In Ancient Marbles to American Shores, Stephen L. Dyson uncovers the history of classical archaeology in the United States by exploring the people and programs that gave birth to archaeology as a discipline in this country. He puts aside the common formula of chronicling great digs, great discoveries, and great men in favor of a cultural, ideological, and institutional history of the subject. The book explores the ways American contact with the monuments of Greece and Rome affected the national consciousness. It discusses how the spread of classical style laid the groundwork for the development of the discipline after the Civil War and examines the period before World War I, when most of the institutions that led to the establishment of the discipline, as well as the first generation of American classical archaeologists, were created. It looks at the role classical archaeology played in the development of the American art museum since the later nineteenth century and considers changes in American classical archaeology from World War II to the mid-1970s. Filling the void of information on the history of classical archaeology in the United States, this lively book is a valuable contribution to literature on a subject which is enjoying ever-increasing interest and attention.

A riveting account of private art collectors' passion from Roman times to the present Whether it's the discovery of $1.6 billion in Nazi-looted art or the news that Syrian rebels are looting UNESCO archaeological sites to buy arms, art crime commands headlines. Erin Thompson, America's only professor of art crime, explores the dark history of looting, smuggling, and forgery that lies at the heart of many private art collections and many of the world's most renowned museums. Enlivened by fascinating personalities and scandalous events, Possession shows how collecting antiquities has been a way of creating identity, informed by a desire to annex the past while providing an illicit thrill along the way. Thompson's accounts of history's most infamous collectors--from the Roman Emperor Tiberius, who stole a life-sized nude Greek statue for his bedroom, to Queen Christina of Sweden, who habitually pilfered small antiquities from her fellow aristocrats, to Sir William Hamilton, who forced his mistress to enact poses from his collection of Greek vases--are as mesmerizing as they are revealing.

The 1931 excavation season at Olynthus, Greece, ushered a sea change in how archaeologists study material culture—and was the nexus of one of the most egregious (and underreported) cases of plagiarism in the history of classical archaeology. Alan Kaiser draws on the private scrapbook that budding archaeologist Mary Ross Ellingson compiled during that dig, as well as her personal correspondence and materials from major university archives, to paint a fascinating picture of gender, power, and archaeology in the early twentieth century. Using Ellingson’s photographs and letters as a guide, Kaiser brings alive the excavations led by David Robinson and recounts how the unearthing of private homes—rather than public spaces—emerged as a means to examine the day-to-day of ancient life in Greece. But as Archaeology, Sexism, and Scandal clearly demonstrates, a darker story lurks beneath the smiling faces and humorous tales: one where Robinson stole Ellingson’s words and insights for his own, and where fellow academ

Situates the study of Roman sculpture within the fields of art history, classical archaeology, and Roman studies, presenting technical, scientific, literary, and theoretical approaches.

Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as Americans increasingly came into contact with the Islamic world, U.S. diplomatic, cultural, political, and religious beliefs about Islam began to shape their responses to world events. In Sacred Interests, Karine V. Walther excavates the deep history of American Islamophobia, showing how negative perceptions of Islam and Muslims shaped U.S. foreign relations from the Early Republic to the end of World War I. Beginning with the Greek War of Independence in 1821, Walther illuminates reactions to and involvement in the breakup of the Ottoman Empire, the efforts to protect Jews from Muslim authorities in Morocco, American colonial policies in the Philippines, and American attempts to aid Christians during the Armenian Genocide. Walther examines the American role in the peace negotiations after World War I, support for the Balfour Declaration, and the establishment of the mandate system in the Middle East. The result is a vital exploration of the crucial role the United States played in the Islamic world during the long nineteenth century--an interaction that shaped a historical legacy that remains with us today.

