AMA - Classical Archaeology

[u/Tiako]

Classical antiquity is period of roughly a thousand years between the rise of the Greek polis and the collapse of the Roman Mediterranean system, and includes at different times the entire Mediterranean basin and beyond. There are a variety of ways to examine this period, and today this panel will discuss the archaeology, or the material remains, a category that includes the massive monumental temple at Baalbek and the carbonized seeds from an Italian farmhouse. Our panelists introduce themselves:

/u/pqvarus: I've specialized in Ancient Greek Archaeology, my geographic field of interest is Asia Minor (from the Archaic Period onwards) and as a result of my PhD project I'm focussing on the archaeology of ancient greek religion (especially cult practice) and material culture studies.

/u/Astrogator: I've just finished my MA at the department of Ancient History and Epigraphics (my BA was in History, Philosophy and Political Science), and my main interests are in provincial epigraphic cultures, especially the Danube region, and the display of dress on sepulchral monuments (and how both are tied to questions of Romanization and Identity).

/u/Tiako: I am an MA student studying the economy of the Early Imperial Period of the Roman Empire. My focus is on commerce, particularly Rome's maritime trade with India.

However, there is more to classical civilization than marble temples an the Aeneid, and there is more to the period than Greece and Rome. To provide a perspective from outside what is usually considered “classical” civilization, we have included three panelists from separate but closely intertwined fields of study. They are:

/u/Aerandir: I am archaeologist studying Iron Age communities. Currently I am working on a PhD on the fortifications of the first millennium AD in Denmark. Danish and Dutch material is what I am most familiar with.

/u/missingpuzzle: I have studied Hellenistic period Eastern Arabia, particularly specializing in settlement patterns and trade. I have also studied the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean trade from the Hellenistic and Early Roman periods.

/u/Daeres: Hi I'm Daeres, and I have an MA in Ancient History. My archaeological focus is on the Ancient Near East in the First Millenium BC, Bactria, and the Aegean, though I am primarily a historian rather than an archaeologist. I have an inordinate fondness for numismatics, and also epigraphy. But I especially concentrate on the archaeological evidence for Hellenistic era Bactria.

And so with knots cut and die cast, we await your questions.

[u/MrIvysaur]

Is it possible to guess how much there is that still hasn't been found? Like, what are the odds that archaeologists find a lost Greek play or a collection of letters from Augustan Rome?

Inscriptions, coins, and artifacts are obviously still out there, but what about the stuff more prone to decomposing?

[u/Tiako → u/MrIvysaur]

You mean textual documents? They survive in very specific instances, the most well known being Egypt, where the dry desert environment can desiccate and preserve papyrus documents. This is the reason, for example, we have a play by Menander, one of the most famous and beloved comedic playwrights. Papyrus documents also survive if they have been carbonized by, eg, the pyroclastic flow of a volcano, and so part of the private library of a house in Herculaneum has been recovered, although analyzing it is extremely difficult and tedious. Also, hilariously enough, the archive is dominated by the works of a second-rate Epicurean philosopher, which makes the whole thing rather a bad joke. Organic material can also preserve if it is in an anaerobic environment, such as the mud around the fort of Vindolanda along Hadrian's Wall, and a very interesting archive from the military garrison there (it includes an invitation to a birthday dinner from the wife of the commander).

Still, although archaeologists love finding textual documents it is far from the norm and isn't our main interest.

[u/General_Awesome → u/Tiako]

are there still documents available which have never been translated?

[u/Tiako → u/General_Awesome]

Lots. There are tons of papyrus documents that await editing, translation, and publication.