Corinthian Matters

A Resource for the Study of the Corinthia, Greece

Category: Hellenistic

Photo of Sarah James, Corinth Excavations, 2005. Photo by David K. Pettegrew

A New Study of Hellenistic Fine Wares at Corinth

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Each of the 45 individual volumes that make up the Corinth Excavation Series published by the American School of Classical Studies at Athens marks a labor of love, sweat, and tears. There are specific studies that focus on an individual building, such as the Temple of Apollo, the Odeion, or a Roman villa, unearthed through over a century of excavation and study by archaeologists. There are more general studies of a particular phase of the site, such as Scranton’s study of Medieval architecture, or general areas of the ancient site such as the volumes on the North Cemetery. Then there are systematic studies of classes of objects like pottery, lamps, and statuary. The volumes are consistently large, heavy, and neat, containing copious detail and categorization that aim to establish archaeological knowledge about a building, district, or artifact group. The labor to produce a Corinth volume can last a lifetime, and even those scholars who write them quickly may wait years in the production process.

For these reasons, there is always cause for celebration when a new volume arrives. While in the Argolid this summer, I ran into Sarah James who seemed relieved that her years and years of study and restudy of Hellenistic fine wares at Corinth had at last made it through the publication pipeline of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens.  Titled Hellenistic Pottery: The Fine Wares, the work is 360 full pages of Corinthian ceramic goodness, with numerous illustrations, figures, and plates. I haven’t picked it up yet, but I imagine it’s as heavy as any of the others in the series. James’ work has been groundbreaking both for defining a new chronology for Hellenistic pottery in Corinth and understanding the Hellenistic period in the city more broadly, including the so-called interim period between the sack by the Romans and the foundation as a colony in 44 BC. It’s also important as a presentation of both new material (from the Panayia Field excavations) and older material recontextualized. You can get a sense of the revolutionary argument from pottery in this book description from the publisher’s website (you can find TOC here):

Using deposits recently excavated from the Panayia Field, this volume substantially revises the absolute chronology of Corinthian Hellenistic pottery as established by G. Roger Edwards in Corinth VII.3 (1975). This new research, based on quantitative analysis of over 50 deposits, demonstrates that the date range for most fine-ware shapes should be lowered by 50-100 years. Contrary to previous assumptions, it is now possible to argue that local ceramic production continued in Corinth during the interim period between the destruction of the city in 146 B.C. and when it was refounded as a Roman colony in 44 B.C. This volume includes detailed shape studies and a comprehensive catalogue.

Last month, the ASCSA website posted a short interview with Sarah about the history and significance of the project that is well worth a read.

You can purchase a copy for only $150 — the cost perhaps of a typical archaeological monograph — through the publisher website, or you can pay a little less via Amazon.

Federalism in Greek Antiquity (Beck and Funke, eds.)

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This new edited collection of essays on federalism and interstate interactions in Greek antiquity caught my eye when it was published late in the fall:

  • Beck, Hans, and Peter Funke, eds.. Federalism in Greek Antiquity. Cambridge University Press, 2015.

As the publisher page notes, this is the first comprehensive study of the subject since the publication of Larsen’s Greek Federal States: their institutions and history (1968) and the work casts a much broader net to capture the various ways that Greeks cooperated for common cause through leagues, federal states, and interstate relations. The comprehensive survey includes some 29 chapters by nearly as many authors and makes use of non-literary sources such as coins, inscriptions, and archaeological evidence. Here’s the book description:

Federalism“The world of ancient Greece witnessed some of the most sophisticated and varied experiments with federalism in the pre-modern era. In the volatile interstate environment of Greece, federalism was a creative response to the challenge of establishing regional unity, while at the same time preserving a degree of local autonomy. To reconcile the forces of integration and independence, Greek federal states introduced, for example, the notion of proportional representation, the stratification of legal practice, and a federal grammar of festivals and cults. Federalism in Greek Antiquity provides the first comprehensive reassessment of the topic. It comprises detailed contributions on all federal states in Aegean Greece and its periphery. With every chapter written by a leading expert in the field, the book also incorporates thematic sections that place the topic in a broader historical and social-scientific context.”

Corinth appears frequently in the work (see some of the relevant passages in Google Books ) given both the important role of the League of Corinth and the Achaian League in the Hellenistic era, as well as interactions between Corinth and its colonies and various federations in the archaic and classical periods. The table of contents is available here as PDF. The first ten pages of the editors’ introductory essay, which outlines why scholars have often ignored federations in favor of polis interactions, can be found here. Hans Beck provides an overview of the project at this page.

