Embriodery in Ancient Egypt

Morris, Frances

Bulletin of the Needle and Bobbin Club, Vol 2. No. 1 (1917)

Abstract

The discovery of fine linen and needles in Egyptian tombs of the First Dynasty (3400 B.C.) which according to scriptural chronology dates back to the days of Noah, makes one realise that the people of Old
Testament times were, after all, human beings like ourselves, with everyday needs that required practical solution. To meet such needs these early Egyptians modelled beautiful pottery, carved exquisite vessels of alabaster and wove linen of the finest texture; but nothing of a decorative quality remains to us save a few archaic line patterns found on some of the vases.

Click here to read this article from the Bulletin of the Needle and Bobbin Club

The Stonehenge Riverside Project: exploring the Neolithic landscape of Stonehenge

By Mike Parker Pearson, Joshua Pollard, Colin Richards, Julian Thomas, Christ Tilley and Kate Welhem

Documenta Prehistorica, Vol.35 (2008)

Abstract: The Stonehenge Riverside Project is a collaborative enterprise directed by six academics from five UK universities, investigating the place of Stonehenge within its contemporary landscape. In this contribution, a series of novel approaches being employed on the project are outlined before the results of investigations at the Greater Stonehenge Cursus, Woodhenge, the Cuckoo Stone and Durrington Walls are discussed.

Click here to read this article from the University of Ljubljana

Click here to visit the The Stonehenge Riverside Project website

Toga and Dagger: Espionage in Ancient Rome

Sheldon, Rose Mary

Military History Quarterly, (Autumn, 2000)

Abstract

The Romans prided themselves on being a people who won their battles the hard way. Roman writers claimed that their army did not defeat its enemies by trickery or deceit but by superior force of arms, and for the most part they were right. The Roman legions could outstrip almost any opponent in maneuverability and discipline. By relying on sound tactics, strategic methods, and superior logistics, the Roman army made itself the most reliable killing machine in the history of pre-mechanized warfare. It has been estimated that the Romans’ standard weapon, the gladius, or Spanish short sword, accounted for more deaths than any other weapon before the invention of firearms.

What need would such a people have for spying or covert action? Were the Romans exactly as they portrayed themselves–too noble and upright to resort to subterfuge? Was it only their enemies who relied on dirty tricks and clandestine operations? Although they wanted others to believe this, the historical record shows that, on the contrary, the Romans used a full range of covert intelligence techniques, as we would expect from any power that aspired to world empire.

Click here to read this article from Military History Quarterly

History of spine surgery in the ancient and medieval worlds

By James Tait Goodrich

Neurosurgery Focus, Vol. 16:1 (2004)

Introduction: There is a paucity of surviving texts from ancient and medieval times that can shed light on the early development of spine surgery. Nevertheless, the author reviews many of the available books and fragments and discusses early developments in the field of spine surgery from the point of view of physicians’ personalities, general themes, and actual surgical practices. For purposes of an overview and to highlight changing trends in spine surgery, he divides the paper into four eras of medicine: 1) Egyptian and Babylonian; 2) Greek and early Byzantine; 3) Arabic; and 4) medieval.

The early development of surgery of the spine is rather sparse from the point of view of literature. Very few writings from the ancient world have survived. Ancient medicine, compared with its modern successor, lacked several essentials such as an understanding of anatomy, recognition of the concept of disease, and comprehension of the origin of illness in an organic system. The failure to grasp these vital principles retarded the practice of medicine and of surgery itself. The practice of neurosurgery and surgery of the spine did not really develop as a discrete specialty until the 20th century. Despite these limitations I will review some of the existent materials that deal with the development of spine surgery in ancient and medieval worlds.

Click here to read this article from Ars Cerebri

See also our feature on Ancient Medicine

Byzantine Intelligence Service

Dvornik, Francis

Origins of intelligence services: Chapter 3 – the ancient Near East, Persia, Greece, Rome, Byzantium, the Arab Muslim Empires, the Mongol Empire, China, Muscovy, (Rutgers University Press, 1974)

Abstract

The Byzantine Empire, often regarded as the heir of the Roman Empire, was rather its continuation. This continuation was more evident at the time when new invasions deprived the empire of its flourishing provinces in the East and West, definitely breaking through the Roman limes, which had been defended successfully for centuries by the Roman Legions. Rome found it necessary to surrender her primacy and the privilege of being the residential city of the emperors to a new Rome on the shores of the Bosporus, named Constantinople after its founder Constantine the Great. Nevertheless, that city’s inhabitants, and the population of the eastern provinces, continued to think of themselves as Romans, or “Romaioi” in their native Greek language.

