Download or read book Literacy and the State in the Ancient Mediterranean written by Kathryn Lomas and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Reading Writing and Bookish Circles in the Ancient Mediterranean written by Lindsey A. Askin and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "By integrating conversations across disciplines, especially focusing on classical studies and Jewish and Christian studies, this volume addresses several imbalances in scholarship on reading and textual activity in the ancient Mediterranean. Contributors intentionally place Jewish, Christian, Roman, Greek, and other reading circles back into their encompassing historical context, avoiding subdivisions along modern subject lines, divisions still bearing the ideological marks of ecclesiastical interests. In their examination, contributors avoid dwelling upon traditional methodological debates over orality vs. literacy and social classifications of literacy, instead turning their attention to the social-historical: groups of people, circles and networks, strata and class, scribal culture, material culture, epigraphic and papyrological evidence, functions and types of literacy and the social relationships that all of these entail. Overall, the volume contributes to an emerging and important interdisciplinary collaboration between specialists in ancient literacy, encouraging future discussion between two traditionally divided fields."--
Download or read book Ancient Literacy written by William V. HARRIS and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How many people could read and write in the ancient world of the Greeks and Romans? No one has previously tried to give a systematic answer to this question. Most historians who have considered the problem at all have given optimistic assessments, since they have been impressed by large bodies of ancient written material such as the graffiti at Pompeii. They have also been influenced by a tendency to idealize the Greek and Roman world and its educational system. In Ancient Literacy W. V. Harris provides the first thorough exploration of the levels, types, and functions of literacy in the classical world, from the invention of the Greek alphabet about 800 B.C. down to the fifth century A.D. Investigations of other societies show that literacy ceases to be the accomplishment of a small elite only in specific circumstances. Harris argues that the social and technological conditions of the ancient world were such as to make mass literacy unthinkable. Noting that a society on the verge of mass literacy always possesses an elaborate school system, Harris stresses the limitations of Greek and Roman schooling, pointing out the meagerness of funding for elementary education. Neither the Greeks nor the Romans came anywhere near to completing the transition to a modern kind of written culture. They relied more heavily on oral communication than has generally been imagined. Harris examines the partial transition to written culture, taking into consideration the economic sphere and everyday life, as well as law, politics, administration, and religion. He has much to say also about the circulation of literary texts throughout classical antiquity. The limited spread of literacy in the classical world had diverse effects. It gave some stimulus to critical thought and assisted the accumulation of knowledge, and the minority that did learn to read and write was to some extent able to assert itself politically. The written word was also an instrument of power, and its use was indispensable for the construction and maintenance of empires. Most intriguing is the role of writing in the new religious culture of the late Roman Empire, in which it was more and more revered but less and less practiced. Harris explores these and related themes in this highly original work of social and cultural history. Ancient Literacy is important reading for anyone interested in the classical world, the problem of literacy, or the history of the written word.
Download or read book DATAM Digital Approaches to Teaching the Ancient Mediterranean written by Sebastian Heath and published by . This book was released on 2020-04 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DATAM: Digital Approaches to Teaching the Ancient Mediterranean brings together a wide range of teaching digital practices, approaches, and philosophies developed to open the Ancient Mediterranean world to students at a wide range of institutions and levels. A series of practical examples demonstrate how gaming, coding, immersive video, and 3D imaging can infuse teaching and learning at edge of the digital divide where the ancient world intersects with contemporary technology, information literacy, and student engagement. While the articles focus on Classics, Ancient History, and Mediterranean archaeology, the issues and approaches considered throughout this book are relevant for anyone who thinks critically and practically about the use of digital technology in the college level classroom.DATAM features contributions from Sebastian Heath, Lisl Walsh, David Ratzan, Patrick Burns, Sandra Blakely, Marie-Claire, Eric Poehler, William Caraher, and Beaulieu and Anthony Bucci as well as a critical introduction by Shawn Graham and preface by Society of Classical Studies Executive Director Helen Cullyer.
Download or read book A Companion to Roman Italy written by Alison E. Cooley and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2016-03-21 with total page 581 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Companion to Roman Italy investigates the impact of Rome in all its forms—political, cultural, social, and economic—upon Italy’s various regions, as well as the extent to which unification occurred as Rome became the capital of Italy. The collection presents new archaeological data relating to the sites of Roman Italy Contributions discuss new theories of how to understand cultural change in the Italian peninsula Combines detailed case-studies of particular sites with wider-ranging thematic chapters Leading contributors not only make accessible the most recent work on Roman Italy, but also offer fresh insight on long standing debates
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of the State in the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean written by Peter Fibiger Bang and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2013-01-31 with total page 568 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tracing the evolution of the state from its beginnings to the early Middle Ages, this comprehensive handbook focuses on key institutions and dynamics while providing accessible accounts of states and empires in the ancient Near East and Mediterranean.