2015 Publications in Corinthian Studies: Prehistoric-Hellenistic Periods

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This is the first of a series of 5 bibliographic posts related in some way to Corinthian scholarship published or digitized in 2015. As with my series last year, I have used Zotero’s Report feature to export bibliography to PDF so that the listing includes URLs and abstracts. This list is certainly not exhaustive, and is surely incomplete, but it does provide a good collection of new scholarship broadly related to the Corinthia in the following periods.

  • Neolithic
  • Bronze Age
  • Geometric
  • Archaic
  • Classical
  • Hellenistic

Download the PDF by right clicking on this link:

If you see references missing from the list, please send to corinthianmatters@gmail.com

Photo by David Pettegrew, May 31,2014
Photo by David Pettegrew, May 31,2014

Bridge of the Untiring Sea (Gebhard and Gregory, eds.)

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I finally have my hands on Bridge of the Untiring Sea: the Corinthian Isthmus from Prehistory to Late Antiquity, fresh off the press (December 2015) from the Princeton office of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. I wrote briefly about this forthcoming book in June (here and here).

The Bridge has been a long time in the making. It began really with a half century of excavation and survey on the Isthmus (Broneer’s excavations began at Isthmia in 1952). A conference was held in Athens in 2007 celebrating that milestone, which proceeded quickly to chapters in 2008 before stalling out in a long period of revisions (my own chapter on Corinth’s suburbs went through at least eight drafts from conference paper to final proof). So this is a well-edited and thoroughly corrected collection, which means no reviewer should point out spelling mistakes and grammatical inconsistencies in my essay! As I haven’t seen hardly any of these essays since the original presentation in Athens, I’m excited to finally have a copy to read, especially since I’m wrapping up page proofs of another book on The Isthmus of Corinth.

UntiringBridge_m

The Bridge is a substantial book in paperback form, well-illustrated (160 figures) and carefully edited. It’s significantly smaller and about a third the weight of The Corinthia and the Northeast Peloponnese, another Corinthia conference published in 2014, which included 56 chapters and 558 pages on all aspects of the broad modern region of the Korinthia. While the editors’ introduction is short and efficient, the book just feels much more focused and coherent than The Corinthia and the Northeast Peloponnese with its sprawl of archaeological knowledge. The nearly 17 chapters and 400 pages of Bridge focus especially on the vicinity of the Sanctuary of Poseidon at Isthmia and, to some lesser extent, the broader region (technically the Isthmus, which has been generously extended in one chapter to the southeast Corinthia). Almost half of the essays (7 of 17) are devoted to the district of Isthmia in the geometric to Hellenstic periods (with chapters on subjects such as the Temple of Poseidon, the Rachi settlement, figurines, pottery, the Chigi Painter, and the West Foundation); another four chapters take on Roman subjects related to Isthmia (sculpture, agonstic festivals, Roman baths, East Field); there are a couple of Late Antique Isthmia essays (on lamps and the Isthmia fortress); and a few chapters consider the entire region (my piece on Roman settlement, Bill Caraher’s essay on the Justinianic Isthmus, and Tartaron’s piece on Bronze Age Kalamianos).

It’s worth noting that this is a collection of solid archaeological and (mostly) empirical essays on different facets of the history of the Isthmus, and especially the district of Isthmia. Some of the essays look like Hesperia articles with extensive catalogues and photos of artifacts. While the work’s scope provides “for the first time the longue durée of Isthmian history” (p. 1), covering the Mycenaean period to the end of antiquity, the editors do not attempt in the introduction (and there is no conclusion) to impose an overarching explanation or central thesis for the long-standing importance of the Isthmus through time. Rather, they offer a short discussion of its different values to ancient writers, an efficient overview of geography and topography of the broad Isthmus, a cursory history of research at Isthmia, and some discussion of recent research programs, publications, and approaches (which is only missing a substantial dicussion of recent efforts at digitization at Isthmia). What the introduction does establish is the long-lasting importance of the Isthmus in ancient thought and the important ties of the landscape to the city of Corinth — points that are discussed explicitly in many of the essays of the volume. But the essays largely stand on their own with little connection between.

