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This thesis will explore how social and political conditions in archaic Greece affected the composition of poetry for female choral performance. My primary source material will be the poetry of Alcman and Sappho. I examine the evidence suggesting that poems by both Alcman and Sappho commented on political issues, using this as a basis to argue that women in archaic Greece may have had a more vocal public presence that has previously been imagined. Rather than viewing female performance as a means of discussing purely feminine themes or reinforcing the idea of a disempowered female gender, I argue that the poetry of Alman and Sappho gives parthenoi an authoritative public voice to comment on issues in front of the watching community. Part of this authority is derived from the social value of parthenoi, who can act as economically and socially valuable points of exchange between communities, but I shall also be looking at how traditional elements of female performance genre were used to enhance female authority in archaic Sparta and Lesbos. Once this has been established, this thesis will proceed to examine how public female performance dealt with major political and social issues in the archaic world. I shall argue that the performance of parthenoi did focus on primarily feminine concerns such as marriage, desire, and abduction, but that it could also be an opportunity to discuss much broader political themes that were of major importance to the entire polis. Alcman and Sappho use their poetry as a vehicle to comment on the society in which their poetry was composed, both discussing threats to order and representing solutions for a stable society. The content of female performed poetry was often composed as much for a male audience as for the performers themselves, using traditional female performance as a means of commenting on the current political climate. Through arguing these factors, the intention of this thesis is to suggest a much more prominent public role for archaic Greek females than has previously been recognised.

Latium Vetus is accepted as having possessed an urban status by the archaic period. The evolution towards this status depended upon various factors operating through centuries. From an initial stage in which the region was composed of insular settlements, the first step towards urbanisation was nucleation of settlement. This was a federal grouping of small, self-governing kin units. Such were the curiae of history; their individualism is emphasised in the topography of the cemeteries. They are revealed in the remnants of early law operating along the lines of reciprocity and collusion. This nucleation was probably a result of demographic pressures; trade and technological innovation may also be considered contributory factors. Certainly these latter emerged as conditioning elements within the development of such communities. The separate units within the settlements practised an individual prestige-goods economy. Their powers were separate from those of the community as a whole. Such powers had to be curbed as the role of manufacture and trade increased. Thus the central, 'state' power grew, as may be seen in legal and historical developments. The aristocracies which had emerged had proved a destabilising factor in the state, for they maintained economic and sociopolitical practices which artificially supported secondary activities and separatist influences. As society became more complex, so the kin basis upon which it was founded proved inadequate. Changes in the demographic constitution of the community, overly competitive economic practice and increasing functional differentiation caused the creation of a public domain, one witnessed in various ways in the source material. Urbanisation was the end-result of the functioning of a prestige-goods economy in a society formed of distinctive groups prior to the initiation of large scale trade and manufacture. The competition inherent within such a society led ultimately to the unity of the urban system.

Although Pindar’s victory songs, or epinikia, were commissioned and performed to celebrate athletic victories, they present persistent reflections on the narrow limits of human prosperity, the inexorable cycle of success and failure, and the impossibility of appropriating any aspect of a godly nature. The present work provides a close reading of the Pythian series to illustrate how Pindar uses prayer, myth and gnomai to secure the moral and psychological reintegration of the athletic victor back into his close-knit community upon his homecoming (νόστος). As a re-integration rite, the challenging and dark elements of mortal limitation and failure are read as prophylactic statements against the destructive effects of hybris (ὕβρις). The Odes rest upon an archaic cosmology of reciprocal and harmonious exchange between humans themselves and between humans and the gods which is captured by the principle of charis or grace (χάρις). Ὕβρις is a breach of this reciprocity and the antithesis of χάρις since it is the unilateral claim of property, prestige, or privilege as well as the transgression against the divine dispensation which governs the cosmos (κόσμος). Modern psychological research shows how such concern for, and such precaution against, ὕβρις may be prudent given that victory fosters a drive for dominance. / Graduate / 0294 / gebeauva@uvic.ca

This dissertation addresses the role of ritual practices in the emergence of complex forms of social organization during the Late Archaic Period of the Central Andes (ca. 3000 1500 B.C.). This theme is approached through description and analysis of ritual architecture remains recovered in excavations at the site of Cerro Lampay, located in the Fortaleza Valley, within the North Central Coast of Peru.The emergence of social complexity is approached from the perspective of Practice Theory, noting the relevance of ritual practices in the generation, reproduction, and/or transformation of social conditions of existence.Following these theoretical principles, archaeological information is analyzed through a methodological frame built to understand the performative aspects of ritual and its material manifestations. A particular emphasis is put on the analysis of architectural remains, which are analyzed from proxemics and space syntax perspectives, in order to define the patterns of human interaction produced during the conduct of ritual.The inference of behavioral patterns conducted within construction events and ritual performances have allowed me to propose a scenario of a community with emergent leaders and a dual organization, which was responsible for the building, use, and closure of the architectural compounds found at Cerro Lampay. Ritual practices such as conspicuous consumption and feasting played a key role in the development of social dynamics and might have been a significant power source for the emergent leaderships.

The thesis examines changes in hunter-gatherer land-use along lower Cypress Creek, atributary of the Green River located in west-central Kentucky. Presented, are the results of the firstthree years of site survey and museum work conducted by the Cypress Creek Archaeological Project.Analysis of site location and hafted bifaces suggests that, throughout the Holocene, increasingemphasis was placed on certain locations and areas of the landscape. Comparison of the CypressCreek study area with other areas of Archaic research indicate that land-use was highly variable inboth space and time across the North American midcontinent.

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By convention epinician poetry claims to be both obligatory and truthful, yet in the intersection of obligation and truth lies a seeming paradox: the poet presents his poetry as commissioned by a patron but also claims to be unbiased enough to convey the truth. In Slater's interpretation Pindar reconciles this paradox by casting his relationship to the patron as one of guest-friendship: when he declares himself a guest-friend of the victor, he agrees to the obligation ‘a) not to be envious of his xenos and b) to speak well of him. The argumentation is: Xenia excludes envy, I am a xenos, therefore I am not envious and consequently praise honestly’. Slater observes that envy may foster bias against the patron, but the problem of pro-patron bias remains: does the poet's friendship with and obligation to his patron produce praise at the expense of truth?

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