The volume celebrates the 75th birthday of Prof. Jan Bouzek, one of the leading specialists in Mediterranean, Black Sea, Anatolian and European archaeology. The chapters, written by leading specialists who are friends and colleagues of the dedicatee, address many of Prof. Bouzek's primary interests: Thrace, the Getae, the Persians in Europe, the impact of the Etruscans on ancient Europe, Black Sea archaeology, Hallstatt Europe, the Celts, the Scythians, the Iron Age in Central Anatolia, jewellery, etc. All chapters are substantial pieces that offer overviews of our present state of knowledge.

A Companion to Ethnicity in the Ancient Mediterranean presents a comprehensive collection of essays contributed by Classical Studies scholars that explore questions relating to ethnicity in the ancient Mediterranean world. Covers topics of ethnicity in civilizations ranging from ancient Egypt and Israel, to Greece and Rome, and into Late Antiquity Features cutting-edge research on ethnicity relating to Philistine, Etruscan, and Phoenician identities Reveals the explicit relationships between ancient and modern ethnicities Introduces an interpretation of ethnicity as an active component of social identity Represents a fundamental questioning of formally accepted and fixed categories in the field

Proceedings of the Fifth International Congress on Black Sea Antiquities (Belgrade - 17-21 September 2013). The theme of the congress included archaeological, historical, linguistic, anthropological, geographical and other investigations across the huge area through which the Argonauts passed in seeking to return from Colchis.

This book presents a new model for understanding the collection of ancient kingdoms that surrounded the northeast corner of the Mediterranean Sea from the Cilician Plain in the west to the upper Tigris River in the east, and from Cappadocia in the north to western Syria in the south, during the Iron Age of the ancient Near East (ca. 1200 to 600 BCE). Rather than presenting them as homogenous ethnolinguistic communities like "the Aramaeans" or "the Luwians" living in neatly bounded territories, this book sees these polities as being fundamentally diverse and variable, distinguished by demographic fluidity and cultural mobility. The Syro-Anatolian City-States sheds new light via an examination of a host of evidentiary sources, including archaeological site plans, settlement patterns, visual arts, and historical sources. Together, these lines of evidence reveal a complex fusion of cultural traditions that is nevertheless distinctly recognizable unto itself. This book is the first to specifically characterize the Iron Age city-states of southeastern Turkey and northern Syria, arguing for a unified cultural formation characterized above all by diversity and mobility and that can be referred to as the "Syro-Anatolian Culture Complex."

A COMPANION TO THE ACHAEMENID PERSIAN EMPIRE A comprehensive review of the political, cultural, social, economic and religious history of the Achaemenid Empirem Often called the first world empire, the Achaemenid Empire is rooted in older Near Eastern traditions. A Companion to the Achaemenid Persian Empire offers a perspective in which the history of the empire is embedded in the preceding and subsequent epochs. In this way, the traditions that shaped the Achaemenid Empire become as visible as the powerful impact it had on further historical development. But the work does not only break new ground in this respect, but also in the fact that, in addition to written testimonies of all kinds, it also considers material tradition as an equal factor in historical reconstruction. This comprehensive two-volume set features contributions by internationally-recognized experts that offer balanced coverage of the whole of the empire from Anatolia and Egypt across western Asia to northern India and Central Asia. Comprehensive in scope, the Companion provides readers with a panoramic view of the diversity, richness, and complexity of the Achaemenid Empire, dealing with all the many aspects of history, event history, administration, economy, society, communication, art, science and religion, illustrating the multifaceted nature of the first true empire. A unique historical account presented in its multiregional dimensions, this important resource deals with many aspects of history, administration, economy, society, communication, art, science and religion it deals with topics that have only recently attracted interest such as court life, leisure activities, gender roles, and more examines a variety of available sources to consider those predecessors who influenced Achaemenid structure, ideology, and self-expression contains the study of Nachleben and the history of perception up to the present day offers a spectrum of opinions in disputed fields of research, such as the interpretation of the imagery of Achaemenid art, or questions of religion includes extensive bibliographies in each chapter for use as starting points for further research devotes special interest to the east of the empire, which is often neglected in comparison to the western territories Part of the acclaimed Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World series, A Companion to the Achaemenid Persian Empire is an indispensable work for students, instructors, and scholars of Persian and ancient world history, particularly the First Persian Empire.

