- Title Pages
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- Part I A Credo
- Chapter 1 Archaeology
- Chapter 2 Greek Archaeology and Greek History
- Chapter 3 The New Archaeology and the Classical Archaeologist
- Chapter 4 A Paradigm Shift in Classical Archaeology?
- Chapter 5 Separate Tables? A Story of Two Traditions within One Discipline
- Part II The Early Iron Age in Greece
- Chapter 6 Metalwork as Evidence for Immigration in the Late Bronze Age
- Chapter 7 The Coming of the Iron Age in Greece: Europe's Earliest Bronze / Iron Transition
- Chapter 8 The Euboeans in Macedonia: A New Precedent for Westward Expansion?
- Chapter 9 The Rejection of Mycenaean Culture and the Oriental Connection
- Chapter 10 An Historical Homeric Society?
- Part III The Early Polis at Home and Abroad
- Chapter 11 Archaeology and the Rise of the Greek State
- Chapter 12 Heavy Freight in Archaic Greece
- Chapter 13 Interaction by Design: The Greek City State
- Chapter 14 The Economics of Dedication at Greek Sanctuaries
- Chapter 15 Archaeology and the Study of the Greek City
- Chapter 16 The Nature and Standing of the Early Western Colonies
- Part IV The Early Polis at War
- Chapter 17 The Hoplite Reform and History
- Chapter 18 The Historical Significance of Fortification in Archaic Greece
- Chapter 19 The ‘Hoplite Reform’ Revisited
- Part V Early Greek Art
- Chapter 20 Poet and Painter in Eighth-century Greece
- Chapter 21 Narration and Allusion in Archaic Greek Art
- Chapter 22 The Uses of Writing on Early Greek Painted Pottery
- Chapter 23 Pausanias and the Chest of Kypselos
- Part VI Archaeological Survey
- Chapter 24 Survey Archaeology and the Rural Landscape of the Greek City
- Chapter 25 Rural Burial in the World of Cities
- Index
Archaeology and the Study of the Greek City
Archaeology and the Study of the Greek City
- Chapter:
- (p.269) Chapter 15 Archaeology and the Study of the Greek City
- Source:
- Archaeology and the Emergence of Greece
- Author(s):
Anthony Snodgrass
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
For more than a hundred years, people studied the Greek city as an entity without making more than negligible use of archaeological evidence. As late as 1969, in the translated second edition of Victor Ehrenberg's Der griechische Staat, the reader has to search very hard indeed to find even a veiled recourse to archaeology. The historians of the polis saw themselves as dealing essentially with an abstraction. Today, all that appears to have changed. Some books on aspects of the polis are being written by historians who make constant reference to archaeological findings; others are even written by archaeologists. A good starting-point for the discussion is the primary importance that Aristotle attached to a ‘community of place’ — perhaps the earliest clear acknowledgment that the abstraction of the polis had an inseparable physical embodiment. Colonial sites are the first to manifest a sign of communal action: the planned layout of an urban centre, with an agora, blocks of housing, and even individual plots provided for; Megara Hyblaia in eastern Sicily has become a classic instance.
Keywords: Megara Hyblaia, archaeology, Sicily, polis, Aristotle, community of place, agora, urban centre, housing
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- Title Pages
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- Part I A Credo
- Chapter 1 Archaeology
- Chapter 2 Greek Archaeology and Greek History
- Chapter 3 The New Archaeology and the Classical Archaeologist
- Chapter 4 A Paradigm Shift in Classical Archaeology?
- Chapter 5 Separate Tables? A Story of Two Traditions within One Discipline
- Part II The Early Iron Age in Greece
- Chapter 6 Metalwork as Evidence for Immigration in the Late Bronze Age
- Chapter 7 The Coming of the Iron Age in Greece: Europe's Earliest Bronze / Iron Transition
- Chapter 8 The Euboeans in Macedonia: A New Precedent for Westward Expansion?
- Chapter 9 The Rejection of Mycenaean Culture and the Oriental Connection
- Chapter 10 An Historical Homeric Society?
- Part III The Early Polis at Home and Abroad
- Chapter 11 Archaeology and the Rise of the Greek State
- Chapter 12 Heavy Freight in Archaic Greece
- Chapter 13 Interaction by Design: The Greek City State
- Chapter 14 The Economics of Dedication at Greek Sanctuaries
- Chapter 15 Archaeology and the Study of the Greek City
- Chapter 16 The Nature and Standing of the Early Western Colonies
- Part IV The Early Polis at War
- Chapter 17 The Hoplite Reform and History
- Chapter 18 The Historical Significance of Fortification in Archaic Greece
- Chapter 19 The ‘Hoplite Reform’ Revisited
- Part V Early Greek Art
- Chapter 20 Poet and Painter in Eighth-century Greece
- Chapter 21 Narration and Allusion in Archaic Greek Art
- Chapter 22 The Uses of Writing on Early Greek Painted Pottery
- Chapter 23 Pausanias and the Chest of Kypselos
- Part VI Archaeological Survey
- Chapter 24 Survey Archaeology and the Rural Landscape of the Greek City
- Chapter 25 Rural Burial in the World of Cities
- Index
