Space and Society in the Greek and Roman Worlds

Description

We cannot properly understand history without a full appreciation of the spaces through which its actors moved, whether in the home or in the public sphere, and the ways in which they thought about and represented the spaces of their worlds. In this book Michael Scott employs the full range of literary, epigraphic and archaeological evidence in order to demonstrate the many different ways in which spatial analysis can illuminate our understanding of Greek and Roman society and the ways in which these societies thought of, and interacted with, the spaces they occupied and created. Through a series of innovative case studies of texts, physical spaces and cultural constructs, ranging geographically across North Africa, Greece and Roman Italy, as well as an up-to-date introduction on spatial scholarship, this book provides an ideal starting point for students and non-specialists.

Michael Scott is a research associate and affiliated lecturer in the Faculty of Classics, Cambridge. He is the author of Delphi and Olympia: The Spatial Politics of Panhellenism in the Archaic and Classical Periods (Cambridge University Press, 2010), and has also written and edited books for interdisciplinary academic audiences and the wider public (From Democrats to Kings in 2009 and Risk [co-edited with Layla Skinns and Tony Cox] in 2011). He is active in making the study of the ancient world accessible to as wide an audience as possible by talking to schools across the country; writing for international magazines and newspapers; taking part in outreach initiatives with the Mayor of London and Olympics 2012; and writing and presenting TV documentaries for the BBC, History Channel and National Geographic.

'The book is well-written and has excellent maps and images that make following the argument an enjoyable experience; it also includes very useful bibliographical essays that are fully up to date. The book is well-designed, covering both a variety of physical spaces (civil, sacred and funerary), as well as examining a range of conceptual spaces and how they function. Particularly laudable is the geographical spread of the topics, which ranges across the Mediterranean and manages to avoid the Athenocentrism and Romanocentrism which often dominate similar works; the same also applies to chronological coverage, that ranges from the archaic period to the early imperial period.' Sehepunkte