Archaeologies of the Greek Past: Landscape, Monuments, and Memories

by Susan E. Alcock

• ISBN13: 9780521813556
• ISBN10: 0521813557
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-09-09
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Social memory - the shared remembrances of group experience - creates shared identity, and provides people with both an image of their past and a design for their future. But how are we to conceive the memories of past peoples such as, for example, the ancient Greeks? This book makes a strong case for the use of archaeology, particularly the evidence of landscape and of monuments, to trace patterns in commemoration and forgetfulness. Three detailed case studies (early Roman Greece, Hellenistic and Roman Crete, and Messenia in Archaic to Hellenistic times) focus on societies undergoing different types of social transformation. Material evidence allows us to observe how groups responded to these challenges, and how they made different uses of the past, in the past.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations	viii
Preface	xi
List of abbreviations	xiv
Archaeologies of memory	1	(35)
Old Greece within the empire	36	(63)
Cretan inventions	99	(33)
Being Messenian	132	(44)
Three short stories about Greek memory	176	(8)
Bibliography	184	(29)
Index	213