Contributions on a variety of topics, e.g. mantle-figures on Athenian late classical red-figure, white-ground cups in fifth-century graves, late 'Apulian' red-figure vases, an overview of Athenian pottery in Southern Italy and Sicily, the Panathenaic amphora shape in Southern Italian red-figure production and Achilles and Troilos in Athens and Etruria. Contributions by Martin Langner, Annie Verbanck-Pierard, Adrienne Lezzi-Hafter, Athena Tsingarida, Maurizio Gualtieri, Helena Fracchia, Victoria Sabetai, Martin Bentz, Thomas Mannack, Stine Scierup and Guy Hedreen.

This book makes recent scholarship on the Italic people of fourth-century BC Apulia available to English-speaking audiences.

In the latter part of the fifth century BC, regional red-figure productions were established outside Attica in regional Greece and in the western Mediterranean, propelled by the impact of the art of Attic vase painting. This collection of papers addresses key issues posed by these production centres. Why did they emerge? To what degree was their inception prompted by the emigration of Attic craftsmen in the context of the weakened Attic pottery market at the onset of the Peloponnesian War? How did Attic vase painting influence already existing traditions, and what was selected, adopted or adapted at the receiving end? Who was using red-figure in mainland Greece and Italy, and what were its particular functions in the local cultures? These and more questions are addressed here with the presentation not only of syntheses, but also primary publication of much newly discovered material. Regional production centres covered include those of Euboea, Boeotia, Corinth, Laconia, Macedonia, Ambracia, Lucania, Apulia, Sicily, Locri and Etruria.

"What happened when Athenian pottery reached other cultural contexts and was absorbed into indigenous communities around or outside Greece? How did the various contexts influence the adaption of Athenian iconography and does the setting add to an understanding of how Athenian iconographic themes were altered or absorbes as they entered into new cultural contexts? To highlight these interpretative challenges the National Museum of Denmark in 2009 stages the colloquium "Red-figure Pottery in its Ancient Setting" and invited a group of specialists to present cases from within their areas of research which would serve to enhance our understanding of the great range of the character and value of red-figure pottery and its imagery whether in local Greek, a colonial Greek, en Etruscan or any other indigenous community. The various cases presented in these proceedings of the colloquium clearly demonstrate that this approach to the study of Greek pottery and its imagery has much to offer."--Publisher's website.

Athenian Potters and Painters III presents a rich mass of new material on Greek vases, including finds from excavations at the Kerameikos in Athens and Despotiko in the Cyclades. Some contributions focus on painters or workshops – Paseas, the Robinson Group, and the structure of the figured pottery industry in Athens; others on vase forms – plates, phialai, cups, and the change in shapes at the end of the sixth century BC. Context, trade, kalos inscriptions, reception, the fabrication of inscribed painters’ names to create a fictitious biography, and the reconstruction of the contents of an Etruscan tomb are also explored. The iconography and iconology of various types of figured scenes on Attic pottery serve as the subject of a wide range of papers – chariots, dogs, baskets, heads, departures, an Amazonomachy, Menelaus and Helen, red-figure komasts, symposia, and scenes of pursuit. Among the special vases presented are a black spotlight stamnos and a column krater by the Suessula Painter. Athenian Potters and Painters III, the proceedings of an international conference held at the College of William and Mary in Virginia in 2012, will, like the previous two volumes, become a standard reference work in the study of Greek pottery.

A lucrative trade in Athenian pottery flourished from the early sixth until the late fifth century B.C.E., finding an eager market in Etruria. Most studies of these painted vases focus on the artistry and worldview of the Greeks who made them, but Sheramy D. Bundrick shifts attention to their Etruscan customers, ancient trade networks, and archaeological contexts. Thousands of Greek painted vases have emerged from excavations of tombs, sanctuaries, and settlements throughout Etruria, from southern coastal centers to northern communities in the Po Valley. Using documented archaeological assemblages, especially from tombs in southern Etruria, Bundrick challenges the widely held assumption that Etruscans were hellenized through Greek imports. She marshals evidence to show that Etruscan consumers purposefully selected figured pottery that harmonized with their own local needs and customs, so much so that the vases are better described as etruscanized. Athenian ceramic workers, she contends, learned from traders which shapes and imagery sold best to the Etruscans and employed a variety of strategies to maximize artistry, output, and profit.

Athenian Potters and Painters III presents a rich mass of new material on Greek vases, including finds from excavations at the Kerameikos in Athens and Despotiko in the Cyclades. Some contributions focus on painters or workshops – Paseas, the Robinson Group, and the structure of the figured pottery industry in Athens; others on vase forms – plates, phialai, cups, and the change in shapes at the end of the sixth century BC. Context, trade, kalos inscriptions, reception, the fabrication of inscribed painters’ names to create a fictitious biography, and the reconstruction of the contents of an Etruscan tomb are also explored. The iconography and iconology of various types of figured scenes on Attic pottery serve as the subject of a wide range of papers – chariots, dogs, baskets, heads, departures, an Amazonomachy, Menelaus and Helen, red-figure komasts, symposia, and scenes of pursuit. Among the special vases presented are a black spotlight stamnos and a column krater by the Suessula Painter. Athenian Potters and Painters III, the proceedings of an international conference held at the College of William and Mary in Virginia in 2012, will, like the previous two volumes, become a standard reference work in the study of Greek pottery.

In the modern world, objects and buildings speak eloquently about their creators. Status, gender identity, and cultural affiliations are just a few characteristics we can often infer about such material culture. But can we make similar deductions about the inhabitants of the first millennium BCE Greek world? Theoretical Approaches to the Archaeology of Ancient Greece offers a series of case studies exploring how a theoretical approach to the archaeology of this area provides insight into aspects of ancient society. An introductory section exploring the emergence and growth of theoretical approaches is followed by examinations of the potential insights these approaches provide. The authors probe some of the meanings attached to ancient objects, townscapes, and cemeteries, for those who created, and used, or inhabited them. The range of contexts stretches from the early Greek communities during the eighth and seventh centuries BCE, through Athens between the eighth and fifth centuries BCE, and on into present day Turkey and the Levant during the third and second centuries BCE. The authors examine a range of practices, from the creation of individual items such as ceramic vessels and figurines, through to the construction of civic buildings, monuments, and cemeteries. At the same time they interrogate a range of spheres, from craft production, through civic and religious practices, to funerary ritual.

This book sheds some necessary light on local economies from the (late) Hellenistic to the Late Roman period. The concepts of regions and regionality are employed to explore the complexity of ancient economies and (ceramic) variability and change in Boeotia (Central Greece), largely on the basis of the survey data generated by the Boeotia Project.

This volume consists consists of forty contributions written by an internationally renowned selection of scholars. The authors adopt an interdisciplinary methodology, examining both literary and archaeological sources, and a comparative perspective that transgresses national, chronological, and cultural boundaries, in order to investigate the nature of the links between text and image. This multifaceted approach to the study of ancient artifacts enables the authors to treat art and artistic production as activities that do not merely mirror social or cultural relationships but rather, and more significantly, as activities that create social and cultural relationships. The essays in this book are motivated by their authors' belief that there is no simple direct link between art and myths, art and text, or art and ritual, and that art should not be delegated to the role of a by-product of a literate culture. Instead, the contextual and symbolic analyses of artifacts and representations offered in this volume elucidate how art actively shaped myth, how it changed texts, how it transformed ritual, and how it altered the course of local, regional, and Mediterranean histories.