Prologue -- About the Aegean Bronze Age -- About the Palace of Nestor -- Mycenaean origins and the Greek nation-state -- Farm, field, and Pylos -- A truly prehistoric archaeology of Greece -- Preserving and conserving Nestor -- Science and the mortuary landscape of Pylos -- Minoan missionaries in Pylos / with Sharon R. Stocker -- Epilogue / with Sharon R. Stocker.

A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org. Although the Mycenaean civilization of the Greek Bronze Age was identified 150 years ago, its origins remain obscure. Jack L. Davis, codirector of excavations at the Palace of Nestor at Pylos, takes readers on a tour of the beginnings of Mycenaean civilization through a case study of this important site. In collaboration with codirector Sharon R. Stocker, Davis demonstrates that this ancient place was a major node for the exchange of ideas between the already established Minoan civilization, centered on the island of Crete, and the residents of the Greek mainland. Davis and Stocker show how adoption of Minoan culture created an ideology of power focused on a single individual, celebrating his military prowess, investing him with divine authority, and creating a figure instantly recognizable to readers of Homer and students of Greek history. A Greek State in Formation makes the powerful case that a knowledge of the Greek Bronze Age is indispensable to the classics curriculum.

State Formation in Italy and Greece offers an up-to-date and comprehensive sampler of the current discourse concerning state formation in the central Mediterranean. While comparative approaches to the emergence of political complexity have been applied since the 1950s to Mesopotamia, Mesoamerica, Peru, Egypt and many other contexts, Classical Archaeology as a whole has not played a particularly active role in this debate. Here, for the first time, state formation processes occurring in the Bronze Age Aegean as well as in Iron Age Greece and Italy are explicitly juxtaposed, revealing a complex interplay between similar dynamics and differing local factors. Building upon recent theoretical developments in the origins and functioning of early states, the papers in this volume experiment with a variety of new approaches to old problems. Dual-processual theory, heterarchy, agency theory and weak state theory figure very prominently in the book and offer innovative, context-sensitive comparative frameworks that match the richness of the archaeological and historical record in the Mediterranean. Contributors include scholars working in Etruscan and early Roman archaeology and history, in Aegean archaeology and on the emergence of the Greek polis. A full analytical index further facilitates the cross-referencing of common themes across the geographic scope of the book.

History's Spoiled Children is the story of a small Ottoman province and its transformation into a modern European state. In some respects, the challenges to the formation of the Greek state could be likened to those encountered by the Western world in its efforts to impose its politico-cultural model on societies foreign to it. Though the Greeks of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were Christians whereas the societies subject to Western experimentation today are Muslim, the political venture known as modernisation has treated both as civilising projects and in no way as equal partners.However, there is one distinction that cannot be ignored. Western Europeans regard Greece and Greeks as foundational in their own history. With this in mind, one may better understand the West's (more or less) particular treatment of these populations, which not only rebelled against the Ottoman Empire in the name of Christianity but also invoked connections to an ancient past in which Europe sees the roots of its own identity.Kostas Kostis explores this perception and traces the formation of this favoured modern nation, dubbed in nineteenth-century Europe the 'spoiled children of history.'

The volumes of The Greek State at War are an essential reference for the classical scholar. Professor Pritchett has systematically canvassed ancient texts and secondary literature for references to specific topics; each volume explores a unique aspect of Greek military practice.

Combining archaeological and textual evidence the author suggests that most of the 8th Century settlements that would become the city-states of classical Greece were defined as much by the boundaries of civilised' space as by their urban centres.

This study of the changing relationships between burial rituals and social structure in Early Iron Age Greece will be required reading for all archaeologists working with burial evidence, in whatever period. This book differs from many topical studies of state formation in that unique and particular developments are given as much weight as those factors which are common to all early states. The ancient literary evidence and the relevant historical and anthropological comparisons are extensively drawn on in an attempt to explain the transition to the city-state, a development which was to have decisive effects for the subsequent development of European society.

Of the many European territorial reconfigurations that followed the wars of the early nineteenth century, the Ionian State remains among the least understood. Xenocracy offers a much-needed account of the region during its half-century as a Protectorate of Great Britain – a period that embodied all of the contradictions of British colonialism. A middle class of merchants, lawyers and state officials embraced and promoted a liberal modernization project. Yet despite the improvements experienced by many Ionians, the deterioration of state finances led to divisions along class lines and presented a significant threat to social stability. Sakis Gekas shows that the impasse engendered de- pendency upon and ambivalence toward Western Europe, anticipating the ‘neocolonial’ condition with which the Greek nation struggles even today.

67 texts, including hymns, manifestos, articles or extracts from lengthy studies exemplify the relation between Romanticism and the national movements in the cultural space ranging from Poland to the Ottoman Empire. Each text is accompanied by a presentation of the author, and by an analysis of the context in which the respective work was born.The end of the 18th century and first decades of the 19th were in many respects a watershed period in European history. The ideas of the Enlightenment and the dramatic convulsions of the French Revolution had shattered the old bonds and cast doubt upon the established moral and social norms of the old corporate society. In culture a new trend, Romanticism, was successfully asserting itself against Classicism and provided a new key for a growing number of activists to 're-imagine' their national community, reaching beyond the traditional frameworks of identification (such as the 'political nation', regional patriotism, or Christian universalism). The collection focuses on the interplay of Romantic cultural discourses and the shaping of national ideology throughout the 19th century, tracing the patterns of cultural transfer with Western Europe as well as the mimetic competition of national ideologies within the region.