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Mediterranean Prehistory and the Classical World 31 Mycenaean Greece, Mediterranean Commerce Monumentality in Etruscan and Early Roman and the Formation of Identity Architecture: Ideology and Innovation by Bryan E. Burns edited by Michael L. Thomas Bryan E. Burns here offers a new understanding of These essays explore the emergence of scale and the effects of Mediterranean trade on Mycenaean monumentality as key factors in pre–Imperial Roman Greece by considering the possibilities represented and Etruscan building and the social and political by the traded objects themselves in their Mycenaean strategies which they reflect. They address questions contexts. A range of imported artefacts were both of technical developments and an evolving distinguished by their precious material, uncommon language of power and commemoration. Topics style, and foreign writing, signalling their status as include the use of more durable building materials, tangible evidence of connections beyond the Aegean. the evolving use of architectural terracottas, and the The consumption of these exotic symbols spread development of an architectural paradigm of beyond the highest levels of society and functioned monumentality in the Capitoline temple, and the as symbols of external power sources. Burns argues interplay between performance, ritual and that the consumption of exotic items thus enabled monumentality. 236p b/w illus (University of Texas Press the formation of alternate identities symbolising 2013) 9780292738881 Hb £43.00 resistance to palatial power. 246p, b/w illus (Cambridge Cambridge Economic History of the Greco– UP 2010, Pb 2012) 9780521119542 Hb £61.00, Roman World 9781107697416 Pb 24.99 edited by Walter Scheidel, Ian Morris and Richard Cultural Landscapes, Social networks and Saller Historical Trajectories: A Data–Rich Synthesis In this, the first comprehensive one–volume survey of Early Bronze Age Networks (c. 2200–1700 of the economies of classical antiquity, twenty–eight BC) in Abruzzo and Lazio (Central Italy) chapters summarise the current state of scholarship by Erik van Rossenberg in their specialised fields and sketch new directions This study foregrounds the Central Italian Bronze for research. The approach taken is both thematic, Age, combining landscape and network approaches with chapters on the underlying determinants of in archaeology. Approaching landscapes as networks economic performance, and chronological, with of places, this study advocates a data–rich form of coverage of the whole of the Greek and Roman synthesis of Bronze Age trajectories, taking into worlds extending from the Aegean Bronze Age to account all facets which make up cultural landscapes Late Antiquity. The contributors move beyond the and social networks, including metalwork substantivist–formalist debates that dominated deposition, burial, cave use and settlement patterns. twentieth–century scholarship and display a new Tracing changing relationships between these nodes, interest in economic growth in antiquity. New network changes are charted and substantiated from methods for measuring economic development are the Copper Age to the Middle Bronze Age. 350p developed, often combining textual and (Sidestone Press 2012) 9789088900990 Pb £55.00 archaeological data that have previously been treated Divining the Etruscan World: The Brontoscopic separately. 942p figs, maps (Cambridge UP 2007, Pb 2012) 9780521780537 Hb £146.00, 9781107673076 Pb Calendar £40.00 by Jean MacIntosh Turfa The Etruscan Brontoscopic Trade, Traders and the Ancient City Calendar is a rare document edited by Helen Parkins and Christopher Smith of omens foretold by A collection of eleven papers exploring the nature of thunder. It long lay hidden, ancient trade and its interrelationship with cities, embedded in a Greek from the Bronze Age Near East to late Roman translation within a northern Italy. 268p (Routledge 1998, Pb 2012) Byzantine treatise from the 9780415165174 Hb £80.00, 9780415518925 Pb £28.00 age of Justinian. The first Ancient Graffiti in Context complete English trans- by Jennifer Baird, Claire Taylor lation of the Brontoscopic The essays in this volume form a collective attempt Calendar, this book to question current conceptions and definitions of provides an understanding of Etruscan Iron Age ancient graffiti. Ancient graffiti range from texts and society as revealed through the ancient text, images written or drawn both inside and outside especially the Etruscans’ concerns regarding the buildings, in public and private places, to those on environment, food, health and disease. Jean monuments in the city and on mountains in the MacIntosh Turfa also analyzes the ancient Near countryside; what unites them conceptually is that Eastern sources of the Calendar and the subjects of they can be seen as actively engaging with their its predictions, thereby creating a picture of the environment in a variety of ways. This book explores complexity of Etruscan society reaching back before these engagements and demonstrates how differences the advent of writing and the recording of the of scale and spatial dynamics can be negotiated. 