Kathryn Lomas, “The Rise of Rome. From the Iron Age to the Punic Wars (1000-264 BC)”, (=The Profile History of the Ancient World 3), London, Profile Books, 2017, 405 pp. [ISBN: 978-18-466-8411-1].

This account of viticulture in Italy during the period from the Punic Wars to the crisis of the third century A.D. is written in the conviction that the ‘economic’ history of the ancient world will remain unacceptably impoverished if it is written in isolation from the social and cultural history of the same period. The orthodoxy which sees a revolution in Italian agriculture in the age of Cato the Censor and a crisis in the time of the emperor Trajan seems to me to be an example of this. It is based on a traditional and limited selection of evidence, and is unable to answer many of the questions which are increasingly being asked about production and exchange in the ancient world, questions about the social background and cultural preferences which underlie production strategies and the evolution of demand. I hope that this study may show some other possibilities, which have still been only partly explored by researchers, of illuminating the changing patterns of Roman agriculture and trade, through the use of comparative evidence and the re-examination of the relevant literary texts for data that are more than simply ‘economic’ in the most restricted sense.

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The Origins of Money in the Iron Age Mediterranean World

10.1017/9781108975322 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Elon D. Heymans

Keyword(s):

Iron Age ◽

Precious Metal ◽

Eastern Mediterranean ◽

Early History ◽

Ancient World ◽

Critical Weight ◽

Wide Range ◽

Mediterranean World ◽

History Of

Color versions of select print images available on the Resources tab (or here: www.cambridge.org/heymans). This book shows how money emerged and spread in the eastern Mediterranean, centuries before the invention of coinage. While the invention of coinage in Ancient Lydia around 630 BCE is widely regarded as one of the defining innovations of the ancient world, money itself was never invented. It gained critical weight in the Iron Age (ca. 1200 – 600 BCE) as a social and economic tool, most dominantly in the form of precious metal bullion. This book is the first study to comprehensively engage with the early history of money in the Iron Age Mediterranean, tracing its development in the Levant and the Aegean. Building on a detailed study of precious metal hoards, Elon D. Heymans deploys a wide range of sources, both textual and material, to rethink money's role and origins in the history of the eastern Mediterranean.

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The History of the Judahite Bench Tomb

10.1093/oso/9780190844738.003.0003 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Matthew Suriano

Keyword(s):

Iron Age ◽

Hebrew Bible ◽

Cultural Practices ◽

Seventh Century ◽

Mortuary Practices ◽

Iron Age Ii ◽

Gradual Development ◽

History Of ◽

The Dead ◽

Insight Into

The history of the Judahite bench tomb provides important insight into the meaning of mortuary practices, and by extension, death in the Hebrew Bible. The bench tomb appeared in Judah during Iron Age II. Although it included certain burial features that appear earlier in the Middle and Late Bronze Ages, such as burial benches, and the use of caves for extramural burials, the Judahite bench tomb uniquely incorporated these features into a specific plan that emulated domestic structures and facilitated multigenerational burials. During the seventh century, and continuing into the sixth, the bench tombs become popular in Jerusalem. The history of this type of burial shows a gradual development of cultural practices that were meant to control death and contain the dead. It is possible to observe within these cultural practices the tomb as a means of constructing identity for both the dead and the living.

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Religious Architecture in Latium and Etruria, c. 900-500 BC

10.1093/oso/9780198722076.001.0001 ◽

2015 ◽

Cited By ~ 22

Author(s):

Charlotte R. Potts

Keyword(s):

Iron Age ◽

Central Italy ◽

Archaic Period ◽

Comprehensive Treatment ◽

Archaeological Evidence ◽

Detailed History ◽

Religious Buildings ◽

Religious Architecture ◽

The People ◽

History Of

Religious Architecture in Latium and Etruria, c. 900-500 BC presents the first comprehensive treatment of cult buildings in western central Italy from the Iron Age to the Archaic Period. By analysing the archaeological evidence for the form of early religious buildings and their role in ancient communities, it reconstructs a detailed history of early Latial and Etruscan religious architecture that brings together the buildings and the people who used them. The first part of the study examines the processes by which religious buildings changed from huts and shrines to monumental temples, and explores apparent differences between these processes in Latium and Etruria. The second part analyses the broader architectural, religious, and topographical contexts of the first Etrusco-Italic temples alongside possible rationales for their introduction. The result is a new and extensive account of when, where, and why monumental cult buildings became features of early central Italic society.

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Conditions of Visibility

10.1093/oso/9780198845560.001.0001 ◽

2019 ◽

Keyword(s):

Art History ◽

Visual Art ◽

Fundamental Question ◽

Ancient World ◽

Work Of Art ◽

History Of Art ◽

Shared Objects ◽

History Of ◽

Modern Prejudice ◽

Historical Past

We often assume that works of visual art are meant to be seen. Yet that assumption may be a modern prejudice. The ancient world - from China to Greece, Rome to Mexico - provides many examples of statues, paintings, and other images that were not intended to be visible. Instead of being displayed, they were hidden, buried, or otherwise obscured. In this third volume in the Visual Conversations in Art & Archaeology series, leading scholars working at the intersection of archaeology and the history of art address the fundamental question of art's visibility. What conditions must be met, what has to be in place, for a work of art to be seen at all? The answer is both historical and methodological; it concerns ancient societies and modern disciplines, and encompasses material circumstances, perceptual capacities, technologies of visualization, protocols of classification, and a great deal more. The emerging field of archaeological art history is uniquely suited to address such questions. Intrinsically comparative, this approach cuts across traditional ethnic, religious, and chronological categories to confront the academic present with the historical past. The goal is to produce a new art history that is at once cosmopolitan in method and global in scope, and in doing so establish new ways of seeing - new conditions of visibility - for shared objects of study.

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Cyprus

The Oxford Handbook of the Phoenician and Punic Mediterranean ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190499341.013.31 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 479-491

Author(s):

Sabine Fourrier

Keyword(s):

Cultural History ◽

Iron Age ◽

Fourth Century ◽

The Political ◽

History Of

This chapter concentrates on the Phoenician presence in the island of Cyprus in the Iron Age (from the eleventh until the end of the fourth century bce). After a brief overview, it addresses the question of identification of the Cypriot Qarthadasht and the issue of a supposed Phoenician colonization in Cyprus. The political and cultural history of the Cypro-Phoenician kingdom of Kition also receives particular attention. At the same time, the widespread and multifaceted aspects of Phoenician presences on the island are underlined: Phoenician presence was not confined to Kition and Phoenician influence did not exclusively spread in the island from Kition.

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