3. Material clues

2019 ◽  
pp. 21-33
Author(s):  
Barbara Graziosi
Keyword(s):  
Historical Context ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Original Audience ◽  
Greek World

‘Material clues’ considers the archaeological evidence for when the Iliad and Odyssey were composed, including Heinrich Schliemann’s quest to find Troy on the basis of clues in the texts. The Iliad and the Odyssey refer to material circumstances not found before the later eighth or early seventh century BCE. They describe a distant, mythical past, but are set in a real and recognisable landscape. No interpretation leads to a single original audience, historical context, or specific political agenda, but earliest quotations from, and references to, Homer in other poets’ work prove that by the late sixth century BCE, the poems were well known throughout the Greek world.

scholarly journals On the Roman-Byzantine adoption of the stirrup once more: a new find from seventh-century Aphrodisias

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Tim Penn ◽  
Ben Russell ◽  
Andrew Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Carpathian Basin ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Asia Minor ◽  
Byzantine Empire ◽  
Multiple Sources ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Sources Of Influence

Abstract Archaeological evidence and the text of the Strategikon show that it was only in the late sixth century AD that the Roman-Byzantine military adopted the stirrup. It is now widely argued that the Avars, who settled in the Carpathian basin in the sixth century, played a key role in introducing iron stirrups to the Roman-Byzantine world. However, the evidence to support this assertion is limited. Although hundreds of stirrups have been found in Avar graves in the Carpathian basin, very few stirrups of sixth- or seventh-century date are known from the Roman-Byzantine empire - no more than seven - and only two of these are of definitively Avar type. The text of the Strategikon, sometimes argued to support this Avar source, can be interpreted differently, as indeed can the archaeological evidence. While the debate about the Roman-Byzantine adoption of the stirrup has focused mostly on finds from the Balkans, two early stirrups are known from Asia Minor, from Pergamon and Sardis. This paper presents a third, previously unpublished stirrup, from a seventh-century deposit at Aphrodisias in Caria; this is the first stirrup found in Asia Minor from a datable context. Here we present this find and its context, and use it to reconsider the model of solely Avar stirrup transmission that has dominated scholarship to date. So varied are the early stirrups that multiple sources of influence, Avar and other, and even a degree of experimentation, seem more likely to underpin the Roman-Byzantine adoption of this technology.

INTERPRETING ROPE CHANNELS: LIFTING, SETTING AND THE BIRTH OF GREEK MONUMENTAL ARCHITECTURE

2019 ◽  
Vol 114 ◽  
pp. 167-206 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alessandro Pierattini
Keyword(s):  
Alternative Hypothesis ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Peculiar Feature ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Construction Process ◽  
Monumental Architecture ◽  
Greek Architecture ◽  
History Of ◽  
Greek World

The first stone ashlar blocks of Greek architecture, those of the mid-seventh-century temples at Isthmia and Corinth, pose a problem for understanding the beginnings of Greek stone construction.1Their peculiar feature is the presence of grooves plausibly explained as a way to move the blocks with ropes. Yet scholars disagree about how these ropes would have been used, and during what stage of construction. The first excavators of the two temples suggested that the ropes would have served to lift each block into place, and were subsequently extracted from the grooves once the block had been set against its neighbour. Later scholars dismissed this theory as both inconsistent with the evidence and technically impracticable, questioning whether lifting machines were used in Greek construction as early as the mid-seventh century. Currently, the widely accepted view holds that the crane appeared in the Greek world only in the late sixth century. An alternative hypothesis is that the grooves were cut early in the construction process so that ropes could be used to manoeuvre the blocks within the quarry. However, the ‘lifting’ theory continues to have its adherents. Clarifying the significance of these parallel grooves is thus a matter of some importance to the history of Greek construction. This article reassesses the alternative theses on the basis of a new examination of the evidence, and demonstrates that the idea that the grooves served for lifting is the most plausible. Furthermore, it argues that forerunners of the crane appeared in Greece well before the late sixth century. Finally, by examining how the blocks would have been manoeuvred into place after lifting, it contends that the grooves also served the purpose of placement, with a method anticipating the Classical period's sophisticated lever technique.

The architecture of early shrines and temples

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte R. Potts
Keyword(s):  
Seventh Century ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Religious Activities ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Religious Buildings ◽  
Religious Rituals ◽  
New Buildings

