Can We See the “Hoplite Revolution” on the Ground? Archaeological Landscapes, Material Culture, and Social Status in Early Greece

Men of Bronze ◽  
2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lin Foxhall
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Site Survey ◽  
Archaic Greece ◽  
History Of ◽  
Small Scale Farmers ◽  
A Site

This chapter considers what a site survey might reveal about the appearance of a new class of small farmers in archaic Greece. It gives a brief history of the discipline and explains the strengths and limitations of using its findings for historical analysis. This study of eight survey projects across Greece, including Boeotia, the Argolid, Laconia, and Pylos, focuses on data for the Geometric through the Hellenistic periods. The chapter suggests that the archaeology tells us a different story than the historical record of citizens, soldiers, and property owners. The survey data show the rise of a densely populated countryside of small-scale farmers neither in the eighth century nor, universally, in the sixth century.

The Purple Traders, 1000 BC–700 BC

The Great Sea ◽  
2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Abulafia
Keyword(s):  
Eighth Century ◽  
Southern Spain ◽  
Writing System ◽  
Old Order ◽  
Western Asia ◽  
Imperial Expansion ◽  
Archaic Greece ◽  
History Of ◽  
P Recovery ◽  
First Time

Recovery from the disasters of the twelfth century was slow. It is unclear how deep the recession in the Aegean lands was, but much was lost: the art of writing disappeared, except among the Greek refugees in Cyprus; the distinctive swirling styles of Minoan and Mycenaean pottery vanished, except, again, in Cyprus; trade withered; the palaces decayed. The Dark Age was not simply an Aegean phenomenon. There are signs of disorder as far west as the Lipari islands, for in Sicily the old order came to an end in the thirteenth century amid a wave of destruction, and the inhabitants of Lipari were able to preserve some measure of prosperity only by building strong defences. The power of the Pharaohs weakened; what saved the land of the Nile from further destruction was the falling away of raids from outside, as the raiders settled in new lands, rather than any internal strength. By the eighth century new networks of trade emerged, bringing the culture of the East to lands as far west as Etruria and southern Spain. What is astonishing about these new networks is that they were created not by a grand process of imperial expansion (as was happening in western Asia, under the formidable leadership of the Assyrians), but by communities of merchants: Greeks heading towards Sicily and Italy, consciously or unconsciously following in the wake of their Mycenaean predecessors; Etruscan pirates and traders, emerging from a land where cities were only now appearing for the first time; and, most precociously, the Canaanite merchants of Lebanon, known to the Greeks as Phoinikes, ‘Phoenicians’, and resented by Homer for their love of business and profit. So begins the long history of contempt for those engaged in ‘trade’. They took their name from the purple dye extracted from the murex shellfish, which was the most prized product of the Canaanite shores. Yet the Greeks also recognized the Phoenicians as the source of the alphabet which became the basis of their new writing system; and Phoenicia was the source of artistic models which transformed the art of archaic Greece and Italy in an age of great creative ferment.

POLITICS, RESEARCH AGENDAS AND ABORTIVE FIELDWORK PLANS OVER LYKTOS, CRETE: A HISTORY OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH

2019 ◽  
Vol 114 ◽  
pp. 399-443
Author(s):  
Antonis Kotsonas
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Academic Factors ◽  
History Of Research ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
Ancient City ◽  
History Of ◽  
Research Agendas ◽  
The Impact

Politics and research agendas have had a major role in shaping the archaeology of Crete. This article focuses on the history of research on Lyktos, one of the most important ancient cities of the island, to explore the impact of academic and non-academic factors on archaeological fieldwork. Relying on wide-ranging archival research and extending from the Renaissance to the early twenty-first century, the analysis covers the fluctuation of international scholarly interest in Lyktos, the often abortive plans for excavations by numerous British, Italian, German and Greek archaeologists, and the ways in which fascination with the ancient city relates to broader political and disciplinary history. I also synthesise the small-scale fieldwork conducted at the site and reconstruct its archaeological landscape from the Bronze Age to the Medieval period, offering several new insights in local topography and material culture. This work challenges the characterisation of Lyktos as a ‘phantom city’ and highlights the significance of the site for the archaeology of Crete.

The new Basrah Museum: dedicated to the archaeological and historical inheritance of Basrah and Iraq

Antiquity ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 93 (369) ◽  
pp. 811-813
Author(s):  
Adil Hashim Ali
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Gulf Coast ◽  
Arabian Gulf ◽  
Fertile Crescent ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Rich ◽  
A Site ◽  
Different Cultures ◽  
The City

