Review of G.A. Aristodemou & T.P. Tassios (eds), Great waterworks in Roman Greece. Aqueducts and monumental fountains. Function in context (Archaeopress Roman Archaeology, 35), Oxford: Archaeopress Publishing Ltd 2018. IV + 258. ISBN 978-1-78491-764-7.

2019 ◽  
pp. 393-396
Author(s):  
Patrik Klingborg
Keyword(s):  
Roman Archaeology ◽  
Roman Greece

Archaeology, Greco-Roman

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Economic ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Roman Archaeology ◽  
Historical Material ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
The Social ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Truth Claims ◽  
Insight Into

Greco-Roman archaeology is an indispensable source of scholarship for biblical scholars. Those who work in a largely textual discipline benefit from conversation with archaeologists to situate literary data within its historical material contexts. Greco-Roman archaeology can also provide insight into the economic, social, political, and religious lives of persons in the ancient world, including marginalized persons whose lives are often obscured by elite literary material. Lastly, Greco-Roman archaeology and biblical studies have intertwined histories and entanglements with colonialism, and comparative work helps to uncover those legacies, especially where they are still operative in the present. While biblical scholars might long for evidence that directly connects to specific individuals in the earliest Christ communities (and thus to the texts of the New Testament), archaeological evidence most often provides evidence for context and not positivist truth claims. Biblical scholars looking, for example, for a particular building where Paul might have slept or where the first Christ communities may have met will be disappointed by the archaeological evidence. Though this evidence is rich and diverse and specific, it does not tell us about the particular individuals biblical scholars so often seek. In other words, the questions biblical scholars ask of Greco-Roman archaeology are often unanswerable. A better use of Greco-Roman archaeology is to guide biblical scholars in asking better questions and learning about the social, economic, and material context from which texts and communities emerge.

Rural sites in Roman Greece

2014 ◽  
Vol 60 ◽  
pp. 117-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Stewart
Keyword(s):  
Field Survey ◽  
Rural Landscape ◽  
Greek Life ◽  
Landscape Studies ◽  
The Past ◽  
Roman Greece ◽  
Urban Core ◽  
Urban Rural ◽  
Rural Sites ◽  
Textual Research

[W]hile pretending to throw some light upon classical authors by careful observation of the manners of the present day, romantic travellers succeeded in fact in accommodating reality to their dreams … by creating for themselves and for their readers carefully edited portraits of modern Greece that transformed the present into the living image of the past (Saïd 2005: 291).Thirty years ago archaeological field survey promised to reshape radically our understanding of the countryside (Keller and Rupp 1983: 1–5). Traditional archaeological approaches to cities and monuments were increasingly seen to be extensions of textual research, and research on the rural landscape was envisaged as a way to access the other side of the traditional urban-rural dichotomy (though see the comments in Alcock 2007: 671–72). Some scholars estimated that, in the Classical period, the vast majority of Greek poleis had populations of less than 3,000 and territories no more than a few hours” walk from the urban core. Given that, they asked, does it make sense to divide elements of Greek life into “city” and “country”? In a sense, the study of landscapes was seen as a way to redress perceived imbalances between this urban-rural division and the picture painted by the ancient sources of Roman Greece as a pale reflection of its Classical brilliance. In the years since, landscape studies have grown to include much more than archaeological field survey, but this tension between textual and archaeological narratives remains at the heart of understandings of rural Roman Greece.

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