The architectural transformations of the seventh and early sixth centuries, often described as the change from huts to houses, generated a range of building types that some scholars have associated with particular types of religious activities. Some small buildings with one or two rooms have been interpreted as oikos shrines; some buildings with multiple adjacent rooms are thought to have been venues for ritual banquets; and some courtyard complexes have been cast as political sanctuaries or residences where the inhabitants observed familial cults. The archaeological evidence for religious activities associated with any of these building types, however, is not straightforward. The first part of this chapter examines whether it is possible to identify any preferred plan for structures that sheltered and complemented religious rituals during the seventh and early sixth centuries BC. The second part then contrasts this inquiry with the relatively straightforward identification of religious buildings during and after the sixth century BC permitted by the introduction of a distinctive, religious architectural marker, namely podia. As such this chapter explores the emergence of a formal architectural vocabulary for Etrusco-Italic religious buildings and identifies when and where cult buildings became architecturally differentiated from other structures within settlements. Although the architectural changes of the seventh and early sixth centuries BC in Latium and Etruria are not linear or uniform, it is clear that round, oval, and rectangular huts with wattle-and-daub walls and thatched coverings were gradually replaced by rectangular structures with stone foundations and tiled roofs. From the middle of the seventh century plans of the new buildings were regularized to the point where it is possible to identify three main types. The names of these types, however, vary both within and between different scholarly traditions, with the result that a rectangular, tile-roofed building thought to have a religious function can be variously labelled an oikos shrine, a proto-temple, or a temple, and a more elaborate building may be described as a Breithaus, a casa a vani affiancati, a courtyard building, a palazzo, a regia, or an elite residence.

Knossos: the Archaic gap

1999 ◽  
Vol 94 ◽  
pp. 289-307 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. N. Coldstream ◽  
G. L. Huxley
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Full Stop ◽  
Deep Recession

This article explores in detail the mysterious lacuna in the record of Knossos during the sixth century BC, between the abandonment of the collective tombs of the Early Iron Age and the revival of the city's fortunes in Classial times. The archaeological evidence, indicating a deep recession, is marshalled in three chronological sections: (i) the full stop in the seventh century, (ii) the Archaic gap, and (iii) recovery in the fifth century. Parallel developments at Amnisos are also discussed. In the light of any relevant clues from the written record, we evaluate the likelihood of various possible causes of the sixth-century recession at Knossos, whether natural or human.

The Lycurgean Reform at Sparta

1950 ◽  
Vol 70 ◽  
pp. 42-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. G. L. Hammond
Keyword(s):  
Ninth Century ◽  
Conclusive Evidence ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
New Evidence

Prior to 1918 the so-called Lycurgean reform at Sparta was dated not later than the ninth century B.C. AS Grote aptly said, ‘it would seem, in the absence of better evidence, that a date [about 830–820 B.C.] … is more probable than any epoch either later or earlier’. In 1918 Wilamowitz-Möllendorff published what he considered to be better evidence—a fragmentary poem which was ascribed by him to Tyrtaeus and which was believed to indicate that in the latter part of the seventh century B.C. the Spartan army was still brigaded by the three Dorian tribes, Hylleis, Pamphyloi, and Dymanes. In the light of this new evidence—new, that is, to us but not to the ancient authorities—he and other scholars have shifted the date of the reform by a couple of centuries or more into the late seventh or middle sixth century. The shift of date flouts all the other evidence of the ancient authorities (Tyrtaeus, Herodotus, Thucydides, Aristotle, Plutarch, etc.); in consequence these authorities are held to be mistaken, their manuscripts to be corrupt, their meanings to be other than they appear, or their views to be due to misconceptions which modern scholars can dispel. The result is that the ancient evidence has been severely tousled. The more logical the scholar is, the further he is impelled to discountenance all the other ancient evidence—once he has accepted Wilamowitz-Möllendorff's interpretation of the meaning of the new fragment. In this paper the view is advanced that the ancient authorities are in general sound both in manuscript and in meaning and that the new fragment does not yield the conclusive evidence for a late dating which has been supposed. It should also be noted that two of the supports on which the late dating once rested have been undermined by the re-dating of the archaeological evidence at Sparta and by the realisation that hoplite warfare commenced at Sparta c. 700 B.C. In Part I of the paper the ancient evidence is re-considered and in Part II the general conclusions are stated.

Secular Monograms, Social Status, and Authority in the Late Roman World and Early Byzantium

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ildar Garipzanov
Keyword(s):  
Social Status ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Imperial Authority ◽  
Christian Culture ◽  
Noble Identity ◽  
Late Roman

This chapter examines the use of monograms as graphic signs of imperial authority in the late Roman and early Byzantine empire, from its appropriation on imperial coinage in the mid-fifth century to its employment in other material media in the following centuries. It also overviews the use of monograms by imperial officials and aristocrats as visible signs of social power and noble identity on mass-produced objects, dress accessories, and luxury items. The concluding section discusses a new social function for late antique monograms as visible tokens of a new Christian paideia and of elevated social status, related to ennobling calligraphic skills. This transformation of monograms into an attribute of visual Christian culture became especially apparent in sixth-century Byzantium, with the cruciform monograms appearing in the second quarter of the sixth century and becoming a default monogrammatic form from the seventh century onwards.

scholarly journals New perspectives on Byzantine Spain: the Discriptio Hispaniae

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 278-308
Author(s):  
Oriol Olesti Vila ◽  
Ricard Andreu Expósito ◽  
Jamie Wood
Keyword(s):  
English Translation ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Southern Spain ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Main Theme ◽  
Territorial Division ◽  
Short Section