Life-writing is a vital part of the history of archaeology, and a growing field of scholarship within the discipline. The lives of archaeologists are entangled with histories of museums and collections, developments in science and scholarship, and narratives of nationalism and colonialism into the present. In recent years life-writing has played an important role in the surge of new research in the history of archaeology, including ground-breaking studies of discipline formation, institutionalisation, and social and intellectual networks. Sources such as diaries, wills, film, and the growing body of digital records are powerful tools for highlighting the contributions of hitherto marginalised archaeological lives including many pioneering women, hired labourers and other ‘hidden hands’. This book brings together critical perspectives on life-writing in the history of archaeology from leading figures in the field. These include studies of archive formation and use, the concept of ‘dig-writing’ as a distinctive genre of archaeological creativity, and reviews of new sources for already well-known lives. Several chapters reflect on the experience of life-writing, review the historiography of the field, and assess the intellectual value and significance of life-writing as a genre. Together, they work to problematise underlying assumptions about this genre, foregrounding methodology, social theory, ethics and other practice-focused frameworks in conscious tension with previous practices.

Archaeological ideas and practices have experienced transformative change since the Society for American Archaeology’s fiftieth Anniversary. Authors in this volume from the SAA press consider critically some of today’s most noteworthy issues. Their voices—like their views—are as diverse as the discipline. Nonetheless, they repeatedly recognize deep articulation between archaeology and social, economic, and political milieus, from local to global scales. And they share conviction that much is to be done in the years ahead. This volume aims to rouse more voices to join the lively ongoing conversation.

The essays in Archaeology and History in Roman, Medieval and Post-Medieval Greece honor the contributions of Timothy E. Gregory to our understanding of Greece from the Roman period to modern times. Evoking Gregory's diverse interests, the volume brings together anthropologists, art historians, archaeologists, historians, and philologists to address such contested topics as the end of Antiquity, the so-called Byzantine Dark Ages, the contours of the emerging Byzantine civilization, and identity in post-Medieval Greece. These papers demonstrate the continued vitality of both traditional and innovative approaches to the study of material culture and emphasise that historical interpretation should be the product of methodological self-awareness. In particular, this volume shows how the study of the material culture of post-Classical Greece over the last 30 years has made significant contributions to both the larger archaeological and historical discourse. The essays in this volume are organized under three headings - Archaeology and Method, the Archaeology of Identity, and the Changing Landscape - which highlight three main focuses of Gregory's research. Each essay interlaces new analyses with the contributions Gregory has made to our understanding of Medieval and Post-Medieval Greece. Read together these essays not only make a significant contribution to how we understand the post-Classical Greek world, but also to how we study the material culture of the Mediterranean world more broadly.

Essays on the historical Greco-Roman influence on the evolving architectural landscape of New York City. During its rise from capital of an upstart nation to global metropolis, the visual language of Greek and Roman antiquity played a formative role in the development of New York’s art and architecture. This compilation of essays offers a survey of diverse reinterpretations of classical forms in some of the city’s most iconic buildings, public monuments, and civic spaces. Classical New York examines the influence of Greco-Roman thought and design from the Greek Revival of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries through the late-nineteenth-century American Renaissance and Beaux Arts period and into the twentieth century’s Art Deco. At every juncture, New Yorkers looked to the classical past for knowledge and inspiration in seeking out new ways to cultivate a civic identity and to structure their public and private spaces. Specialists from a range of disciplines—archaeology, architectural history, art history, classics, and history— focus on how classical art and architecture are repurposed to help shape many of New York City’s most evocative buildings and works of art. Federal Hall evoked the Parthenon as an architectural and democratic model; the Pantheon served as a model for the creation of libraries at New York University and Columbia University; Pennsylvania Station derived its form from the Baths of Caracalla; and Atlas and Prometheus of Rockefeller Center recast ancient myths in a new light during the Great Depression. This examination of post-Revolutionary art, politics, and philosophy enriches the conversation about how we shape space—be it civic, religious, academic, theatrical, or domestic—and how we make use of that space and the objects in it.

A detailed history of the Boston Athenaeum's historic role in the founding of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston