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“A masterly summary.”—The Times Literary Supplement The spread of Greek civilization through Europe and into Africa and the Near East began long before the full flowering of Classical Greek culture. The Greeks Overseas vividly demonstrates the value of archaeology in reconstructing one of the most important formative periods of European history. Out of the Dark Ages of reduced population and comparative penury, the Greeks set their sails north, south, east, and west to plant trading posts and colonies, to reap whatever harvest of materials and expertise the barbarians could offer, and to disseminate the benefits of their own rapidly developing and brilliant civilization. Reviewing the first edition in 1965, The Times Literary Supplement described it as "a masterly summary of a subject that is constantly in need of reappraisal." This fourth edition adds a chapter summarizing new finds and exploring the new attitudes that have affected the study of the subject in the past forty years. The spread of Greek civilization through Europe and into Africa and the Near East began long before the classical period, long after Troy, Mycenae, and Knossos had fallen. This study gives an archaeologist’s view of one of the most important periods of European history, describing how, out of a time of reduced population and comparative penury, the Greeks set their sails north, south, east, and west to plant trading posts and colonies, to reap whatever harvest of materials and expertise the barbarian could offer, and to disseminate the benefits of their own rapidly developing and brilliant civilization. The book vividly demonstrates the value of archaeology to the historical record and indicates how much the arts and culture of classical Greece already owed to foreign influences.
"The spread of Greek civilization through Europe, into Africa and the Near East began long before the Classical period, long after Troy, Mycenae and Knossos had fallen. This classic study gives the archaeologist's view of one of the most important periods of European history, describing how, out of the Dark Ages of reduced population and comparative penury, the Greeks set their sails north, south, east and west to plant trading posts and colonies, to reap whatever harvest of materials and expertise the barbarian could offer, and to disseminate the benefits of their own rapidly developing and brilliant civilization. The canvas is broad - Greek mercenaries leaving graffiti on the statues of Abu Simbel in southern Egypt; Greek traders braving the Atlantic breakers or introducing wine to Burgundy. The Greeks Overseas vividly demonstrates the value of archaeology to the historical record, and indicates how much the arts and culture of Classical Greece already owed to foreign influences."--Jacket.
The 2-volume handbook is dedicated to one of the most significant processes in the history of ancient Greece - colonisation. Greeks set up colonies and other settlements in new environments, establishing themselves in lands stretching from the Iberian Peninsula in the west to North Africa in the south and the Black Sea in the north east. In this colonial world Greek and local structures met, influenced and enriched each other. The handbook brings together historians and archaeologists, all world experts, to present the latest ideas and evidence. The principal aim is to present and update the general picture of this phenomenon, showing its importance in the history of the whole ancient world, including the Near East. The work is dedicated to Prof. A.J. Graham. This first volume gives a lengthy introduction to the problem, including methodological and theoretical issues. The chapters cover Mycenaean expansion, Phoenician and Phocaean colonisation, Greeks in the western Mediterranean, Syria, Egypt and southern Anatolia, etc. The volume is richly illustrated.
Greek civilization and identity crystallized not when Greeks were close together but when they came to be far apart. It emerged during the Archaic period when Greeks founded coastal city states and trading stations in ever-widening horizons from the Ukraine to Spain. No center directed their diffusion: mother cities were numerous and the new settlements ("colonies") would often engender more settlements. The "Greek center" was at sea; it was formed through back-ripple effects of cultural convergence, following the physical divergence of independent settlements. "The shores of Greece are like hems stitched onto the lands of Barbarian peoples" (Cicero). Overall, and regardless of distance, settlement practices became Greek in the making and Greek communities far more resembled each other than any of their particular neighbors like the Etruscans, Iberians, Scythians, or Libyans. The contrast between "center and periphery" hardly mattered (all was peri-, "around"), nor was a bi-polar contrast with Barbarians of much significance. Should we admire the Greeks for having created their civilization in spite of the enormous distances and discontinuous territories separating their independent communities? Or did the salient aspects of their civilization form and crystallize because of its architecture as a de-centralized network? This book claims that the answer lies in network attributes shaping a "Small Greek World," where separation is measured by degrees of contact rather than by physical dimensions.
Greek ethnography is commonly believed to have developed in conjunction with the wider sense of Greek identity that emerged during the Greeks' "encounter with the barbarian"--Achaemenid Persia--during the late sixth to early fifth centuries BC. The dramatic nature of this meeting, it was thought, caused previous imaginings to crystallise into the diametric opposition between "Hellene" and "barbarian" that would ultimately give rise to ethnographic prose. The Invention of Greek Ethnography challenges the legitimacy of this conventional narrative. Drawing on recent advances in ethnographic and cultural studies and in the material culture-based analyses of the Ancient Mediterranean, Joseph Skinner argues that ethnographic discourse was already ubiquitous throughout the archaic Greek world, not only in the form of texts but also in a wide range of iconographic and archaeological materials. As such, it can be differentiated both on the margins of the Greek world, like in Olbia and Calabria and in its imagined centers, such as Delphi and Olympia. The reconstruction of this "ethnography before ethnography" demonstrates that discourses of identity and difference played a vital role in defining what it meant to be Greek in the first place long before the fifth century BC. The development of ethnographic writing and historiography are shown to be rooted in this wider process of "positioning" that was continually unfurling across time, as groups and individuals scattered the length and breadth of the Mediterranean world sought to locate themselves in relation to the narratives of the past. This shift in perspective provided by The Invention of Greek Ethnography has significant implications for current understanding of the means by which a sense of Greek identity came into being, the manner in which early discourses of identity and difference should be conceptualized, and the way in which so-called "Great Historiography," or narrative history, should ultimately be interpreted.
When in 1821, the Greeks rose in violent revolution against the rule of the Ottoman Turks, waves of sympathy spread across Western Europe and the United States. More than a thousand volunteers set out to fight for the cause. The Philhellenes, whether they set out to recreate the Athens of Pericles, start a new crusade, or make money out of a war, all felt that Greece had unique claim on the sympathy of the world. As Byron wrote, 'I dreamed that Greece might Still be Free'; and he died at Missolonghi trying to translate that dream into reality. William St Clair's meticulously researched and highly readable account of their aspirations and experiences was hailed as definitive when it was first published. Long out of print, it remains the standard account of the Philhellenic movement and essential reading for any students of the Greek War of Independence, Byron, and European Romanticism. Its relevance to more modern ethnic and religious conflicts is becoming increasingly appreciated by scholars worldwide. This new and revised edition includes a new Introduction by Roderick Beaton, an updated Bibliography and many new illustrations.
This analysis of the relationship between collective identities and politics in ancient Greece focuses on four key types of identity - polis identity, ethnicity (e.g., Dorian or Achaean), regional, and Greek - and places these multiple and flexible self-perceptions at the center of a new account of politics in the Greek West.