It should also be stressed that from the time of Constantine, the ,empire developed along different religious lines, and the emperors regarded themselves as appointed by God, not only to reign, but also to protect and extend the Christian religion, now victorious over the pagan gods and over those principles which had prevailed in Rome and the western provinces.

Click here to read this article from Origins of intelligence services

The Seleukid Empire between Orientalism and Hellenocentrism: Writing the history of Iran in the Third and Second Centuries BCE

By Rolf Strootman

Paper given at the Center for Persian Studies, University of California Irvine (2011)

Introduction: Wedged between the Achaemenid and Parthian periods in Iranian history, there is the so-called Hellenistic Age, in which the lands of Greater Iran were part of the political organization known as the Seleukid Empire. For two centuries the Seleukid Empire (312-64 BCE) was the largest of the three Macedonian empires that had emerged after the death of Alexander the Great. It was created by, and later named after, Seleukos I Nikator (‘the Victorious’) from his satrapy of Babylonia, incorporating and transforming the infrastructure of the preceding Achaemenid Empire. It was an archetypal imperial polity: a huge, composite hegemonial system characterized by wide ethnic, cultural, religious and political diversity—like most premodern imperial organizations, the empire can be best described as a centralized network of power relations rather than a rigidly structured ‘state’. The Seleukid Empire was in essence a military organization exacting tribute. Kingship was charismatic and intensely martial. Imperial ideology was universalistic, the self-presentation of the Seleukid monarch a continuation and elaboration of the age-old Near Eastern notion of a Great King. The empire in its heyday stretched from the Pamir Mountains to the Aegean Sea, reaching its greatest extent around 200 under Antiochos III the Great. From c.150 the empire declined due to internal dynastic conflicts, as a result of which the empire was unable to halt Parthian expansion on the Iranian plateau. In 64 the Seleukid dynasty, by then reduced to a small kingdom in northern Syria, disappeared from history virtually unnoticed when Pompey took the royal title from the last Seleukids and turned Syria into a Roman provincia.

Click here to read this article from Oudheid

Mineral Exploration and Fort Placement in Roman Britain

By Richard Dibon-Smith

Published Online (1985-1990)

Introduction: “Britain yields gold, silver, and other metals, to make it worth conquering.” Tacitus (De Vita Agricolæ)

It has been common practice for historians of technology to interpret the colonial systems of the ancient world as little more than mining enterprises operated for the enrichment of the conquering country. Two examples of this approach are the works of Alexander Del Mar and Thomas Rickard. Del Mar’s account, written in the late nineteenth century, and Rickard’s, in the 1930s, both describe military occupation and domination in essentially mineralogical terms, particularly when it comes to the Romans: “Spain was exploited to enrich the patricians; Britain was exploited to enrich the emperors; after which it was abandoned to six centuries of anarchy and decay,” according to Del Mar.

Unfortunately Del Mar’s disdain for citing specific evidence considerably weakens his argument. His claim that “the gold quartz mines opened by the Romans [in Britain] are too numerous to mention” is not only unconvincing but still—over one hundred years later—unsubstantiated.

For Rickard’s part, he bases his entire claim from the single brief comment by Tacitus quoted above. While Rickard presents good evidence to show that Britain first came under the notice of Mediterranean cultures because of her store of minerals (mostly tin) neither Rickard nor Del Mar nor anyone else until very recently has been very successful in demonstrating anything more than rather casual links between Roman military occupation and mineral exploitation, whether in Britain or anywhere else.

