Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
  1. Home
  2. Browse subjects
  3. Classical Studies
  4. Ancient history
  5. Content listing

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

24595 results in Ancient history

Page 1 of 1230

Legal Curses and Politics in Archaic and Classical Sicily
  • Sofia Bianchi Mancini
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    August 2026
    Print publication:
    31 August 2026
  • Sicilian curse practices have often been misread through Athenocentric paradigms. This book repositions Sicily at the centre of inquiry, offering the first holistic analysis of legal curse tablets (defixiones iudiciariae) from the sixth to the fourth centuries BCE, with particular focus on Selinous, Akragas and Kamarina. Moving beyond isolated textual readings, it situates these inscriptions within the legal, social and political environments that shaped their production. The study provides new editions and drawings of key tablets – revisited after decades of neglect – while addressing palaeographic, chronological and editorial issues. For the first time, it also assembles a complete set of images of all major examples, making them fully accessible. By embedding curses within civic life and predominantly elite rivalries, it reveals them as 'paralegal' instruments in the renegotiation of status, authority and power. Sicilian legal curses thus emerge as independent from, rather than appendices to, their better-known Attic and Athenian counterparts.

Locality and Agency in the Iron Age Mediterranean
  • Edited by Erich Kistler, Christian Heitz, Birgit Öhlinger, Peter Van Dommelen
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    August 2026
    Print publication:
    31 August 2026
  • Against the background of the interest in ancient Mediterranean connectivity and globalization, the present volume examines local places and local communities. Exploring the interplay between the local and the global, the focus shifts from long-distance connections and 'global' trends to the local dimensions of Mediterranean interactions, highlighting how local contexts engaged with their long-distance counterparts. Given the transformative nature of this period and region, our focus is firmly on the western Mediterranean during the first half of the first millennium BCE. Discussions of the local places and local communities of the Iron Age West Mediterranean are wrapped around the twin notions of agency and locality. We argue that everyday local agency produces locality in an ongoing dialectic, ranging from collaboration to struggle, with globalizing influences and colonial forces. The eighteen West Mediterranean case studies are organized around the themes of 'Indigeneity and locality', 'agency and empowerment' and 'practice and production'.

Japan and Ancient Greece
  • Culture and Possession
  • Michael Lucken
  • Translated by Malcolm DeBevoise
  • Edited by Phillip Mitsis
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    July 2026
    Print publication:
    31 July 2026
  • Japan and ancient Greece. Placed side by side, these two concepts give the impression of something very strange, a sort of chimera - half Apollo, half samurai; half Venus, half geisha - set on a ground that is at once white and blue like the Cyclades, dark green and vermillion like Shintō shrines. How could two countries so distant from each other be joined together to form a coherent image, to give birth to a meaningful concept? In this groundbreaking study - translated into English for the first time - Michael Lucken analyses the manifold ways in which Japan has adopted and engaged with ancient Greece in the period from the Meiji restoration to the present. This invaluable and timely volume not only demonstrates that the influence of ancient Greece has permeated all aspects of Japanese public and cultural life, but ultimately illustrates that the reception of Classics is a global phenomenon.

The Archaic and Early Classical Greek World
  • Using Coins as Sources
  • Keith Rutter
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    July 2026
    Print publication:
    31 July 2026
  • The western tradition of coinage began in Asia Minor around 650 BCE and from there the idea spread quite rapidly to other parts of the Mediterranean. This book describes and evaluates developments in coinage down to the period of the Persian Wars, ending in 479. Early coinage was not monolithic. The new medium of exchange proved attractive to a variety of rulers and societies – kings, dynasts, tribes, city–states with varying forms of governance. The physical characteristics of the coins produced were another source of difference. Initially there was no fixed idea of what a coin should look like, and there were several experiments before a consensus emerged around a small, circular metal object with a design, or type, on both sides. This book provides students with an authoritative introduction, with all technical terms and methodologies explained, as well as illustrations of over 200 important coins with detailed captions.