In this respect, The Bridge of the Unitiring Sea should be most useful for Corinthian studies in its presentation of a series of state-of-the-field studies of different material classes (pottery, lamps, architecture, terracotta figurines) and sites, some of which are underpublished. Many of the scholars who have contributed essays to the volume have been engaged for years–decades, even–in archaeological research at Isthmia, the Isthmus, and Corinth and their material classes. The collection, for example, offers up-to-date assessments of the architectural development of the Temple of Poseidon, the history of settlement at Rachi, the West Foundation near Isthmia, the Roman bath, the mysterious “East Field” area near the Temple of Poseidon, and late antique lamps–most of which will form the subject of their own specialist publications in the future.

The work is valuable in a final respect in making available numerous up-to-date maps, plans, and illustrations: maps of the eastern Corinthia, the Isthmian district, the Sanctuary of Poseidon, and the Temple proper; maps of Bronze Age and Roman and Late Roman settlement in the Corinthia; state plans and restored views of the temple, sanctuary, and domestic architecture (at Rachi); reconstructed views of men at work; and dozens of photos of materials excavated at Isthmia.

As the Isthmus is central in so many ways to Corinthian history, this edited collection is a most welcome addition to the scholarship of the ancient Corinthia. And since the essays cover every period from prehistory to late antiquity (sadly, no medieval), and often consider the sanctuary’s relationship to Corinth specifically, this is a work relevant to anyone interested in ancient Corinth and Panhellenic sanctuaries.

On the Eutychia Mosaic Conservation

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EutychiaMosaicThe American School of Classical Studies at Athens posted this update yesterday about the conservation work surrounding the Eutychia Mosaic, which has been the focus of the Corinth excavation and conservation teams in recent years. The piece by Katherine M. Petrole discusses the excavation below the mosaic last summer, continued conservation, recent presentations about the work, and educational outreach programs designed to link the mosaic to culture and life in the Roman world. The article update also includes links to videos.

Here’s a taste:

In June 2015 Corinth Excavations hit something better than gold—bedrock! The soil underneath the Eutychia mosaic was removed to bedrock thanks to the careful work of Dr. Sarah James and Corinth Excavations workmen. Keep an eye out for her publication to learn about some of the fascinating finds and their potential implications for the South Stoa…Fun Fact: Did you know that Corinth Excavations now has an outreach program all about the Eutychia mosaic? It’s highlighted in a lesson plan about the cultural achievements of the Roman Empire. From a classroom in America, students can examine how this mosaic helps us learn about the Roman Empire, and their teacher can show current conservation work at Corinth Excavations. A variety of videos showing a behind-the-scenes look at the process of conservation will be available to teachers, and is linked below. With this case study of the Eutychia mosaic, we are looking at its connection to the Roman Empire and its connection to us today as an object of art:  a masterpiece laden with many meanings that affected the function of the space it decorated. It puts Corinth on the “Learning about the Roman Empire” map.

Read the full article here:

See related stories:

Hellenistic Sanctuaries between Greece and Rome (Melfi and Bobou)

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I’m slowly making my way through a backlog of new Corinthian scholarship this morning as the first east coast snowstorm of 2016 threatens to envelop central Pennsylvania (and I’m not sure whether my six year old or I am more excited about a foot of snow).

Discovered this little gem. A brand new collection of essays on Hellenistic sanctuaries due for publication in March with Oxford University Press.  According to the publisher website, the book

  • HellenisticSanctuariesExamines the complex relationship between ancient Hellenistic and Republican sanctuaries and cities, rulers, and worshippers through surviving archaeological material
  • Represents a significant contribution to the existing bibliography on ancient Greek religion, history, and archaeology
  • Provides new ways of thinking about politics, rituals, and sanctuary spaces in Greece
  • Features an international, interdisciplinary range of contributors

 

 

The abstract suggests wide-ranging essays on sanctuaries within various political, spatial, and social contexts.

Sanctuaries were at the heart of Greek religious, social, political, and cultural life; however, we have a limited understanding of how sanctuary spaces, politics, and rituals intersected in the Greek cities of the Hellenistic and Republican periods. This edited collection focuses on the archaeological material of this era and how it can elucidate the complex relationship between the various forces operating on, and changing the physical space of, sanctuaries. Material such as archaeological remains, sculptures, and inscriptions provides us with concrete evidence of how sanctuaries functioned as locations of memory in a social environment dominated by the written word, and gives us insight into political choices and decisions. It also reveals changes unrecorded in surviving local or political histories. Each case study explored by this volume’s contributors employs archaeology as the primary means of investigation: from art-historical approaches, to surveys and fieldwork, to re-evaluation of archival material. Hellenistic Sanctuaries represents a significant contribution to the existing bibliography on ancient Greek religion, history, and archaeology, and provides new ways of thinking about politics, rituals, and sanctuary spaces in Greece.

