School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Research Publications
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ItemAll in All, It’s Just Another Stone in the Wall: From Safi to Sicily, 12th-Century Monumental Architecture in the Mediterranean(De Gruyter, 2021-10-25)Worked stone in Philistia has been frequently limited to highly visible elements such as column bases, pavements, and ritual features such as altars (Hitchcock andMaeir 2017). This contribution presents a study of a selected group of Iron I monu-mental buildings and building elements in Areas A and C at Tell eṣ-Ṣâfī/Gath.1These remains can be potentially situated within the context of what is known about Sea Peoples’ architecture in the Mediterranean, as seen at the 12thcentury B.C.E.“Anaktoron”at Pantalica, Sicily, and in changes in Final Bronze Age Sardinia. Strati-graphic excavations of the Iron IIB siege tower in the lower city in Area C at Telleṣ-Ṣâfī/Gath indicate that the tower was built on the foundations of an earlier Iron I building (Gur-Arieh and Maeir 2020).
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ItemThe Eurotas Valley, Laconia, in the 2nd Millennium BC The Area of Vapheio-Palaiopyrgi in Context(Sidestone Press, 2022)Palaiopyrgi is the most prominent hill in the chain of hills marking the centre of the Eurotas valley, rising to a height of 214 m, about 7 km south of Sparta; its summit offers an unhindered view to all directions, towards the Menelaion to the north, Ayios Vasileios to the south-west and Vouno Panayias to the east. About 350 m to the north lies the famous Mycenaean tholos tomb of Vapheio, one of the very few tholos tombs known and the only one thoroughly excavated so far in Laconia, with which the hill has been associated. Midway between the Vapheio tholos tomb and Palaiopyrgi lies a quarry of conglomerate, consisting of a semi-worked column base, curved cuttings and separation channels. Based on the stone quarried, the extraction technique, the size of the column base, part of the pottery found in association with it and its proximity to the tomb and the hill of Palaiopyrgi, the quarry was dated in the Mycenaean times, leading to the conclusion that material extracted from this and other conglomerate shelves exposed in the wider area, may have been used for extensive building activities on the hill itself in that period. In 2016‑2017, an intensive survey was carried in the area between the tholos tomb and Palaiopyrgi, having the quarry at its centre. The article discusses existing archaeological evidence from the area of Vapheio-Palaiopyrgi and its implications for social and political change in the Eurotas valley, with special reference to its central location in the valley and to the transition to the Mycenaean era, taking into consideration recent developments of research in the area.
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ItemSharing Your Adventures Has Been an Interesting Experience Indiana Jones and Professional Archaeology(John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 2023)The adventures and real ethical issues that confront archaeologists in comparison and contrast with the fictional character of Indiana Jones.
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ItemAll in All, It’s Just Another Stone in the Wall: From Safi to Sicily, 12th century Monumental Architecture in the Mediterranean(De Gruyter, 2021-12-09)Worked stone architecture in Philistia is rare and usually limited to highly visible elements such as column bases, ritual features such as altars, and pavements. Our contribution presents a study of a selected group of minimally preserved but nonetheless important Iron I monumental buildings in Areas A and C at Tell es-Safi/Gath. These remains are situated within the context of what is known about “Sea Peoples’” architecture in the Mediterranean as seen at the 12th century BCE “Anaktoron” at Pantalica, Sicily and architectural changes in Sardinia. Our study demonstrates that monumental architecture was more widespread in the early Philistine period than originally thought.
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ItemGlobalization, Capitalism, and Collapse in Prehistory and the Present(Jameson Books, Inc, 2021)This paper, which is based on my professorial lecture, considersr the emergence of globalized connectivities in the Mediterranean during the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1700–1300 BCE) which was arguably the first age of globalization in human history. It was also one of the first ages of social acceleration characterized by a confluence of increasing technological and economic interdependency, yet fragile in its susceptibility to climate change, plagues, authoritarian city-states, and small empires ruled by kings claiming divinity or divine authority. Thus, the Late Bronze Age Mediterranean was also an economically fragile era with a high concentration of wealth distributed among supra-regional global elite plutocrats unified more by wealth and shared symbolism than by cultural tradition or ideology. That era was susceptible to populist resistance in the form of piratical activity and banditry. This paper explores the globalist and populist aspects, along with the effects of plagues and pandemics on the ancient Mediterranean and in current times. It is published in a collection of papers dedicated to my former teacher, Professor John Hospers.
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ItemMagical Mystery Tour: The Role of Islands in Connecting Ancient West and East(Peeters, 2022)From an ecological standpoint, islands once held allure as imagined laboratories for the isolated study of social and cultural change. However, in The Corrupting Sea, Horden and Purcell have compellingly demonstrated that in reality islands were places of “strikingly enhanced interaction … central to the history of the Mediterranean.” Although their detailed meta-history focuses on the historic periods, much of what they discuss can be identified in prehistory. Our contribution focuses on the unique role that island-scapes play in shrinking maritime space among the disparate cultures of the Mediterranean, bringing ancient west and east together through cultural and economic entanglement. Through strong interaction, islands could promote security, but in isolation, they could be a source of danger. However, from Sicily to Cyprus, like the Magical Mystery Tour, islands had “everything you need,” because they were connected nodes in a globalized, unrestricted flow of people and goods, the ancient version of capital, where “satisfaction was guaranteed.”
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ItemE-Qe-Ta: Conceptions of Warrior Beauty and Constructions of Masculinity on Postpalatial Crete(Peeters, 2020)This article examines the evidence for constructions of warrior beauty and masculinity in Crete at the time of the Bronze to Iron Age transition (ca. 1300-1100 BCE).
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ItemFrom Mason’s Mark to Maker’s Mark Cypriot Mason’s Marks in their Aegean and Levantine Contexts(Lockwood Press, 2020)Engraved signs begin to appear in the Aegean, mostly on worked stone blocks, as early as the Middle Bronze Age (ca. 1900-1700 BCE) in Crete. Their numbers proliferate in the Late Bronze Age on Crete, and they appear in smaller numbers in the Aegean islands and Mycenaean mainland. Although they have been conventionally termed “mason’s marks” in the literature, they did not function as such in the traditional sense in terms of aiding in the placement of blocks in the construction of a building. Their varying contexts, multiple designs, and varied visibility within a building have resulted in divergent interpretations linked to their symbolic significance, religious meaning, or to the social and/or ethnic identities of the masons. By the 13th century BCE, mason’s marks appear, primarily in token amounts, in monumental administrative centers and cult sites in Cyprus. In Israel, Yigal Shiloh documented their appearance in palatial architecture at Megiddo and Samaria. In addition, one appears on a block from the great horned altar in Beersheba. The marks from Israel received detailed attention from Norma Franklin, who associated them with guilds of Carian builders, an association that has not irrefutably been confirmed or disputed. This paper considers the marks anew based on their appearance in Cyprus, where twenty-five possible marks have been documented in their varying contexts, and concluding that meanings assigned to them may vary and need not be mutually exclusive.