Roman Rural Archaeology
  • Society, Economy, and Culture
  • Edited by Gijs Willem Tol, Astrid Van Oyen
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    July 2026
    Print publication:
    31 July 2026
  • The Roman world was a rural world. Most of the Roman population lived in the countryside and had their immediate rural surroundings as their social and economic frame of reference. For much of the Roman period, rural property provided the basis for political power and urban development, and it was in rural areas that the agricultural crops that sustained an expanding empire were grown and many of the most important Roman industries were situated. Rural areas witnessed the presence of some of the most durable symbols of Roman imperial hegemony, such as aqueducts and paved roads. It was mainly here that native and Roman traditions collided and were negotiated. This volume, containing 30 chapters by leading scholars, leverages recent methodological advancements and new interpretative frameworks to provide a holistic view, with an empire-wide reach, of the importance of Roman rural areas in the success of ancient Rome.

Serving the Christian State in Late Antiquity
  • Robin Whelan
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    June 2026
    Print publication:
    30 June 2026
  • How did the state become Christian in late antiquity? Many scholars have traced the Christianization of the Roman world in the centuries following the conversion of the emperor Constantine in 312 CE. Robin Whelan, however, turns his attention away from the usual suspects in such accounts-emperors, empresses, bishops, ascetics, and other holy people-to consider a surprisingly understudied set of late ancient Christians: those who served the state as courtiers, bureaucrats, and governors. By tracing the requirements of regimes, the expectations of subjects, and patterns of engagement with churches and churchmen, he argues that that those who served the state in late antiquity could be seen-and indeed, could see themselves-as distinctly Christian authority figures-just as much as the emperors and kings whom they served, and the bishops and ascetics whom they governed. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Appropriation and Religion in the Greek and Roman Worlds
  • Edited by Andreas Bendlin, Jitse H. F. Dijkstra
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    June 2026
    Print publication:
    30 June 2026
  • Appropriation, 'making something one's own', is a modern way of thinking about social practices. This volume highlights the potential of this critical concept for the investigation of everyday religious practice – and more generally, everyday social practice – in Antiquity. Appropriation foregrounds the agency of the social actors against the strictures imposed by the dominant culture's social order, whose ideas and practices they make their own, altering them in multiple, often subtle ways. How does appropriation transform pre-existing, traditional practices? What are the dominant structures against which the actors operate? Which tactics do they use? These are only some of the questions this volume seeks to address. The critical term 'appropriation' has yet to be fully discovered by classicists; the case studies in this volume, ranging from classical Greece to Late Antique Egypt, endeavour to demonstrate its pertinence to the study of religion in Antiquity.

Belief in Greek and Roman Religion
  • Edited by Ralph Anderson, Pramit Chaudhuri
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    May 2026
    Print publication:
    31 May 2026
  • For the Greeks and Romans, the world was full of gods, but this fundamental aspect of their experience poses major challenges to modern understanding. The concept of belief has been central to meeting those challenges but has itself been hotly debated, and has at times even been rejected as a supposedly Christianising anachronism. Others, meanwhile, have argued that a culture-neutral model of belief is both possible and essential, while the advent of the cognitive science of religion has offered new possibilities for understanding ancient religious worlds. The essays in this volume trace the historical development of the modern concept of belief, examine ancient debates about the nature of human knowledge of the divine, and draw on perspectives from anthropology, cognitive science and early modern history as well as classical studies to explore the nature and role of belief in Greek and Roman religion in ancient literature, society, experience and practice.

Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age Economies of Mesopotamia
  • 4th and 3rd Millennia BCE
  • Marcella Frangipane, Lucia Mori
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    May 2026
    Print publication:
    31 May 2026
  • The Element reconstructs economic developments in the crucial phase of State formation in Mesopotamia, from the 4th to early 3rd millennium BCE, trying to understand how interrelating environmental, social, economic, and political factors in the two main areas of Mesopotamia profoundly changed the structures of societies and transformed the relations between social components, giving rise to increasing inequality and strengthening political institutions. The interrelation between economic changes and state formation and urbanization is analyzed. Mesopotamia represents a foundational case study to understand the processes that transformed the function of economy from being an instrument to satisfy community needs to become a means of producing “wealth” for privileged categories. These processes varied in characteristics and timescales depending on environmental conditions and organizational forms. But wherever they took place, far-reaching changes occurred resulting in emergent hierarchies and new political systems. Reflecting on these changes highlights phenomena still affecting our societies today.

Diodoros of Sicily: Bibliotheke Historike
  • Translation, with Introduction and Notes
  • Volume 2, Books 16-17: The Rise of Macedon under Philip II and the Conquests of Alexander III (the Great)
  • Edited and translated by Phillip Harding
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    April 2026
    Print publication:
    30 April 2026
  • Diodoros of Sicily (c.90–c.30 BC) spent thirty years producing an encyclopedic compendium of world history from its mythical beginnings to his own day. His is the only surviving, connected account of Greek affairs from 480/79 to 302/1. The books translated in this volume offer the best account of the career of Philip II of Macedon, his conquest of Greece and his assassination, as well as the earliest extant history of the career of Alexander the Great. Book 16 is also the main source for the Persian re-conquest of Egypt by Artaxerxes III (Okhos), the seizure of Delphi by the Phokians in the Third Sacred War, and Athens' defeat by a coalition of her allies in the Social War. The translation is supported by extensive notes, and the Introduction examines Diodoros' moral and educational purpose in writing, the plan of his work, his sources, and his qualities as a historian.

The Cambridge History of International Law
  • Volume 4, International Law in the Middle East and the Mediterranean during Antiquity
  • General editor Randall Lesaffer
  • Edited by Jesper Eidem, Jacob Giltaij, Kaius Tuori
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    April 2026
    Print publication:
    30 April 2026
  • Volume IV of The Cambridge History of International Law explores the existence and scope of international law in Antiquity, spanning approximately 1800 BCE to 650 CE. During this period, the territories surrounding the Mediterranean engaged in various forms of cross-border interaction, from trade wars to diplomacy; this traffic was regulated through a patchwork of laws, regulations and treaties. However, the existence of international law as a coherent concept in Antiquity remains contested. We can speak only about 'territories', which include empires, tribal lands and cities, not about 'countries' or 'nations' in the modern sense. Rather than offering an overview of legal relations between territories surrounding the Mediterranean in Antiquity, this volume presents a set of case studies centred around various topics commonly associated with the modern idea of international law. Together, these studies result in a novel but accessible perspective on the (in)existence of international law in Antiquity.

The Cambridge Companion to Classics and Race
  • Edited by Rosa Andújar, Elena Giusti, Jackie Murray
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    April 2026
    Print publication:
    30 April 2026
  • Race as a concept has had a fraught role in the history of Classics, woven into its formation as an academic discipline. While the texts and artefacts of the ancient Mediterranean world provide complex understandings of what race might mean and how it might operate, they have also provided fodder for modern racial ideologies. This Companion offers a wide-ranging and groundbreaking overview of 'race' and 'racism' in ancient Mediterranean cultures as well as in the formation of Classics as a discipline. Through twenty-four chapters written by a team of international scholars, it clarifies the terms and concepts that are central to contemporary theories of race and explores the extent to which they can be applied to the study of the ancient Mediterranean world, in and beyond Greece and Rome. It also showcases various concrete examples of how Classics has been shaped by the intertwined histories of race and colonialism.