And Google Books, which recently won a major legal battle with the Author’s Guild over its practice of scanning books, has made available sections of the book online. The work includes a number of articles on sanctuaries in Greece and the Peloponnese. Of particular interest to Corinthiaphiles is Milena Melfi’s essay, “The Making of a Colonial Pantheon in the Colonies of Caesar in Greece: The Case of Corinth,” pp. 228–53. In it, she examines three preexisting sanctuaries in Corinth (Asklepios, Aphrodite on Acrocorinth, and Demeter & Kore on the lower slopes of Acrocorinth) that survived the transition to Roman colonization both because they met the community’s basic needs and they represented the colonists’ social backgrounds. Here is a taste:

“Recent archaeological and historical research has demonstrated how few sites conformed to the stereotypical notion that all colonies needed to have capitolia at their centres before the Imperial period. Therefore, rather than looking at what the Romans brought about in Corinth, I will make use of the archaeological and documentary evidence attesting continuity and possibily change in cult places and cultic activities (230) ….The cults practiced in Corinth at the time of the foundation of the Roman colony seem to have been all Greek cults. No elements of the public religion postulated on the basis of the charter of Urso can be detected in these early years. The Greek origin of most of the early colonists was certainly one of the factors contributing to the development of these specific cults over others (250).

 

The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Greek Religion (eds. Eidinow and Kindt)

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Oxford Handbook of Ancient Greek ReligionAnother exciting new Oxford handbook is scheduled for publication next month. The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Greek Religion, edited by Esther Eidinow and Julia Kindt, offers a broad overview of Greek religion from archaic to Hellenistic times, including numerous case studies and some 43 chapters on topics ranging from belief and practice to the deities, daimonic powers, the afterlife, sacrifice, and healing. Google Books has already scanned a sample that suggests plentiful Corinthiaka on topics such as the debate over sacred prostitution at Corinth, the city treasury at Delphi, particular cults, sanctuaries, and divine epiphanies.  But the book’s general content by itself will offer state-of-the-field syntheses of a host of subjects related to ancient religion.

The publisher page describes the book in this way:

This handbook offers a comprehensive overview of scholarship in ancient Greek religion, from the Archaic to the Hellenistic periods. It presents not only key information, but also explores the ways in which such information is gathered and the different approaches that have shaped the area. In doing so, the volume provides a crucial research and orientation tool for students of the ancient world, and also makes a vital contribution to the key debates surrounding the conceptualization of ancient Greek religion.

The handbook’s initial chapters lay out the key dimensions of ancient Greek religion, approaches to evidence, and the representations of myths. The following chapters discuss the continuities and differences between religious practices in different cultures, including Egypt, the Near East, the Black Sea, and Bactria and India. The range of contributions emphasizes the diversity of relationships between mortals and the supernatural – in all their manifestations, across, between, and beyond ancient Greek cultures – and draws attention to religious activities as dynamic, highlighting how they changed over time, place, and context.

And the table of contents suggests wide-ranging approaches:

List of Figures
Abbreviations and Conventions
List of Contributors

Introduction Esther Eidinow and Julia Kindt

Part 1: What is Ancient Greek Religion?
1. Unity vs. Diversity?, Robin Osborne
2. Belief vs. Practice?, Tom Harrison
3. Old vs. New?, Emily Kearns
4. Many vs. One?, Vinciane Pirenne Delforge and Gabriella Pironti

Part 2: Types of Evidence
5. Visual Evidence, Milette Gaifman
6. Literary Evidence: Prose, Hannah Willey
7. Literary Evidence: Poetry, Renaud Gagne
8. Epigraphic Evidence, Claire Taylor
9. Material Evidence, Caitlin E. Barrett
10. Papyrology, David Martinez

Part 3: Myths? Contexts and Representations
11. Epic, Richard Martin
12. Art and Imagery, Tanja Scheer
13. Drama, Claude Calame
14. History, Robert Fowler
15. Philosophy, Rick Benitez and Harold Tarrant

Part 4: Where?
16. Temples and Sanctuaries, Mike Scott
17. Households, Families, and Women, Matt Dillon
18. Religion in Communities, Kostas Vlassopoulos
19. Regional Religious Groups, Amphictionies, and Other Leagues, Christy Constantakopoulou