243p calendar. 432p b/w illus (Cambridge UP 2012) b/w illus (Routledge 2011, Pb 2012) 9780415878890 Hb 9781107009073 Hb £65.00 £90.00, 9780415653527 Pb £28.00 32 Classical World A Companion to Ancient History The Ancient Sailing Season edited by Andrew Erskine by James Beresford To produce a companion to ancient history is Providing a comprehensive obviously a monumental task, and examination of the capacity of comprehensiveness an almost impossible goal, but ancient ships and seafarers to there are nonetheless an impressively wide range of cope with seasonally approaches, key topics and concepts covered in this changing sea conditions, this volume. It is comprised of short essays, each by a book draws on a wide range specialist in the particular field, which, rather than of ancient literary sources serve as a nuts and bolts style introduction, instead while also taking account of intend to get the reader thinking, presenting key modern weather records, arguments from current research. As well as broad hydrological data, and recent overviews by period and geographical area, chapters archaeological discoveries. address such topics as environmental history, the Taking a fresh look at the family, death, finance and resources and citizenship various ways in which seasonality affected maritime to pick but a few. 693p b/w illus (Blackwell 2009, Pb transport across the sea–lanes of the ancient world, 2012) 9781405131506 Hb £136.00, 9781118451366 Pb it offers new perspectives on the nature of seaborne £29.99 trade, naval warfare and piratical operations. The Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian result is a volume that questions many long–held Wars to the Fall of Rome scholarly assumptions concerning the strength and edited by Victor Davis Hanson seaworthiness of ancient vessels, as well as the abilities of Greek and Roman mariners, to regularly Consciously echoing Peter Paret’s monumental undertake voyages across hazardous stretches of sea. Makers of Modern Strategy, this volume comprises 364p (Brill 2012) 9789004223523 Hb £125.00 essays which examine various aspects of military strategy from the Persian Wars to the later Roman Perspective in the Visual Culture of Classical Empire. It reappraises the military thought of Antiquity various famed generals including Pericles, by Rocco Sinisgalli Epiminondas, Alexander and Caesar, as well as In this book, Rocco Sinisgalli investigates theories looking at how challenges such as of linear perspective in the classical era. Departing counterinsurgency, frontier defence, and Empire from the received understanding of perspective in building were faced. 265p (Princeton UP 2010, Pb 2012) the ancient world, he argues that ancient theories 9780691156361 Pb £13.95 of perspective were primarily based on the study of A Companion to Greek and Roman Political objects in mirrors, rather than the study of optics Thought and the workings of the human eye. In support of edited by Ryan K. Balot this argument, Sinisgalli analyzes, and offers new insights into, some of the key classical texts on this Justice, virtue and citizenship were at the center of topic, including Euclid’s De speculis, Lucretius’ De political life in ancient Greece and Rome and were rerum natura, Vitruvius’ De architectura and Ptolemy’s frequently discussed by classical poets, historians and De opticis. 224p, b/w illus (Cambridge UP 2012) philosophers. This companion illuminates Greek and 9781107025905 Hb £60.00 Roman political thought in all its range, diversity and depth. 34 essays provide stimulating discussions Rethinking the Other in Antiquity of classical political thought, ranging from the by Erich S. Gruen Archaic Greek epics to the final days of the Roman For some years, the notion that Greek, Romans and Empire and beyond, taking in theoretical and Jews defined themselves with reference to other historical perspectives. 658p (Blackwell 2009, Pb 2012) peoples whose attributes appeared to be opposite to 9781405151436 Hb £136.00, 9781118451359 Pb 29.99 their own – the so–called ‘Other’ – has enjoyed much Greek and Roman Dress from A to Z scholarly attention. Such self–definition is thought by Liza Cleland, Glenys Davies and Lloyd to have entailed significant distortion and stereotyping of the other peoples used in this way. Llewellyn–Jones But in this provocative book, Gruen argues that this From abolla (a thick woollen cloak) to zostra (a type is

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