Click here to read this article from Richard Dibon-Smith’s website

Growth and decline in complex hunter-gatherer societies: a case study from the Jomon period Sannai Maruyama site, Japan

By Junko Habu

Antiquity, Vol. 82 (2008)

Abstract: The Sannai Maruyama site (3900-2300 BC) is one of the largest known from Japan’s Jomon period (14 000-300 BC). This study shows that over 1500 years the number of dwellings, their size, the type of stone tools and the fondness for figurines varied greatly. Nor was it a story of gradual increase in complexity: the settlement grew in intensity up to a peak associated with numerous grinding stones, and then declined to a smaller settlement containing larger buildings, many arrowheads and virtually no figurines. Using a bundle of ingenious analyses, the author explains what happened.

Introduction: Understanding the conditions, causes and consequences of cultural change has been an important research focus in anthropological archaeology. To explain the mechanisms of long-term cultural change among hunter-gatherers, and their transition to agriculture, scholars have considered environmental change, technological developments, subsistence practice, mobility, settlement size, population pressure, craft specialisation, long-distance trade, social inequality, labour organisation, historical contingency, human agency, creativity and cultural logic. Over the past couple of decades, there has been a general shift away from ecological models that focus solely on subsistence settlement systems to alternative models that emphasise the importance of social landscapes and human agency. To test these competing models of the mechanisms of long-term cultural change, and to explain historically unique trajectories of various hunter-gatherer groups, solid archaeological case studies from different parts of the world are needed.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the mechanisms of settlement growth and decline in ‘complex’ hunter-gatherer societies using a case study from a prehistoric Jomon period site in Japan. The focus of this paper, the Sannai Maruyama site, is dated to the Early and Middle Jomon periods, and is currently the largest known Jomon settlement. Using data from Sannai Maruyama, I argue that in order to understand the mechanisms of longterm change it is necessary to examine multiple lines of evidence, including environment, subsistence-settlement, ceremonial practices and crafts/trade at a given site or sites, and identify the order in which changes in each of these aspects occurred.

Click here to read this article from the University of California

Foreign Policy of Agesilaus

By Nick Doyle

Corvus Classics Journal (2010)

Introduction: Agesilaus II was a Eurypontid king who ruled between 444 BC and 360 BC. The bulk of his contribution to Sparta’s foreign policy happened when he was recalled from campaigning in Asia because of the threat of a coalition of Greek states at home. The policy he favoured in Greece was an aggressive expansion of Spartan domination through disciplining the member states of the Peloponnesian League, such as Mantinea and Phlius, and a constant pursuit of an anti-Theban policy. He was not motivated, as some have argued, by the desire to return to Asia in order to campaign against the Persians, which can be seen in his contribution to the creation of the King’s Peace. He was instead motivated to push the boundaries of Sparta’s power further north outside of the Peloponnese. Agesilaus was dogged by rabid factionalism from home and the multiple factions led to it being harder to push forward his agenda. The main consequence of his policies was the alienation of many member states of the Peloponnesian League. Despite the battle of Leuctra ending Spartan hegemony in Greece, Agesilaus’ policies were not directly responsible for Sparta’s end, they only expedited it.

Click here to read this article from Corvus Classics Journal

Ritual Dining, Drinking, and Dedication at Stymphalos: A Case Study in the Influence of “Popular” Culture on Religion

Stone, Peter J.

Master of Arts, University of Cincinnati, Arts and Sciences : Classics, (2007)

Abstract

This study examines ritual dining, drinking and dedication at 2nd century B.C. Stymphalos as it appears through the lens of surviving physical evidence. This evidence is primarily ceramic, the vessels used for preparing and consuming meals and drinking. The material under discussion was found within a ritual dining building (Building A) in the sanctuary of Athena on the acropolis of ancient Stymphalos. The analysis I conduct will provide evidence that the activities in the building were divided between preparation and/or consumption of meals in the south room of the building and drinking and the storage of dedicated drinking vessels and lamps in the north room. My second aim is to explore “ritual” dining at Stymphalos as an example of an Ancient Greek activity that was “religious” but had a very important “social” element. I consider the ceramic objects found within Building A, and the activities they provide evidence for, against the backdrop of Greek cultural practices in general. I also make focused comparisons with religious practices documented in other religions, ancient and modern, to show that religious practice is often influenced by culturally embedded social realities.

Click here to read this thesis from University of Cincinnati