The Cambridge Companion to the Greek Iron Age
  • Edited by Jane B. Carter, Carla M. Antonaccio
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    April 2026
    Print publication:
    30 April 2026
  • Once considered a period of poverty and isolation, devoid of impressive material culture, the Iron Age is now regarded as a pivotal era. It witnessed how the ancient Greeks lost and regained literacy, created lifelike figural representations and monumental architecture, and eventually established new and complex civic polities. The Companion to the Greek Iron Age offers an up to date account of this critical epoch of Greek antiquity. Including archaeological surveys of different regions, it presents focused discussions of the Early Iron Age cultures and states with which Greek regions had contacts and which are integral for understanding cultural developments in this formative period. They include Cyprus, Syro-Anatolia, Italy, and Egypt, regions in which, as in Greece, the Early Iron Age is diverse and unevenly documented. Offering a synthesis of the key developments, The Companion to the Greek Iron Age also demonstrates how new archaeological and theoretical approaches have enlarged and clarified our understanding of this seminal period.

Architecture and Politics in Mycenaean Greece
  • Stoneworking, Labor, and Regional Ties in the Late Bronze Age
  • Nicholas G. Blackwell
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    April 2026
    Print publication:
    30 April 2026
  • In Late Bronze Age Greece, Mycenaean authorities commissioned impressive funerary monuments, fortifications, and palatial complexes, reflecting their advanced engineering and architectural skills. Yet the degree of connectivity among Mycenaean administrative centers remains contested. In this book, Nicholas Blackwell explores craft relationships by analyzing artisan mobility and technological transfer across certain sites. These labor networks offer an underexplored perspective for interpreting the period's geopolitical dynamics. Focusing on iconic monuments like the Lion Gate relief, the refurbished Grave Circle A, and the Treasury of Atreus, Blackwell reconsiders the topographical and political evolution of Mycenae and the Argolid in the 14th-13th centuries BCE.  Notable stone-working links between the Argolid and northern Boeotia also imply broader state-level relationships.  His analysis contributes fresh ideas to ongoing research into the organization of the Mycenaean world.

Inscriptions from the Age of Constantine
  • Editions, Translations, and Essays
  • Edited and translated by Raymond Van Dam
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    April 2026
    Print publication:
    30 April 2026
  • The reign of Constantine, Roman emperor from 306 to 337, was one of the most important periods in world history. Although literary texts often represented him as the first Christian emperor, the inscriptions engraved on monuments, statue bases, and milestones offer alternative perspectives. Inscriptions highlight the influence of the other emperors, the prominence of senators at Rome, the civic traditions for praising benefactors in provincial cities, the logistics of the economy, and the abiding importance of traditional cults. This book includes the Greek and Latin texts of over 800 inscriptions from the early fourth century, with translations and critical annotations. An extended Introduction and almost 200 short essays provide context by explaining the issues and problems, correlating the literary texts, and comparing the legends and images of coins. Without the emperor as the constant focus, the Age of Constantine becomes all the more fascinating.

Living Precariously in the Roman World
  • A Social Archaeology of Inequality
  • Astrid Van Oyen
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    April 2026
    Print publication:
    31 May 2026
  • Literary and archaeological evidence suggests that the Roman world was profoundly unequal. What did this mean in material terms for people at the bottom of the social hierarchy? Astrid Van Oyen here investigates the lived experiences of non-elite people in the Roman world through qualitative analysis of archaeological data. Supported by theoretical insights from the material turn, development economics, and feminist studies, her study of precarity cuts across the experiences of workers, the enslaved, women, and conquered populations. Van Oyen considers how precarity shaped these people's relation to production, consumption, time, place, and community. Drawing on empirically rich archaeological data from Roman Italy, Britain, Gaul, and the Iberian Peninsula, Van Oyen challenges long-held assumptions and generates new insights into the lives of the non-elite population. Her novel approaches will inspire future studies, enabling archaeologists, historians, and anthropologists to retrieve the unheard voices of the past.
Climate and Environment in the Southern Levant, 1300–300 BCE