Download or read book Literacy and Power in the Ancient World written by Alan K. Bowman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1996-12-05 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection attempts to set the study of literacy in the ancient world in the wider contexts of the debates among anthropologists over the impact of writing on society.
Download or read book Ancient Literacies written by William A Johnson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009-02-05 with total page 447 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Classicists have been slow to take advantage of the important advances in the way that literacy is viewed in other disciplines (including in particular cognitive psychology, socio-linguistics, and socio-anthropology). On the other hand, historians of literacy continue to rely on outdated work by classicists (mostly from the 1960's and 1970's) and have little access to the current reexamination of the ancient evidence. This timely volume attempts to formulate new interesting ways of talking about the entire concept of literacy in the ancient world--literacy not in the sense of whether 10% or 30% of people in the ancient world could read or write, but in the sense of text-oriented events embedded in a particular socio-cultural context. The volume is intended as a forum in which selected leading scholars rethink from the ground up how students of classical antiquity might best approach the question of literacy in the past, and how that investigation might materially intersect with changes in the way that literacy is now viewed in other disciplines. The result will give readers new ways of thinking about specific elements of "literacy" in antiquity, such as the nature of personal libraries, or what it means to be a bookseller in antiquity; new constructionist questions, such as what constitutes reading communities and how they fashion themselves; new takes on the public sphere, such as how literacy intersects with commercialism, or with the use of public spaces, or with the construction of civic identity; new essentialist questions, such as what "book" and "reading" signify in antiquity, why literate cultures develop, or why literate cultures matter. The book derives from a conference (a Semple Symposium held in Cincinnati in April 2006) and includes new work from the most outstanding scholars of literacy in antiquity (e.g., Simon Goldhill, Joseph Farrell, Peter White, and Rosalind Thomas).
Download or read book The Peoples of Ancient Italy written by Gary D. Farney and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2017-11-20 with total page 856 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although there are many studies of certain individual ancient Italic groups (e.g. the Etruscans, Gauls and Latins), there is no work that takes a comprehensive view of each of them—the famous and the less well-known—that existed in Iron Age and Roman Italy. Moreover, many previous studies have focused only on the material evidence for these groups or on what the literary sources have to say about them. This handbook is conceived of as a resource for archaeologists, historians, philologists and other scholars interested in finding out more about Italic groups from the earliest period they are detectable (early Iron Age, in most instances), down to the time when they begin to assimilate into the Roman state (in the late Republican or early Imperial period). As such, it will endeavor to include both archaeological and historical perspectives on each group, with contributions from the best-known or up-and-coming archaeologists and historians for these peoples and topics. The language of the volume is English, but scholars from around the world have contributed to it. This volume covers the ancient peoples of Italy more comprehensively in individual chapters, and it is also distinct because it has a thematic section.
Download or read book Inscriptions and the Epigraphic Habit written by Rebecca Ruth Benefiel and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-10-30 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume illustrates how the epigraphic habit is ubiquitous but variously expressed. Inscriptions become part of the fabric of Greek and Roman culture.
Download or read book Materialising the Roman Empire written by Jeremy Tanner and published by UCL Press. This book was released on 2024-03-19 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Materialising the Roman Empire defines an innovative research agenda for Roman archaeology, highlighting the diverse ways in which the Empire was made materially tangible in the lives of its inhabitants. The volume explores how material culture was integral to the processes of imperialism, both as the Empire grew, and as it fragmented, and in doing so provide up-to-date overviews of major topics in Roman archaeology. Each chapter offers a critical overview of a major field within the archaeology of the Roman Empire. The book’s authors explore the distinctive contribution that archaeology and the study of material culture can make to our understanding of the key institutions and fields of activity in the Roman Empire. The initial chapters address major technologies which, at first glance, appear to be mechanisms of integration across the Roman Empire: roads, writing and coinage. The focus then shifts to analysis of key social structures oriented around material forms and activities found all over the Roman world, such as trade, urbanism, slavery, craft production and frontiers. Finally, the book extends to more abstract dimensions of the Roman world: art, empire, religion and ideology, in which the significant themes remain the dynamics of power and influence. The whole builds towards a broad exploration of the nature of imperial power and the inter-connections that stimulated new community identities and created new social divisions.
