A captivating examination of the profound impact Thracian art and culture had on the Greeks and the entire northern Aegean region. The Thracians—a collection of tribal peoples who inhabited territories north of ancient Greece, an area that comprises present-day Bulgaria, much of Romania, and parts of Greece and Turkey—were renowned for their skill as warriors and horsemen, as well as for their wealth in precious metals. Thracians left few written records, and knowledge of their history and customs has long been dependent on brief accounts from ancient Greek authors. They appeared in Greek myth as formidable adversaries in the Trojan War, cruel kings, and followers of the ecstatic god Dionysos. Spectacular archaeological discoveries made in Thracian lands during modern times, however, have provided firsthand evidence of this remarkable culture, illuminating Thrace’s interactions with Greece, Persia, and Rome. Ancient Thrace and the Classical World reproduces more than two hundred glorious objects dating from the end of the Bronze Age, around 1200 BC, to the end of the first century AD, when Thrace became part of the Roman Empire. Experts explore topics such as Thracian royal tombs, the Greek colonization of the Black Sea coast, Thracian religion, and more, placing Thracian culture in a broader historical context that highlights its complex relationships with the surrounding region. This volume is published to accompany an exhibition on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Villa from November 6, 2024, to March 3, 2025.

In the quarter century since Wallerstein first developed world systems theory (WST), scholars in a variety of disciplines have adopted the approach to explain intersocietal interaction on a grand scale. These essays bring to light archaeological data and analysis to show that many historic and prehistoric states lacked the mechanisms to dominate the distant (and in some cases, nearby) societies with which they interacted. Core/periphery exploitation needs to be demonstrated, not simply assumed, as the interdisciplinary dialogue which occurs in this volume demonstrates. World-Systems Theory in Practice will appeal to individuals with an interest in the application of WST in both the Old World and the New World. The papers in this volume reflect the vitality of the debate concerning the use of such generalizing theories and will be of interest to archeologists, anthropologists, historians, sociologists, and those involved in the study of civilizations.

This book presents the structures and stratigraphy of the important Iron Age sequence at Tille Höyuek, a mound at a crossing of the Euphrates in eastern Turkey. The site, which was excavated between 1979 and 1990 by the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, revealed ten major structural levels of the Iron Age, spanning the period from the 11th century to the 6th-4th centuries BC, as well as earlier and later remains, and the wide exposure of architecture provides a sequence of intelligible and impressive building plans. After the initial discussion of the background and methodology of their excavation, the successive levels are carefully described and fully illustrated. The earliest Iron Age occupation, simple buildings among the ruins of the Late Bronze Age, was followed by a major settlement of the Middle Iron Age, when the Neo-Hittite kingdom of Kummuh was at its height. Most impressive architecturally are a large palatial building centred on a courtyard paved with a pebble mosaic, which was probably built after the Assyrian annexation of Kummuh in 708 BC and continued in use through the seventh, and the excellently preserved Level X with many distinctively Persian architectural features (built in the latter half of the 6th or the early 5th century and probably lasting for a substantial time). The structures and stratigraphy are also important as the context for the first rigorously established ceramic sequence in this part of Turkey, which will be presented, together with the other materials and artefacts, in the companion to this volume (already complete in draft). Lying on the fringes of the Mesopotamian world, and with contacts with North Syria, North Mesopotamia, and the Levant rather than with Anatolia or the Mediterranean, Tille casts vivid new light on the cultural and political history of the region in the Iron Age.

Originally published: Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

This is a survey of European prehistory addressing questions raised in the study of the Bronze Age.

Archaeology, Artifacts and Antiquities of the Ancient Near East follows the evolution of the author’s scholarly work and interests and is divided into several categories of interrelated fields. The first part deals primarily with excavations and associated artifacts, issues in ancient geography and the identification of ancient sites in northwest Iran, the author’s research involving the culture and chronology of the Phrygian capital at Gordion in Anatolia, and the chronology and Iranian cultural relations of a site in the Emirate of Sharjah. Part two is wide-ranging and includes chapters on Aegean and ancient Near Eastern cultural and political interconnections, the role of fibulae in revealing cultural and chronological matters, and the gender-determined usage of parasols and their recognition in excavated contexts. There are also articles specifically concerned with “Plunder Culture” and the forgery of both objects and their alleged proveniences. "At 1,088 pages, this volume provides a wonderful sample– chosen by Muscarella himself – of forty papers spanning the author’s career and many interests...This volume is so rich that it contains something for everyone." D.T. Potts, NYU, Bibliotheca Orientalis lxxIII n° 3-4, mei-augustus 2016

In this ambitious and venturesome book, Peter W. Rose applies the insights of Marxist theory to a number of central Greek literary and philosophical texts. He explores major points in the trajectory from Homer to Plato where the ideology of inherited excellence—beliefs about descent from gods or heroes—is elaborated and challenged. Rose offers subtle and penetrating new readings of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Pindar's Tenth Pythian Ode, Aeschylus's Oresteia, Sophokles' Philoktetes, and Plato's Republic. Rose rejects the view of art as a mere reflection of social and political reality—a view that is characteristic not only of most Marxist but of most historically oriented treatments of classical literature. He applies instead a Marxian hermeneutic derived from the work of the Frankfurt School and Fredric Jameson. His readings focus on illuminating a politics of form within the text, while responding to historically specific social, political, and economic realities. Each work, he asserts, both reflects contemporary conflicts over wealth, power, and gender roles and constitutes an attempt to transcend the status quo by projecting an ideal community. Following Marx, Rose maintains that critical engagement with the limitations of the utopian dreams of the past is the only means to the realization of freedom in the present. Classicists and their students, literary theorists, philosophers, comparatists, and Marxist critics will find Sons of the Gods, Children of Earth challenging reading.

The rediscovery of Babylon and Assyria in the 1840s transformed Western views on the origins of civilisation. The excavation of Nineveh proved that even the Greeks, Romans and Egyptians together did not constitute the ancient world. These peoples had nothing to do with the beginnings of civilisation on Earth. It was in Mesopotamia that humanity took the first steps on its path towards the society we know today. The Sumerians inaugurated civilisation itself, but it was the Babylonians and then the Assyrians who fulfilled its potential. Their early experiments in state formation remain fascinating to us today: just like our governments, for a thousand years Babylon and Assyria grappled with the challenges of organising central power, administering distant territories, and engineering social harmony in empires and their cities. These achievements form one of the momentous episodes in human history; the Mesopotamian invention of writing revolutionised our minds and increased our intellectual possibilities a hundredfold. The First Great Powers is a revelation: of kingship, warfare, society and religion. Here at last we can discover what it meant to be an ancient Mesopotamian living in such an extraordinary world.

Syria has been a major crossroads of civilizations in the ancient Near East since the dawn of human kind. This volume brings together scholars involved in archaeological activities in Syria and focusses on the scientific aspects of each explored site, allowing researchers to examine in detail each heritage site, its characteristics and identity.