What is a city, and what forms did urbanization take in different times and places? How do peoples and nations define themselves and perceive foreigners? Questions like these serve as the framework for The Ancient Mediterranean World: From the Stone Age to A.D. 600. This book provides a concise overview of the history of the Mediterranean world, from Paleolithic times through the rise of Islam in the seventh century A.D. It traces the origins of the civilizations around the Mediterranean--including ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, Israel, Greece, and Rome--and their interactions over time. The Ancient Mediterranean World goes beyond political history to explore the lives of ordinary men and women and investigate topics such as the relationships between social classes, the dynamics of the family, the military and society, and aristocratic values. It introduces students not only to the ancient texts on which historians rely, but also to the art and architecture that reveal how people lived and how they understood ideas like love, death, and the body. Numerous illustrations, chronological charts, excerpts from ancient texts, and in-depth discussions of specific art objects and historical methods are included. Text boxes containing primary source materials examine such diverse subjects as warfare in early Mesopotamia, sculpting the body in classical Greece, the young women of Sappho's chorus, and early descriptions of the Huns. Combining excellent chronological coverage with a clear, concise narrative, The Ancient Mediterranean World is an ideal text for undergraduate courses in ancient history and ancient civilization.

This general reader's history of the ancient mediterranean combines a thorough grasp of the scholarship of the day with an great historian's gift for imaginative reconstruction and inspired analogy. Extensive notes allow the reader to appreciate thestate of scholarship at the time of writing, the scale and breadth of Braudel's learning and the points where orthodoxy has changed, sometimes vindicating Braudel, sometimes proving him wrong. Above all the book offers us the chance to situate Braudel's mediterranean, born of a lifetime's love and knowledge, more clearly in the climates of the sea's history.

This book uses network ideas to explore how the sea connected communities across the ancient Mediterranean. We look at the complexity of cultural interaction, and the diverse modes of maritime mobility through which people and objects moved. It will be of interest to Mediterranean specialists, ancient historians, and maritime archaeologists.

In 1482 Francesco Berlinghieri produced the Geographia, a book of over 100 folio leaves describing the world in Italian verse interleaved with lavishly engraved maps. Roberts demonstrates that the Geographia represents the moment of transition between printing and manuscript culture, while forming a critical base for the rise of modern cartography.

Written by eminent classical scholar Michael Grant. The Ancient Mediterranean is a wonderfully revealing, unusually comprehensive history of all the peoples who lived around the Mediterranean from about 15,000 B.C. to the time of Constantine (306-337 A.D.). Many volumes, including Professor Grant's own previous works, trace the histories of the great civilizations of Greece and Rome. But this unique work looks at the influences and cultures of the entire region, including Egypt, Israel, Crete, Carthage, Ionia and the Eastern colonies. Syria, and the Etruscans, as well as the Greek and Roman states. Drawing on archaeology, geography, anthropology, and economics. Professor Grant shows how the great Oriental civilizations—Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, Persia—originated attitudes and institutions ultimately passed on to the West. He describes the effect on the people and their achievements of the long, irregular coastline, the mountainous terrain surrounding small fertile plains, the typical plant life of olive and grape, and the rapidly changing weather. Further, he investigates how the demographic factors around this deep and stormy sea caused or influenced the great periods of ancient history, such as that of fifth-century Athens and of Rome in the first century A.D. Appealing and fascinating reading, this impeccably researched history brings a fresh perspective to understanding our ancient heritage.

This book provides both a detailed introduction to the vivid and exciting period of `late antiquity' and a direct challenge to conventional views of the end of the Empire.

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An environmental history of the mountain areas of Turkey, Greece, Italy, Spain, and Morocco.