CLASSICAL ARCHAEOLOGY
SEMINAR PROGRAMME
Semester 1, 2017
Seminars will be held on Tuesdays, 3.00-4.30, in the Boardroom of the Centre for Classical and Near Eastern Studies of
Australia. It is located on level four of the Madsen Building (on Eastern Avenue opposite the Carslaw Building). CCANESA
is at the top of the stairs located directly in front of you when you enter the Madsen Building (i.e. one floor above the level
of the main entrance to the building).
7 March
Jean-Paul Descoeudres
Ten years of Swiss-Albanian excavations at Orikos
21 March
Amelia Brown (UQ)
Creation and Destruction of Public Sculpture in Late Antique Corinth
Sponsored by the Australian Archaeological Institute at Athens
4 April
Alba Mazza
The coastal landscape of a Western Greek city: the case of Selinus
11 April
Rudy Alagich
The first detailed look at Greek Early Iron Age animal management
using stable isotopes
16 May
Craig Barker
Cyprus in the Second Century AD: New Thoughts on Roman Cyprus
from Recent Excavations in Nea Paphos
23 May
Brett Myers
Lucanian Fortified Centres – Iron-Age intervisiblity networks, visual
control and communication. Findings and conclusions
30 May
Lesley Beaumont
TBC (Kato Phana or Zagora)
Enquiries:
Ted Robinson ([email protected], 9351 3072)
Dr. Amelia Brown, Senior Lecturer in Greek History and Language in the Classics and Ancient History discipline of the
School of Historical & Philosophical Inquiry, will visit Sydney as a guest of the Australian Archaeological Institute at Athens.
In addition to her seminar, she will give a public lecture in the CCANESA Boardroom at 6.30pm on Wednesday, March
22. Abstracts of her two talks appear below.
March 21 (seminar): Creation and Destruction of Public Sculpture in Late Antique Corinth
Corinth, like most Greek cities, had a centuries-old collection of public sculpture at the beginning of Late Antiquity.
Arrayed around the Forum and in temples, fountains, baths, stoas and other public spaces were hundreds of carved or cast
statues: local grandees and governors of Achaia, venerable cult statues, pedimental figures and historical reliefs. Yet it
seems that by the 9th century most of this sculpture had been destroyed, and whether Christian iconoclasm, economic
imperatives or defensive structures were most to blame, some basic change in aesthetic values clearly came over the
Corinthians, as it did others. In Byzantine Corinth, new sculpture was confined to carving reliefs for church decoration,
while ancient sculpture was cut up or melted down for building material, with heads often discarded in wells or drains.
The search for historical causes for this transformation of the urban landscape must account for a fundamental change in the
urban psyche, as individually and collectively people both ceased to create new sculpture in the round, and undertook the
actual physical destruction of most of what existed around them. The decline in the quantity and quality of production of
new sculpture lasted from the 4th into the 5th century at Corinth, affected both ideal and portrait types, and ended with
public portraits of the governor. Yet contemporary texts of these eras warmly praise the naturalism of the new works which
were created, even as their proportions appear more awkward, and their material of manufacture more ad hoc. Their
chronology remains vague, and comparisons with the minor arts or literary styles of Late Antiquity may yet yield new
conclusions.
Yet physical destruction of statuary seems to both coexist with creation, and continue beyond it. It impacted all ancient
sculpture in the round, whether in wood, bronze or stone, centuries old or brand new. But while cult statues bear the
brunt of Christian fervour in texts, many existing private portraits are still marked with crosses. The newest sculpture was
sometimes the first into the lime kilns, and elsewhere almost untouched. City fathers actively used statues to repair roads
or build walls, even while commissioning new portraits. How, then, can we chart the extent of destruction in relation to
defacement, reuse or abandonment? Did the same change of mentality cause the end of sculptural creation and the onset of
destruction? If so, why do these phenomena overlap by so many centuries? This paper compares the types of evidence for
these two distinct sculptural phenomena of Late Antiquity, and draws new conclusions for the chronology of each and their
relationship to one another.
March 22 (public lecture): Like Frogs around a Pond: Maritime religion in ancient Greek culture
The ancient Greeks were never politically unified before the rise of Rome, yet they succeeded in developing and
maintaining a common culture all around the Mediterranean coasts ‘like frogs around a pond’ (Plato Phaedo 109b). Modern
scholars struggle to explain how the ancient Greeks could have shared such strong bonds of religion, language and identity,
despite a homeland of separate city-states, and large-scale migration and intermarriage with other ancient peoples around
the Mediterranean sea. This paper looks to the everyday practices of archaic and classical Greek maritime religion for an
answer, focusing on the widespread cults of seafaring saviour gods and the rituals practiced at harbors and aboard ships for
safe arrival ashore. I argue that the religious system of sailors and travellers helped the ancient Greeks develop and maintain
their common culture all around the Mediterranean sea. Cults of seafaring gods like Aphrodite, Apollo, Hera, Poseidon
and the Dioscuri were carried from port to port around ancient Greece, to the Greek colonies, and into foreign cities, yet
this maritime religion and carriage of cults ‘on the winedark sea’ is not well understood today. The sources are very widely
scattered, from ancient testimonia for seafaring rituals of embarkation, accurate navigation and safe arrival on shore, to the
archaeological remains of shipwrecks, harbourside sanctuaries and votive offerings. Bringing this evidence back together,
however, reveals a durable yet flexible network of travelling rituals and beliefs which bound the ancient Greeks together
in unexpected and close-knit ways, even across great distances and without political bonds.