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/[deleted]]

In Herodotus there's a section where he talks about a Persian marriage custom thingy. Basically, he says girls are forced to go into a temple until a man picks them for sex. She must then accept the silver he offers and have sex, then can go home. However, if your ugly you may be there awhile. Any of you know more about this custom Herodotus describes?

[u/Daeres → u/[deleted]]

It's not attested to in any Iranian-language material of the time, and it also fits squarely into the profile of 'extremely outlandish foreign custom that shocks and titillates all good Hellenes that read/hear this history'. On balance, I am very much prone to believe this is not a real custom. Of course, some very outlandish things in history turn out to have been real, but that doesn't really change that here we have no evidence and it's instead very implausible-seeming.

[u/[deleted] → u/Daeres]

Thanks pal, another follow up whenever you get a chance. Did Herodotus and other Historians (in particular Greek) write to entertain at all? Or was there history strictly informative/academic. Basically, you think him/they stretched they truth a bit for better stories?

[u/Daeres → u/[deleted]]

Essentially, Herodotus should not be seen as the equivalent of the modern historical genre. The ancient Greek literary genre we'd call history had different conventions and understandings to our own. One of the biggest is that entertainment was indeed a factor, another was the fact that attitudes towards sources were very different.

Herodotus doesn't simply describe the Persian Wars and their initial background. He references far more ancient events, and the ethnography of many areas he talks about, and delves into anecdotes about peoples and places. It is as much ethnography and geography as history.

Now, in fairness to him, he explicitly stated that many of the stories he talked about were possibly not true. He often provided more than one alternative story or explanation, and invited the reader to decide which to believe as more accurate. However, sometimes he did only have the one source or explanation; in many cases, the belief is not that Herodotus was actively attempting to lie or be deceitful, it was that he was misinformed or provided with faulty information. However, Herodotus probably did also embellish in order to entertain as well.

History writing such as his were not strictly academic, nor were any ancient historical works arguably intended in what we'd call an academic purpose. The key thing to understand with Herodotus is that the principles of informing and entertaining were not seen as contradictory, and a formative influence on Greek historians was the Homeric epics in terms of syntax and style.

Being a relatively early practitioner of history as literature, there are things which Herodotus does which are not necessarily followed by his successors. Thucydides concentrated on a much more narrow account of the war he was covering, with only relatively limited background beyond what was necessary for context. He also does not cite his sources, or provide many alternate explanations. He also proceeds as though the prime movers of events are human beings, with little influence from anything supernatural or divine at all. In general, the kind of ethnography and geography that Herodotus wrote about became mostly its own genre, with its most famous proponent being Strabo in later times. However, even Strabo often indulged in historical stories in order to survey the world, and no historians entirely avoided ethnographic information in their works.

Generally speaking, even the ancient Greek historians who seem more plausible, rational and accurate were just as compromised as Herodotus was. Neither was any of them pursuing objectivity as a course (though true objectivity in history doesn't really exist), or doing it for what we would think of as academic purposes, or pursuing 'academic' methodology. However, this shouldn't minimise them too much; they did try to report events accurately at the best of times, and also generally conducted a lot of what we'd understand as research. Nor was plagiarism something that they conceived of. They were working to different standards and with a different goal to what a modern historian would consider the general objective. These historians are not all liars and useless, it means that using their work as primary source material can only be done extremely cautiously.

[u/[deleted] → u/Daeres]

Wow thanks, that was awesome. I really appreciate you taking the time to give me such an excellent response. I really have a passion for this stuff, which is why I'm a history major. I currently go to Ualbany and I'm thinking about doing this archeological program out of SUNY buffalo this summer. Its in Albania and I was just wondering if you think it's at all interesting. I figured you may know something since it's anicent history around Greece. Anyway don't feel like you have to answer, I know your probably busy!

Suny Buffalo program Narta Lagoon.

.https://buffalo-sa.terradotta.com/index.cfm?FuseAction=Programs.ViewProgram&Program_ID=10083