A Companion to Ancient Thrace presents a series of essays that reveal the newly recognized complexity of the social and cultural phenomena of the peoples inhabiting the Balkan periphery of the Classical world. • Features a rich and detailed overview of Thracian history from the Early Iron Age to Late Antiquity • Includes contributions from leading scholars in the archaeology, art history, and general history of Thrace • Balances consideration of material evidence relating to Ancient Thrace with more traditional literary sources • Integrates a study of Thrace within a broad context that includes the cultures of the eastern Mediterranean, southwest Asia, and southeast Europe/Eurasia • Reflects the impact of new theoretical approaches to economy, ethnicity, and cross-cultural interaction and hybridity in Ancient Thrace

The ancient Celtic world evokes debate, discussion, romanticism and mythicism. On the one hand it represents a specialist area of archaeological interest, on the other, it has a wide general appeal. The Celtic world is accessible through archaeology, history, linguistics and art history. Of these disciplines, art history offers the most direct message to a wider audience. This volume of 37 papers brings together a truly international group of pre-eminent specialists in the field of Celtic art and Celtic studies. It is a benchmark volume the like of which has not been seen since the publication of Paul JacobsthalÕs Early Celtic Art in 1944. The papers chart the history of attempts to understand Celtic art and argue for novel approaches in discussions spanning the whole of Continental Europe and the British Isles. This new body of international scholarship will give the reader a sense of the richness of the material and current debates. Artefacts of rich form and decoration, which we might call art, provide a most sensitive set of indicators of key areas of past societies, their power, politics and transformations. With its broad geographical scope, this volume offers a timely opportunity to re-assess contacts, context, transmission and meaning in Celtic art for understanding the development of European cultures, identities and economies in pre- and proto-history.

This book presents the results of the survey conducted by the University of Florence, in the years 2008-2012, at the site and in the surrounding territory of Uşaklı Höyük on the central Anatolian plateau in Turkey. Geological, geomorphological, topographic and geophysical research have provided new information and data relating to the environment and the settlement landscape, as well as producing new maps of the area and indicating the presence of large buried buildings on the site. Analysis of the rich corpus of pottery collected from the surface indicates that the site and its territory were continuously settled from the late Early Bronze Age through the Iron Age and down to the Late Roman and Byzantine periods. A few fragments of cuneiform tablets with Hittite texts, a sealing with two impressions of a stamp seal, and pottery stamps illustrate the importance of Uşaklı Höyük and support the hypothesis of its identification with the town of Zippalanda, known from the Hittite sources as a seat of the cult of the Storm God.

Contributions to this volume, covering all shores of the Black Sea, draw on a mix of archaeological evidence, epigraphy and written sources to explore the activities and characteristics of those that inhabited or colonised the Black Sea area, as well as those that visited, acted in, or influenced the region, from the archaic to Roman periods.

The fluidity of myth and history in antiquity and the ensuing rapidity with which these notions infiltrated and cross-fertilized one another has repeatedly attracted the scholarly interest. The understanding of myth as a phenomenon imbued with social and historical nuances allows for more than one methodological approaches. Within the wider context of interdisciplinary exchange of ideas, the present volume returns to origins, as it traces and registers the association and interaction between myth and history in various literary genres in Greek and Roman antiquity (i.e. an era when the scientific definitions of and distinctions between myth and history had not yet been perceived as such, let alone fully shaped and implemented), providing original ideas, new interpretations and (re)evaluations of key texts and less well-known passages, close readings, and catholic overviews. The twenty-four chapters of this volume expand from Greek epos to lyric poetry, historiography, dramatic poetry and even beyond, to genres of Roman era and late antiquity. It is the editors’ hope that this volume will appeal to students and academic researchers in the areas of classics, social and political history, archaeology, and even social anthropology.