Full Description
This volume explores the theme of ethnicity and ethnogenesis in societies of the ancient world. Its starting point is the current view in the social and historical sciences of ethnicity as a subjective construct that is shaped through interaction with an ethnic 'other'. The 13 essays collected in this volume are based on the analysis of historical, epigraphic and archaeological source material and thematically range from Archaic Greece to Early Mediaeval Western Europe. Despite frequent claims by ethnic groups to the contrary, all ethnic formations are intrinsically unstable and dynamic over time. Much of this dynamism is to be understood in close association with conflict, violence and changing constellations of power. The explicit theoretical framework, together with the wide range of case-studies makes this volume indispensable for historians, archaeologists and social scientists with an interest in the ancient world. Amsterdam Archaeological Studies is a series devoted to the study of past human societies from the prehistory up into modern times, primarily based on the study of archaeological remains. The series will include excavation reports of modern fieldwork; studies of categories of material culture; and synthesising studies with broader images of past societies, thereby contributing to the theoretical and methodological debates in archaeology.
Contents
Contents - 8[-]Introduction - 10[-]Ethnic expression on the Early Iron Age and early Archaic Greek mainland. Where should we be looking? - 20[-]The Ionians in the Archaic period. Shifting identities in a changing world - 46[-]From Athenian identity to European ethnicity - the cultural biography of the myth of Marathon - 94[-]Multi-ethnicity and ethnic segregation in Hellenistic Babylon - 110[-]The Galatians in the Roman Empire: historical tradition and ethnic identity in Hellenistic and Roman Asia Minor - 126[-]Material culture and plural identity in early Roman Southern Italy - 154[-]Foundation myths in Roman Palestine. Traditions and reworkings - 176[-]Ethnic discourses on the frontiers of Roman Africa - 198[-]Cruptorix and his kind. Talking ethnicity on the middle ground - 216[-]Hercules and the construction of a Batavian identity in the context of the Roman empire - 228[-]Ethnic identity in the Roman frontier. The epigraphy of Batavi and other Lower Rhine tribes - 248[-]Grave goods, ethnicity, and the rhetoric of burial rites in Late Antique Northern Gaul - 292[-]The early-medieval use of ethnic names from classical antiquity. The case of the Frisians - 330[-]Index of names and places - 348[-]List of contributors - 352
