Global connections in Greek and Roman archaeology

• Credit value: 30 credits at Level 5
• Convenor and tutor: Professor Jennifer Baird
• Assessment: a 2000-word essay (25%), a digital exhibit (25%) and a three-hour examination (50%)

This module explores the Greek and Roman worlds, with a specific focus on their diversity and cultural complexity, reaching beyond their frontiers. The module examines a series of archaeological case studies, from Greeks in the Black Sea to Roman Syria, from Greeks in Sicily to Romans in Scotland, to ask what it meant to be Greek or Roman. Utilising a range of archaeological evidence, from architecture to ceramics to grave goods, this module will give you a detailed knowledge of the diversity of peoples and evidence in the ancient world and the conceptual tools that can be used to study it.

Indicative module syllabus

Term 1, Greece

• Introduction: from Culture-History to Globalism
• Orientalising Art and Technology
• Greek Colonisation: the Traditional Subject and its Sources
• Archaic Trade and Emporia
• Crete in the Early Iron Age: a Special Case?
• Agriculture and Mobility in the New Mediterranean Paradigm
• Elite Interaction: Banquets, Gifts and Cultures of Consumption
• Greeks and Indigenous Populations in Sicily and Southern Italy
• Phoenician Colonisation
• The Black Sea Region

Term 2, Rome

• Introduction: Romans and Others
• Representing the Barbarian: Non-Romans in Roman Art
• The Axis of Evil: Rome and its Enemies
• Frontier Communities: Soldiers and Civilians
• On the Fringes: Globalisation and Glocalisation
• Ethnicity and Integration: Multiculturalism and Enclaves
• Hybrid Cultures: Provincial Societies
• Rome the Cosmopolis: Foreign People, Ideas and Cults in Rome
• Interaction across Frontiers: Rome and Scandinavia, India and Beyond
• Migration, Mobility and Networks

By the end of this module you will be able to:

• understand the key issues and debates in ancient Greek and Roman archaeology
• discuss the history, culture and politics of the ancient world.