Greg Woolf
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, £25 HARDBACK
ISBN 978-0199664733
Greg Woolf is an incisive scholar with an ambition to write grand syntheses. This is to be welcomed. Though he has contributed some very important specialist monographs – like his Becoming Roman: the origins of provincial civilisation in Gaul, a detailed empirical study of the Romanisation process in the Late Republic and Early Empire – he is also interested in general overviews. This latest example is exceptionally ambitious.
Generalism is itself a specialism, and it is as necessary as it has ever been. Many (perhaps most) scholars are reluctant to attempt it, fearful that stepping outside their immediate specialism, their comfort zone, they may trip and fall.
What Greg Woolf, a Classicist, ancient historian, and archaeologist who specialises in the Greek and Roman worlds, offers here is an overview of 3,500 years of ancient urbanism. His focus is the Mediterranean Classical world we know well, but he delves back in time to explore the Bronze Age civilisations of the Ancient Near East, which perhaps provided models for the subsequent development of urbanism. So the Greeks and Romans are foregrounded, but we learn too about Sumerian, Egyptian, Phoenician, Cretan, Persian, and other urban traditions.
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ROMAN DISCOVERIES AT ANCIENT AUGUSTODUNUM
More than 230 graves have been uncovered at a necropolis in the French city of Autun, revealing a diverse mix in burial practices over a period of nearly 200 years, as well as luxury grave goods from the 3rd and 4th centuries AD that highlight the wealth of some of its ancient inhabitants.
SHAPING THE WORLD: SCULPTURE FROM PREHISTORY TO NOW
The sculptor Antony Gormley and the art historian and critic Martin Gayford have been talking about sculpture with each other for 20 years.
Amelia Edwards (1831-1892)
“I am essentially a worker, and a hard worker, and this I have been since my early girlhood.”
THE GREAT BEYOND
The ancient Greeks thought much about the dead – how their remains should be disposed of, how their spirits might be summoned, how malignant they could be if unavenged. Classicist David Stuttard brings us face to face with the Greek dead.
INTO THE VALLEY OF THE QUEENS
The Great Royal Wife of Ramesses II, Nefertari, was buried in one of the most spectacular tombs of Egypt’s Valley of the Queens. Well-educated and well-travelled, Nefertari played a crucial part in the political life of the pharaoh, and her importance was reflected through her magnificently decorated tomb. Lucia Marchini speaks to Jennifer Casler Price to find out more.
DEIR EL-BAHRI, 1894
Tensions were already high among the archaeologists, surveyors, and artists of the Archaeological Survey of Egypt in 1891 when an eventful dispute arose on Christmas Eve.
PUSHING BOUNDARIES
When the Etruscans expanded to the south and the vast plains of Campania, they found a land of cultural connections and confrontations, as luxurious grave goods found across the region reveal. An exhibition at the National Archaeological Museum in Naples sheds light on these ancient Italians at the frontier. Paolo Giulierini, director of the museum, is our guide.
CUZCO 'CENTRE AND HEAD OF ALL THE LAND'
Cuzco was the heart of the vast Inca empire, but all changed in the 16th century when the capital was conquered by Spanish invaders. Michael J Schreffler investigates the Inca city, and how it went from the centre of one empire to the periphery of another.
A STUDY IN PURPLE
A tiny speck of purple paint from the 2nd century AD may yield clues to how ancient artists created the extraordinary portrait panels that accompanied mummified bodies into the afterlife.
Rome In The 8th Century: A History In Art
John Osborne CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, £75 HARDBACK - ISBN 978-1108834582
