The Greeks and the Mediterranean World c.950 B.C. - 500 B.C.

The period from 950 to 500 B.C. sees the emergence of many of the institutions, practices and products that characterise Greek civilisation - city-states, Panhellenic sanctuaries, colonies, monumental building and sculpture, alphabetic writing, coinage, and many others. It is a period within which Greeks, Phoenicians, and others travelled widely in the Mediterranean, in search of wealth in both finished goods and raw materials, and also in search of land.

The evidence for much of the period is almost entirely archaeological, much of it recovered only in the last 30 years or so. The course introduces this physical evidence, and examines how it can be used to illuminate changes in social and religious behaviour, to demonstrate contacts between the Greeks and their Mediterranean neighbours, and to investigate important questions of origin and development. Some of these questions naturally overlap with I.1 Greek History 776-479 B.C., with which this paper may usefully be combined. It has a distinctive emphasis on understanding the physical evidence, and the strengths and weaknesses of the archaeological methods used to reconstruct unrecorded aspects of society.

Lectures for this option are given in Michaelmas or Hilary term. For a flavour of this option you might like to look at J. N. Coldstream, Geometric Greece, 2^nd edn (Routledge, 2003), and J. M. Hall, A History of the Archaic Greek world, ca. 1200-479 BCE (Blackwell, 2007).