandra in Amyklai by Salapata represents a fundamental contribution to our knowledge of the coroplastic craft of Lakonia and sheds light on its hero cults.

Derived from the proceedings of a 2012 conference held at the Danish Institute in Athens, The Architecture of the Ancient Greek Theatre is an impressive edited volume featuring 26 contributions from an international group of scholars. Individual studies of well-known theaters appear alongside discussion of unpublished and understudied ones, while a handful of broader, more thematic essays serve to underscore the bigger problems and issues at stake in studying the architecture of the Greek theater.

In book 10 of Plato’s Republic, while debating the art of mimesis, Socrates draws a distinction between the divinely conceived couch (kline), the couch created by the carpenter that conforms in appearance to this original idea or form, and the couch produced in imitation of it by the painter (596b–597e). As Baughan argues, the exemplum works because the couch was so familiar a part of the material and visual landscape of classical Greece (86).

This is the third volume in the excellent series of conference proceedings Athenian Potters and Painters. This conference took place in September 2012, at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, the home institution of the Athenian Potters and Painters organizer, John H. Oakley. The conference volume is dedicated to Alan Shapiro, and a photograph of him at the conference lectern is the volume’s frontispiece.

In Master of Attic Black-Figure Painting: The Art and Legacy of Exekias, Moignard has given us a refreshing new and personal approach to Attic figure-decorated pottery and a new appreciation of Exekias, the best of the black-figure painters. While recently much has been written about reading Attic images, Moignard rather wants the images to speak—and in such a way that they provoke intense aesthetic and emotional experiences. At the same time, she has not abandoned the rigor of, to use her words, “the academic house I grew up in” (xx).

Roller, Professor Emeritus of Classics at Ohio State University, is well known to students of ancient geography for his translation of Strabo’s Geography (Cambridge 2014) and his edition of the fragments of Eratosthenes’ Geography (Princeton 2010), as well as for his work on early ancient Atlantic seafarers (Through the Pillars of Herakles: Greco-Roman Exploration of the Atlantic [London 2006]). In this new book, Roller offers the reader a compact and readable overview of Greek and Roman geography down to the end of the second century C.E.

Pyla-Koutsopetria I is the first volume of final reports on the Pyla-Koutsopetria survey project (PKAP) in Cyprus. Published as part of the American Schools of Oriental Research Archaeological Reports series, the volume meets the generally high standards of the series. The publication reflects an appreciation for the historical landscape as well as a robust discussion of ceramics and material culture.

The Greeks in Asia is the most recent academic effort of Boardman. This book predominantly deals with the consequences of the impact of Hellenistic (more than simply Greek) culture on the visual arts of Iran, Central Asia, and the Indian subcontinent, all lands that were characterized by a strong local and lasting Indo-Iranian tradition. The book also includes discussion of the effects of the contacts between this western culture and China.

This comprehensive and colorful volume is based on a workshop held in Athens in February 2011 and is devoted to the largely neglected matter of Mycenaean mural painting. Instead of thematic, iconographical, and other comparative studies, the main focus of the contributions is placed on the presentation of selected material from various sites of the Mycenaean mainland, as indicated by the subtitle of the book. Most of the articles are devoted to fresco material from one distinct site, be it a mural composition or a group of painted plaster fragments from a particular findspot.