Part 5: How?
20. Religious Expertise, Mike Flower
21. New Gods, Ralph Anderson
22. Impiety, Hugh Bowden
23. ‘Sacred Law’, Andrej Petrovic

Part 6: Who?
24. Gods: Olympian or Chthonic, Susan Deacy
25. Gods: Origins, Carolina Lopez-Ruiz
26. Heroes: Living or Dead?, Gunnel Ekroth
27. Dead or Alive?, Emanuel Voutiras
28. Daimonic Power, Giulia Sfameni Gasparro
29. Deification: Gods or Men?, Ivana Petrovic

Part 7: What?
30. Prayer and Curse, Henk Versnel
31. Sacrifice, Fred Naiden
32. Oracles and Divination, Sarah Iles Johnston
33. Epiphany, Verity Platt
34. Healing, Fritz Graf

Part 8: When?
35. From Birth to Death: Life-changing Rituals, Sarah Hitch
36. Ritual Cycles: Calendars and Festivals, Jan-Matheiu Carbon
37. Imagining the After-Life, Radcliffe Edmonds III

Part 9: Beyond?
38. Magna Graecia (South Italy and Sicily), Gillian Shepherd
39. The Northern Black Sea: The Case of the Bosporan Kingdom, Maya Muratov
40. The Ancient Near East, Jan Bremmer
41. Greco-Egyptian Religion, Kathrin Kleibl
42. Bactria and India, Rachael Mairs
43. China and Greece: Comparisons and Insights, Lisa Raphals
Index

 

Corinthiaka

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Every month I sort through hundreds of google alerts, scholar alerts, academia notices, book review sites, and other social media in an attempt to find a few valuable bits to pass along via this site. I ignore the vast majority of hits that enter my inbox, store away those that I plan to develop into their own stories, and then release the ephemera (or those I fail to convert to stories) via these Corinthiaka posts. Here are a few from the last month–a small selection of the news, stories, and blogs about the Corinthia.

UnionpediaArchaeology and Classics:

New Testament:

Modern Greece:

 

American School of Classical Studies Concludes 2015 Season

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The American School of Classical Studies Excavations at Corinth announced on Friday the conclusion to their 2015 season which focused this season on continuing excavation in the Frankish quarters, conservation of the Good Luck mosaic, excavation in the area of South Stoa, 3D scans of the Fountain of Peirene, among others. Here’s the news release from Friday:

Our 2015 excavation season at Corinth has come to a successful end as the third session supervisors, Emilio Rodriguez-Alvarez, Phil Katz, and Anna Marie Sitz, wrap up their final reports over the next week. Evidence for the construction date of the Church in the Frankish area will be bolstered by the large numbers of coins retrieved. Elina Salminen excavated and studied burials from the area. Larkin Kennedy acted as the site supervisor and Rossana Valente assisted in the pottery sheds. Conservation and anastylosis also continue in the Frankish area. In the Agonotheteion of the South Stoa excavation reached bedrock in preparation for the resetting of the Eutychia mosaic. Conservation work in the South Stoa, generously funded by the Stockman Family Foundation, continues. Currently Colin Wallace is using photogrammetry to record the 37 mosaic panels. Also during the final session we received a visit from Scott Lee and Matthew Strahan of Cyark who scanned the fountain of Peirene in 3D. Thus, 102 years after Carl Blegan and Emerson Swift slid through the wet muddy tunnels with compass, measuring rod, and candles floating on boards, this old fountain was recorded by archaeologists in yet another fashion.

Related Stories:

2013-2014 Publications in Corinthian Studies: New Testament, Christianity, and Judaism

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This is the fourth and final post in a series of bibliographic releases of new Corinthian scholarship published or digitized in 2013-2014. See this post last last Monday for further information about the sources of this bibliography and instructions for accessing the Zotero database. For earlier releases, see these posts:

Today’s list presents scholarship published or digitized in 2013 and 2014 related in some way to the subjects of Christianity, Judaism, and early Christianity. This includes some scholarship on the Hellenistic and early Roman “backgrounds” of Christianity and Judaism but most of this material focus directly on questions of religion.

Screenshot (31)

I have divided these reports by year to keep them manageable. Download the PDFs by right clicking on these link:

I generated these reports through Zotero tags and searches, and there are undoubtedly missing entries as well as false positives. For best results, visit the Zotero library or download the RIS file into your bibliographic program.

If you see references missing from the list, please send to corinthianmatters@gmail.com