Climate and Environment in the Southern Levant, 1300–300 BCE
  • 1300–300 BCE
  • Dafna Langgut
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    April 2026
    Print publication:
    30 April 2026
  • Past climate fluctuations significantly shaped human ways of life. This Element reconstructs the Southern Levant climate (ca. 1300–300 BCE) using high-resolution, well-dated paleoclimate records. Results show a 150-year arid phase ending the Late Bronze Age, likely driving the collapse of eastern Mediterranean complex societies. The Iron Age I saw a return to humid climate conditions, fostering highland settlement expansion and supporting the rise of the biblical kingdoms. This was one of the region's most profound cycles of collapse and revival. During Iron Age II, climate conditions were moderate, similar to today. The Achaemenid period began with brief aridity, followed by renewed humidity. Pollen evidence, along with additional data such as charcoal remains, was employed to trace environmental changes, including variations in the composition of natural vegetation. Human impacts on the environment were also identified, including fruit tree cultivation, deforestation, overgrazing, the introduction of new plant species, and landscape terracing.

The Topography and Monuments of Ancient Rome
  • C. Brian Rose
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    April 2026
    Print publication:
    30 April 2026
  • Tracing the development of Rome over a span of 1200 years, The Topography and Monuments of Ancient Rome offers an overview of the changing appearance of the city and the social, political, and military factors that shaped it. C. Brian Rose places Rome's architecture, coinage, inscriptions and monuments in historical context and offers a nuanced analysis regarding the evolution of the city and its monuments over time. He brings an interdisciplinary approach to his study, merging insights gained from cutting-edge techniques in archaeological research, such as remote sensing, core-sampling, palaeobotany, neutron-activation analysis, and isotopic analysis, with literary, epigraphic, and numismatic evidence. Rose also includes reconstructions of the ancient city that reflect the rapid developments in digital technology and mapping in the last three decades.  Aimed at scholars and students alike, Rose's study demonstrates how evidence can be drawn from a variety of approaches. It serves as a model for studying and viewing the growth and structure of ancient cities.

  • Chapter 7 - Inequality, Property, and Stratification

  • Edited by Kenneth Hirth, Pennsylvania State University, Timothy Earle, Northwestern University, Illinois
  • Book:
    Premodern Economies
    Published online:
    22 January 2026
    Print publication:
    31 March 2026, pp 153-179

  • Summary

    As economies become more complicated with increasing interdependence tied to exchange and specialization, inequality appears as an outcome of dispersed versus concentrated flows and accumulations of value that affect differences in well-being, power, and institutional formations. We look at the complicated institutional arrangements that favor or limit inequality, perhaps the most important of which is the development of institutional property and how it allowed control over production and distribution. The theoretical and empirical breadth of inequality is vast. For this comparative effort, we formulate an approach that can analyze inequalities in wealth and property from widely different social formations, including the segmentary societies of Pare, Tanzania, and Zuni in the American Southwest, chiefdoms in the Scandinavian Bronze Age (BA), and advanced states and empires such as Rome and the Inca. Within this broad spectrum, differences in the control of wealth, prestige, ranking and/or ascribed rank are intertwined but not necessarily overlapping. Our approach focusses on how access to and control over material wealth is distributed in our sample.

  • Chapter 8 - Commerce and the Marketplace

  • Edited by Kenneth Hirth, Pennsylvania State University, Timothy Earle, Northwestern University, Illinois
  • Book:
    Premodern Economies
    Published online:
    22 January 2026
    Print publication:
    31 March 2026, pp 180-202

  • Summary

    The development of commerce and integrated market exchange is perhaps one of the most dramatic factors determining the nature and evolution of human economies. Among other things, these developments become closely linked to urban communities and other central places as points to assemble and distribute labor and goods. These places, when they developed as part of the broader process of commercialization, were transformative, increasing the ease of day-by-day interactions, specialization, and freedom of movement.

Page 1 of 1230