The American School of Classical Studies’ website has a nice piece on Angela Ziskowski’s recently defended dissertation The Construction of Corinthian Identity in the Early Iron Age and Archaic Period. As Angela describes her work there:
My work on this topic focused on whether or not archaeological remains and literary testimonia from the city and region of Corinth could provide evidence for the construction of civic and cultural identity. My study considered the topography and resources of the region, production practices, ceramic and epigraphic remains, iconography, as well as cultic institutions to allow the question of identity construction to be considered from many angles. Through this synthetic approach, I tried to offer a fuller, more comprehensive understanding of how the early city of Corinth created its own civic identity and successfully differentiated itself from neighboring regions.
Angela joins a number of recently completed PhD dissertations in different fields (Classics, Classical Archaeology, and History) that have brought together archaeological, textual, epigraphical, and environmental evidence to speak to broad cultural issues.
The ASCSA website lists five other dissertations on Corinth completed in the last two years. I was curious about the dissertations on the Corinthia (broadly defined) over the last decade and ran a search in Worldcat on doctoral dissertations with keywords Corinth*, Kenchreai, Nemea, Isthm*, and Lechaion. The search generated 454 hits! Some of these hits are redundant probably because the dissertations are owned by several universities that have classified them differently. A few relate to medical studies (isthm* is responsible here) and the Battles of Corinth (the American civil war, not that of 146 BC). But the great majority of those dissertations–say, 75% or more–center on some aspect of 1 and 2 Corinthians. I’ve said it before: it must be tiring for New Testament scholars to keep up with the scholarship.
So, as I often do, I compiled a list of archaeology and history dissertations completed since 2000. No doubt incomplete and I’m sure I have left off some (your!) important study. But the list gives you a sense of some of the trends in the field. Of the 21 dissertations in process, defended, or completed, some patterns:
1. Archaic-Hellenistic: Studies of the Corinthia / NE Peloponnese of the period of the polis dominate but these studies cover the full range from the Early Iron Age to Hellenistic.
2. Late Antiquity: some 7 dissertations focus on the late Roman Corinthia or deal with it as part of the study of the Roman Corinthia, although that number could in part reflect my own knowledge of the dissertations. Only 3 studies focus on the Earlier Roman period. Most “Roman” studies go into Late Antiquity.
3. Materials: Ceramic studies are most common (n=4) but in general, we find variety: wall paintings, coinage, architecture, fountains, walls, baths
4. Landscape: countryside, territory, and cultural landscapes are the focal points of several studies and frame / complement many of the other studies. Corinth in broader context.
5. Archaeology and history: more archaeological discussions here than historical but many of the studies consider the textual evidence, and most of the archaeological studies frame their studies within broader contexts (social, economic, cultural): “a contextual study,” “the culture of water,” “mortuary practices”, “language of reuse”, “production and distribution”
Corinthian Matters 