Located in the Fertile Crescent and at the head of the Persian/Arabian Gulf, the city of Basra is steeped in history. Close to the heart of ancient Mesopotamia, the territory of modern Iraq was occupied variously by Achaemenids and Seleucids, Parthians, Romans and Sassanids, before the arrival of Islam in the early middle ages. In more recent history, the city's strategic position near the Gulf coast has made Basra a site of contestation and conflict. This exposure to so many different cultures and civilisations has contributed to the rich identity of Basra, a wealth of history that demands a cultural museum able to present all of the historical periods together in one place. The original Basra Museum was looted and destroyed in 1991, during the first Gulf War. The destruction and loss of so much of Iraq's history and material culture prompted official collaboration to build a new museum that would represent the city of Basrah and showcase its significance in the history of Iraq. The culmination of an eight-year collaborative project between the Iraq Ministry of Culture, the State Board of Antiquities and the Friends of Basrah Museum, the new museum was opened initially in September 2016. Already established as a cultural landmark in the city, with up to 200 visitors a day and rising, the museum was officially opened on 20 March 2019. The author was fortunate to be present for this event and able to explore the new galleries (Figure 1).

scholarly journals Gayo Highland Takengon from 1904 To 1942: A Historical Analysis of Coffee Plantations at the Era of Dutch Colonialism

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-82
Author(s):  
Sufandi Iswanto ◽  
Zulfan Zulfan ◽  
Nina Suryana
Keyword(s):  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Coffee Plantation ◽  
Coffee Plantations ◽  
Historical Method ◽  
Geographical Factors ◽  
History Of ◽  
Background History ◽  
Labor System ◽  
Dutch Colonialism

This article analyzes the history of Coffee Plantations in Gayo Highland Takengon at the time of the Dutch Colonialism era from 1904 to 1942. This historical research aimed to reveal the social and economic background, history, and the labors' condition of Gayo Highland Takengon Coffee Plantations. The historical method, which consisted of five analytical stages, was used as the method to reconstruct the history of the coffee plantations in Gayo. The findings of the research show that the geographical factors supported Gayo Highland Takengon as the area of the coffee plantation. Coffee was firstly developed at Gayo Highland by Veenhuyzen in 1908. From 1908 to 1918, coffee was a non-commercial commodity and produced on a small scale. In 1918, after the establishment of Wilhelmina Blang Gele Coffee Plantation and other plantations managed by both private and state companies, coffee increasingly became a commercial commodity. Private and state-owned companies started to employ Javanese laborers or popularly known as Jawa Kontrak and Jawa Kolonisasi. The laborers were brought in gradually from Java and bounded by the Labor System based on the Staatsblad 1911 and Staatsblad 1915. Based on these findings, it can be concluded that the geographical factors and the spirit of capitalism had driven the Dutch private and state companies to develop coffee plantations in Gayo Highland by employing the Javanese contract laborers.Tulisan ini merupakan kajian tentang analisis historis perkebunan kopi di Dataran Tinggi Gayo Takengon pada era kolonial Belanda (1904-1942). Tujuannya tidak lain untuk mengetahui faktor dibukanya perkebunan, sejarah perkebunan pertama dan buruh yang berkerja pada perkebunan kopi. Metode penelitian yang digunakan adalah metode sejarah dengan menggunakan lima tahapan. Adapun hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa secara geografis Dataran Tinggi Gayo cocok dijadikan sebagai kawasan perkebunan kopi, hal tersebut telah mendorong adanya penerapan kapitalisme Barat. Tanaman kopi untuk pertama kalinya dikembangkan di Dataran Tinggi Gayo pada tahun 1908, pelopor pertamamnya seorang Belanda bernama Veenhuyzen. Tanaman kopi tersebut awalnya hanya sebagai tanaman non komersial dengan jumlah terbatas, namun sejak tahun 1918 dengan dibukanya perkebunan kopi Wilhelmina Blang Gele, tanaman kopi menjadi tanaman komersial baik yang dikelola oleh Belanda maupun swasta. Buruh yang diperkerjakan pada perkebunan baik Belanda maupun swasta merupakan buruh kontak orang-orang Jawa yang disebut sebagai Jawa Kontrak dan Jawa Kolonisasi. Para buruh tersebut didatangkan dari Pulau Jawa secara bergelombang dan terikat dengan sistem kontak yang mengacu pada staatsblad tahun 1911 dan staatsblad tahun 1915. 

‘The Heart of the Country’: The Primacy of Peasants and Maize in Modern Guatemala

2018 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 273-306
Author(s):  
David Carey
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Latin America ◽  
National Development ◽  
Agricultural Practices ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Domestic Markets ◽  
History Of ◽  
Domestic Use ◽  
Forced Labour ◽  
Small Scale Farmers

AbstractMuch of the agricultural history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Latin America has been dominated by studies of export products and economies. Yet just as important for national development were domestic markets supplied by small-scale farmers. Using Guatemala as a case study for Latin America, this article examines the challenges faced by farmers producing for local, regional and national markets. Over the course of the national period, state authorities’ sporadic concern for domestic agriculture provided indigenous small-scale farmers with opportunities to advance their agendas, which ranged from resisting forced labour to maintaining their traditional agricultural practices. By the 1930s, domestic foodstuff production had increased markedly because in the early twentieth century state authorities had joined small-scale farmers to actively promote domestic-use agriculture.