AbstractThe Discriptio Hispaniae is a passage from the Geometry of Gisemundus, also entitled Ars Gromatica Gisemundi (AGG), a medieval treatise of agrimensura written by an unknown author, probably a monk known as Gisemundus who had some agrimensorial experience. The work was compiled around AD 800 by collecting passages of a range of sizes, from just a few words to several pages, extracted from ancient and medieval sources. Although modern research into Roman agrimensorial texts has admitted the importance of the AGG, its corrupt condition has not invited sustained analysis. The passage now known as the Discriptio Hispaniae, a short section from chapter three of the second book of the AGG entitled III De segregatione provinciarum ab Augustalibus terminis, is particularly interesting for the information that it provides concerning the territorial division of Hispania in Late Antiquity. This article presents an edition and English translation of the Discriptio Hispaniae and argues that the most likely point of origin for the Discriptio Hispaniae is during the Byzantine occupation of parts of southern Spain during the second half of the sixth century and the first quarter of the seventh century. We suggest that the Discriptio Hispaniae was preserved because the Byzantine authorities were keen to keep on record information about the borders of the province of Carthaginensis, perhaps the main theme in the text.

King Wamba’s Campaign against dux Paulus (673)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastian Steinbach
Keyword(s):  
Seventh Century ◽  
Military Power ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Royal Power ◽  
Isidore Of Seville ◽  
History Of ◽  
Military Campaign

Following the death of Isidore of Seville (636), Julian of Toledo’s Historia Wambae regis is the only contemporary narrative source for the history of the late Visigothic kingdom. It mainly focuses on the rebellion of the dux Paulus within the province of the Narbonensis. Apart from that, it is the only detailed description of the election and unction of a Visigothic king, as well as that of an extensive military campaign during the seventh century. This chapter analyses the narration of military power and the implementation of warlike undertakings in this barbaric reign. It reveals the interconnection between the divine legitimation of royal power and military success in Julian’s Historia, and examines the archaeological evidence of the equipment and arming of Visigothic warriors, as well as reference to a Visigothic fleet.

Sailing to the Britannic Isles: Some Mediterranean Perspectives on the Remote Northwest from the Sixth Century bc to the Seventh Century AD

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Wilkes
Keyword(s):  
Second Century ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Detailed Account ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
British Isles ◽  
Alexander The Great ◽  
Astronomical Observations ◽  
The Baltic ◽  
A Minor

If you were training to be an athlete you would not spend all your time doing exercises: you would also have to learn when and how to relax, for relaxation is generally regarded as one of the most important elements in physical training. To my mind it is equally important for scholars. When you have been doing a lot of serious reading, it is a good idea to give your mind a rest and so build up energy for another bout of hard labour. For this purpose the best sort of book to read is not merely one that is witty and entertaining but also has something interesting to say. This advice from the satirist Lucian, sometime itinerant lecturer and at other times a minor government official, seems as valid today as it was in the second century AD. For students engaged in the history and archaeology of Europe in the first millennia BC and ad, I can currently think of no better respite from the structures, models and databases, that are the currencies of modern research, than Barry Cunliffie’s monograph on the explorer Pytheas published in 2001. Unencumbered with footnotes and with minimal bibliography, a text of barely 170 pages introduces one of the great mysteries of antiquity, the fantastic voyage of exploration by a citizen of Massalia, the Greek ancestor of modern Marseilles, to the British Isles and beyond to Iceland and the Arctic Circle and then in the direction of the Baltic (Cunliffe 2001). Nothing is known of Pytheas himself and the only reasonably certain fact we have concerning the voyage is that it was undertaken around the time of Alexander the Great (d. 323 BC). No less remarkable is that all we know of Pytheas’ own account of his travels is preserved in later writers, who at the least denigrated his achievement and often branded him a downright liar with considerable vehemence, while still exploiting his detailed account of the lands and seas he saw. Despite this the value of his astronomical observations was recognized by some of the greatest minds of antiquity and as a result his place in the development of the geographical sciences is assured.

Art, Nature, Power

2019 ◽  
pp. 339-354
Author(s):  
Steven D. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
Imperial Power

This final chapter demonstrates the importance of contextualizing epigrams into the sociohistorical circumstances of their era if we want to achieve a deeper comprehension of the transformations that various motifs undergo through space and time. The chapter analyses a cluster of epigrams on imperial gardens that date from the first to the seventh century CE, and shows how these poems reflect diverse views about imperial power, aesthetics, pagan culture, and Christianity. The chapter discusses first an epigram from the Neronian era, then moves forward to late antiquity to consider a sequence of garden epigrams from the age of the Emperor Justinian (sixth century CE). The chapter concludes with an explicitly Christian garden epigram from the reign of the Emperor Heraclius (seventh century CE).

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