A bold and original examination of the relationships between ethnicity and political power in the ancient world.

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.

The era generally referred to as antiquity lasted for thousands of years and was characterized by a diverse range of peoples and cultural systems. This volume explores some of the specific ways race was defined and mobilized by different groups-including the Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Persians, and Ethiopians- as they came into contact with one another during this period. Key to this inquiry is the examination of institutions, such as religion and politics, and forms of knowledge, such as science, that circumscribed the formation of ancient racial identities and helped determine their meanings and consequences. Drawing on a range of ancient evidence-literature, historical writing, documentary evidence, and ancient art and archaeology-this volume highlights both the complexity of ancient racial ideas and the often violent and asymmetrical power structures embedded in ancient racial representations and practices like war and the enslavement of other persons. The study of race in antiquity has long been clouded by modern assumptions, so this volume also seeks to outline a better method for apprehending race on its own terms in the ancient world, including its relationship to other forms of identity, such as ethnicity and gender, while also seeking to identify and debunk some of the racist methods and biases that have been promulgated by classical historians themselves over the last few centuries.

Identity is a 'trendy' and 'hot' topic in classics Eminent contributors, including Pat Easterling, Gillian Clarke Identity examined from different perspectives and as different structures - sexual, ethnic, geographic, status, religions - comprehensive Theoretically and critically up-to-date

By offering fluent, accurate translations of extracts and fragments from a wide assortment of ancient texts, this volume allows a comprehensive overview of ancient Greek and Roman concepts of otherness, as well as Greek and Roman views of non-Greeks and non-Romans. A general introduction, thorough annotation, maps, a select bibliography, and an index are also included.

"This volume arises from two inter-related sessions presented at the 7th Roman Archaeology Conference, held at UCL and Birkbeck College in March 2007"--Page vii.

In this book Jonathan Hall seeks to demonstrate that the ethnic groups of ancient Greece, like many ethnic groups throughout the world today, were not ultimately racial, linguistic, religious or cultural groups, but social groups whose 'origins' in extraneous territories were just as often imagined as they were real. Adopting an explicitly anthropological point of view, he examines the evidence of literature, archaeology and linguistics to elucidate the nature of ethnic identity in ancient Greece. Rather than treating Greek ethnic groups as 'natural' or 'essential' - let alone 'racial' - entities, he emphasises the active, constructive and dynamic role of ethnography, genealogy, material culture and language in shaping ethnic consciousness. An introductory chapter outlines the history of the study of ethnicity in Greek antiquity.

This study raises that difficult and complicated question on a broad front, taking into account the expressions and attitudes of a wide variety of Greek, Roman, Jewish, and early Christian sources, including Herodotus, Polybius, Cicero, Philo, and Paul. It approaches the topic of ethnicity through the lenses of the ancients themselves rather than through the imposition of modern categories, labels, and frameworks. A central issue guides the course of the work: did ancient writers reflect upon collective identity as determined by common origins and lineage or by shared traditions and culture?

The question of ethnicity is highly controversial in contemporary archaeology. Indigenous and nationalist claims to territory, often rely on reconstructions of the past based on the traditional identification of 'cultures' from archaeological remains. Sian Jones responds to the need for a reassessment of the ways in which social groups are identified in the archaeological record, with a comprehensive and critical synthesis of recent theories of ethnicity in the human sciences. In doing so, she argues for a fundamentally different view of ethnicity, as a complex dynamic form of identification, requiring radical changes in archaeological analysis and interpretation.

Ethnicity is a social construct within an ideological framework, ancient or modern. This wisdom has penetrated most scholarly disciplines, but its reception is delayed in Black Sea studies, where essentialist views still prevail. Nationalism, Rostovtzeff's culture-history and Marxist-Leninist materialism have cast longer shadows on this part of the ancient world. Likewise, the balance between documentary sources and ancient literature needs redressing. The latter has often been either accepted in a positivist manner or rejected due to perceived inconsistencies. More rewarding is to try to understand what exactly the ancient authors knew or intended. In this light, the contributors discuss the concept of Sarmatization, the implications of rural versus urban cults, ethnic hierarchies, interaction patterns in colonial settings, inversions of barbarian stereotypes, cultural affiliations of Bosporan kings, imperial policies of Pharnakes I and II, foreign princes on the Ara Pacis Augustae, the reorganization of Pontos under Pompey and Deiotaros, the sanctuary of Leukothea in Kolchis, Christian urbanism in Scythia Minor and crop selections of Anatolian farmers. Though selective, the book covers the four coastlines of the Black Sea, ranging from the archaic to the Byzantine periods.