Rethinking TV History

1997 ◽  
Vol 74 (3) ◽  
pp. 501-514 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas Gomery
Keyword(s):  
Local Level ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Country Music ◽  
Early History ◽  
History Of ◽  
National Networks ◽  
A Site ◽  
Social Demographic ◽  
Demographic Policy

The writing of the early history of U.S. television has long concentrated on the rise of dominating national networks. Based on principles of social, demographic, policy, and urban history, I propose we rethink historical analysis, and begin at the local level. To illustrate the power of this approach, I offer a case study of the place of Washington, D.C., as a site for network news. In the mid-1950s, it was also an important example of live locally produced country music. As a community, Washington presents an important site where forces such as migration and suburbanization shaped the early history of television.

scholarly journals The Parasites

2014 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-272 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olof Hallonsten
Keyword(s):  
Synchrotron Radiation ◽  
High Energy Physics ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
The United States ◽  
High Energy ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Big Science ◽  
Local Actors ◽  
History Of

The synchrotron radiation activities at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (formerly Stanford Linear Accelerator Center) started out in 1972 as a small-scale Stanford University project. The project gradually grew to become one of the first national centers for synchrotron radiation in the United States and, eventually, an independent laboratory in charge of its own accelerator machine and organizationally a part of SLAC. This article tells the story of the first two decades of these activities, when the synchrotron radiation activities operated parasitically on the SLAC site, entirely peripheral to SLAC’s main scientific mission in high energy physics. The article’s meticulously detailed account of the history of the parasitic period of synchrotron radiation at SLAC constitutes an important and interesting piece of modern science history, complementing previous efforts in this journal and elsewhere to chronicle the history of the U.S. national laboratories and similar homes of Big Science abroad. Most importantly, the article communicates an alternative interpretative perspective on the institutional change of Big Science labs, consciously and consistently keeping its analysis at a micro level and emphasizing the incremental small-step changes of local actors in their everyday negotiations and deliberations. Not at all disqualifying or seeking to replace historical accounts framed with reference to macro developments of grand long-term change in science and science policy at the end of the previous century, but rather seeking to complement them, this article contributes with a worm’s-eye view on change and advances the argument for a further exploration of such viewpoints in the historical analysis of institutional transformation in science.

Material Culture and Historical Analysis

2019 ◽  
pp. 58-75
Author(s):  
Laura Salah Nasrallah
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Vital Importance ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Scholarship

This chapter outlines and argues for the vital importance of material culture in our historiographies of early Christianity in four parts. The chapter begins by defining material culture and then shows that material culture has long been included in the history of scholarship of the New Testament. Next, it surveys some of the key trends in the use of material culture for the study of women, gender, and sexuality in antiquity, and, finally, it suggests ways in which feminist materialist philosophy and history leads us to think more expansively about what is meant by material culture, focusing on the “matter” within it and harnessing theories of materiality to deepen our historical analysis of the context for the first production and reception of New Testament and other early Christian texts.

Hindus Beyond the Hindu Kush: Indians in the Central Asian Slave Trade

2002 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 277-288 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott C. Levi
Keyword(s):  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Social Institution ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
North India ◽  
Cultural Relations ◽  
Early Modern History ◽  
Mughal Empire ◽  
Central Asian ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Buddha

AbstractHistorical analyses of slavery in India generally emphasize the escalation of this social institution during the era of Muslim domination in north India. The present study is not an exception to this rule. However, while historical records make it clear that the Delhi Sultans and Mughal emperors retained slavery in order to suit their political and economic needs, it should be emphasized that Muslim rulers did not introduce slavery to the subcontinent. Sources such as the Arthaśāstra, the Manu-smrti and the Mahābhārata demonstrate that institutionalized slavery was well established in India by the beginning of the common era. Earlier sources suggest that it was likely to have been equally widespread by the lifetime of the Buddha (sixth century BC), and perhaps even as far back as the Vedic period. Furthermore, just as slavery was common in India long before the eighth-century Islamic conquests in Sind, recent work demonstrates that the institution continued, in various manifestations, well after the decentralization of the Mughal Empire in the early eighteenth century. Still, it is argued here that the expansion of slavery in Muslim India is an important component of the medieval and early modern history of the region and, at least in terms of its role in the commercial and cultural relations of India and Central Asia, it is a subject that would benefit from further historical analysis.

Ur: Empire, Modernity, and the Visualization of Antiquity Between the Two World Wars

2019 ◽  
Vol 145 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-151 ◽  
Author(s):  
Billie Melman
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Aerial Photography ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Black And White ◽  
History Of ◽  
Place Of Origin ◽  
Rich Material ◽  
A Site ◽  
Southern Iraq

This article explores the multiple visual presences of antiquity in the first half of the twentieth century and connects visual histories to the history of empires. It shows how archaeology mediated between the newly discovered material civilizations of the ancient Mesopotamian empires and experiences of modernity in the British Empire, the world’s largest modern empire. The article demonstrates how the materiality of antiquity enabled its visualization in a variety of forms, from illustrations through black-and-white and color photography to aerial photography, and in three-dimensional reconstructions in museums. The article focuses on the spectacular archaeological discoveries at Ur, Tell Al-Muqayyar, in Southern Iraq, which exposed to mass audiences the unknown Sumerian culture. Ur was represented and constructed as the place of origin of monotheism, a site of a rich material culture, and, at the same time, as barbarous.

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