Download or read book Writing Matters written by Ruth Whitehouse and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2024-09-05 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The epigraphy of 1st-millennium-BCE Italy has been studied for many years, but these studies have largely concentrated on the languages encoded in the inscriptions and their semantic meanings. This book takes a more holistic approach that looks not only at content, but also the archaeological contexts of the inscriptions and the materiality of their 'supports': the artefacts and monuments on which the inscriptions occur. The first writing in Italy was not a local invention, but was introduced by the Phoenicians and Greeks in the 9th–8th centuries BCE. It was taken up by number of indigenous communities over the subsequent centuries to write their own languages, before these were eventually submerged by the spread of Latin. In a series of theoretical, methodological and interpretative essays, Ruth Whitehouse explores what can be learned about how writing was used by these communities and what it meant to them. The bodies of data considered relate to Venetic and Raetic (the northeast), Lepontic (the northwest), Messapic (the southeast) and Etruscan (west central Italy, extending also into Campania in the south and the Po plain in the north). While not a comprehensive survey, there are enough different groups to allow a comparative approach to be adopted. Analysis of the datasets is able to reveal the similarities and differences between them, as well as identify features that were widespread in 1st-millennium-BCE Italy and others that were more idiosyncratic and specific to particular cultural groups. Placing materiality at the centre of study allows a reconsideration of the roles writing played in the lives of the individuals and groups who occupied Italy in the 1st millennium BCE.
Download or read book Weak Knowledge written by Annette Imhausen and published by Campus Verlag. This book was released on 2020-01-10 with total page 503 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many of us view the world of science as a firm bastion of knowledge, with each new discovery and further illumination adding to an unshakable foundation of natural truths. Weak Knowledge aims to rattle our faith, not in core certainties of scientific findings but in their strength as accessible resources. The authors show how, throughout history, many bodies of research have become precarious due to a host of factors. These factors have included cultural or social disinterest, feeble empirical evidence or theoretical justifications, and a lack of practical applications in a given field's findings. This book brings together cases from a range of historical periods and disciplines, ranging from personal medicine to climatology, to illuminate the specific forms, functions, and dynamics of so-called "weak" bodies of knowledge.
Download or read book Understanding Relations Between Scripts written by Philippa Steele and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2017-08-31 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Understanding Relations Between Scripts examines the writing systems of the ancient Aegean and Cyprus in the second and first millennia BC, principally Cretan ‘Hieroglyphic’, Linear A, Linear B, Cypro-Minoan and the Cypriot Syllabary. These scripts, of which some are deciphered and others are not, are known to be related to each other. However, the details of their relationships with each other have remained poorly understood and this will be the first volume dedicated solely to this issue. Nine papers aim to reach a better appreciation of relationships between writing systems than has been possible in previous research, through an interdisciplinary dialogue that takes account of both features of the writing systems and the contextual factors affecting the way in which writing was passed on. Each individual contribution furthers this aim by presenting the latest research on the Aegean scripts, demonstrating the great advances in our understanding of script relations that are possible through such detailed and innovative studies.
Download or read book Writing and Power in the Roman World written by Hella Eckardt and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book focuses on the material practice of ancient literacy through a contextual examination of Roman writing equipment.
Download or read book Literacy and History written by Marian Redmond and published by R.I.C. Publications. This book was released on 2007 with total page 111 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Writing as Material Practice written by Kathryn E. Piquette and published by Ubiquity Press. This book was released on 2013-12-18 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Writing as Material Practice grapples with the issue of writing as a form of material culture in its ancient and more recent manifestations, and in the contexts of production and consumption. Fifteen case studies explore the artefactual nature of writing — the ways in which materials, techniques, colour, scale, orientation and visibility inform the creation of inscribed objects and spaces, as well as structure subsequent engagement, perception and meaning making. Covering a temporal span of some 5000 years, from c.3200 BCE to the present day, and ranging in spatial context from the Americas to the Near East, the chapters in this volume bring a variety of perspectives which contribute to both specific and broader questions of writing materialities. The authors also aim to place past graphical systems in their social contexts so they can be understood in relation to the people who created and attributed meaning to writing and associated symbolic modes through a diverse array of individual and wider social practices.
