Author: Bunny Waring
Date: 25th January 2021
Amidst adapting to e-learning, preparing lectures and caring for students, staff here at the Classics Department have been busy. A key element of academic life is never resting on your laurels. Each lecturer has their own research passions and are constantly writing blogs, papers, books and articles about what they have discovered and why it matters. Here are some of the latest releases from Prof. Annalisa Marzano and Dr. Arietta Papaconstantinou!
Marzano, Annalisa (Ed.) 2020. Villas, Peasant Agriculture, and the Roman Rural Economy: Panel 3.15, Heidelberg: Propylaeum.
This edited volume includes presentations and proceedings of the 19th International Congress of Classical Archaeology held in Cologne/Bonn 2018 and centres around the theme of Archaeology and Economy in the Ancient World. The publication is open access and free to read and download, which you can do here:
Villas, Peasant Agriculture, and the Roman Rural Economy
Arietta Papaconstantinou, 2020. A Monk Deploring the Imitation of the Hagarenes by the Christians. UCP.
This sourcebook edited by Hurwitz, N., H., Sahner, C., Simonsohn, U. and Yarbrough, L. provides translations for Islamic studies of pre-modern age conversions. On pages 167-171 Dr Papaconstantinou provides a translation and introduction to the section regarding the Apocalypse of Samuel of Qalamūn.
Have a look inside: Conversion to Islam in the Pre-Modern Age.
Annalisa Marzano, 2021 The Casa della Regina Carolina (CRC) Project, Pompeii: Preliminary Report on 2018 and 2019 Field Seasons. Fasti Online.
In this open-access journal by Fasti Online’s Fold & R-Documents and Research Italy series, Prof. Marzano discusses the finds and interpretations of field work in Pompeii, alongside co-authors: Caitlín Barrett, Kathryn Gleason and Dafna Langguto (palynology). Free to access and download here: The Casa della Regina.
Arietta Papaconstantinou, 2020. The sound of a thousand tongues: visitors to Constantinople from the eastern provinces in the sixth century. YILLIK
On pages 179-183 of the second Annual of Istanbul Studies, Dr Papaconstantinou addresses sensory dimensions of Byzantine rituals. This journal article is free to read and download and you can do so here: The Sound of a Thousand Tongues.
Arietta Papaconstantinou, 2020. No mere scholarly pursuit: Fergus Millar and the Late Roman East. Ancient West and East.
On pages 239-246 of the Ancient West and East journal’s 19th volume, Dr Papaconstantinou recalls and critiques the late scholar Fergus Millar’s infatuation with the late Roman world. See what they have to say here: No Mere Scholarly Pursuit.
Dr Arietta Papaconstantinou published a co-edited conference volume ‘Le Proche-Orient de Justinien aux Abbassides’. This volume is the result of a conference held in Paris with the aim of exploring the impact of the seventh-century Arab conquests on population and settlement in the Near East and Egypt. The transfer of sovereignty from Byzantium to the Caliphate brought some obvious geo-political changes, which in the long term signalled the decline of some cities or regions, which had lost their hinterlands, and the rise of others which were much more strategically placed than before. The contributions in the volume build on thirty years of extremely fruitful archaeological investigations in the area, and paint an exciting new picture of a major transition, which shaped the wider Mediterranean world as we know it
The latest volume of the international series Pallas (vol. 86), published by the Presses Universitaires du Mirail, University of Toulouse, has been devoted to The Gods of Small Things, a volume that presents select articles from the international conference by the same name hosted by the Ure Museum and the Department of Classics at University of Reading in September 2009. The volume was edited by Dr. Amy Smith, Curator of the Ure Museum and Senior Lecturer in Classics at Reading, and Dr. Marianne Bergeron, who completed her PhD in Classics at Reading in 2010 and is now Project Curator in the Naukratis Project at the British Museum.Smith and Bergeron, along with Katerina Volioti, a current PhD candidate in Classics at Reading, co-organised the 2009 conference on the Gods of Small Things. Bergeron and Volioti have contributed articles to this volume as has Nick West, who has also just this term defended his PhD thesis at Reading.This volume investigates small and portable objects-small pots, figurines, loomweights, even shells-that functioned in a variety of non-commercial contexts in antiquity. Such objects are often fragmentary and/or overlooked, even by excavators. These items and assemblages, whether or not used as offerings, also inform us about the relationships between humans, their ancestors and gods.
We are happy to announce the publication of Dr Timothy Duff‘s annotated translation of Plutarch’s fourth- and third-century BC Greek Lives: Plutarch: the Age of Alexander, in the world famous Penguin series. The volume, which runs to almost 700 pages, includes translations, introductions and notes to 10 of Plutarch’s Lives covering a crucial period of Greek history which saw the collapse of Spartan power, the rise of Macedonia, the conquests of Alexander the Great, and the wars of his successors.Dr. Duff has already published extensively on Plutarch, including his landmark 1999 monograph, Plutarch’s Lives: Exploring Virtue and Vice (Oxford University Press). This new edition includes a revised version of Ian Scott-Kilvert’s earlier translations, plus a new general introduction, and new introductions and substantial historical and literary notes to each Life. It also includes new translations of the Life of Artaxerxes I, Great King of Persia from 405 to 359 BC, and of Eumenes of Cardia, one of Alexander’s officers.Lives included in the volume: Artaxerxes – Pelopidas – Dion – Timoleon – Demosthenes – Phocion – Alexander the Great – Eumenes – Demetrius Poliorcetes – Pyrrhus of Epirus.