The terms "core" and "periphery" have a long history of use for describing regional variability in the archaeological record. Contemporary theories for the late prehistoric in the Greater Southwest often follow this tradition, postulating underlying social processes that created this division. This dissertation examines the assumptions and the evidence for theories of long-distance social interaction by considering the prehistory of the Northern Sierra, a region in the south-central Greater Southwest located in northwestern Chihuahua, northeastern Sonora, southwestern New Mexico, and southeastern Arizona. Paquime (sometimes called Casas Grandes) in Chihuahua is widely considered to be the core of late prehistoric developments in the Northern Sierra. The history of research and interpretation of the region are carefully considered, an analysis that demonstrates the inadequacies of current data and theory. New frameworks will be needed to resolve disputed issues. Towards this end, evidence of interaction at Paquime is examined by analyzing the quantity and distribution of nonlocal ceramics within the site. These probable exchange items are found to be relatively rare and their distribution diffuse, indicating acquisition was largely casual and infrequent. Attention is then focused on the postulated periphery by examining the upper San Bernardino Valley in the extreme southeastern corner of Arizona. Data collected for this examination includes survey within the Valley and excavation of the late prehistoric Boss Ranch Site (AZ FF:7:10 (ASM)). The interpretive concerns that are addressed include (1) population movements, (2) external influences on settlement systems, (3) trade and interaction, and (4) the influences of subsistence systems. The analysis revealed no evidence of population intrusion from the "core" and few aspects of local material culture that could be ascribed to Paquime. Exchange items are rare, and the probable sources include many areas besides the zone around Paquime. Furthermore, excavation data suggest that settlements may have been occupied repeatedly for short periods. This undermines notions of stable core and periphery interaction by indicating the absence of surplus crops, stable social alliances, and hierarchical settlement systems in the region.

This dissertation examines the relationship between selected Iron Age cultic sites found in the land of Canaan and their material cultures. The resulting data allows the creation of tentative paradigms reflecting the material culture found in Iron Age temples, chapels, votive shrines, and offertory shrines. The paradigms are then applied to Megiddo 2081, concluding that it was a chapel and not a mere corner shrine. After an introductory chapter, chapter 2 surveys the history of research on the investigation of cult centers in ancient Palestine. This chapter traces the maturation of archaeological investigation of the Canaanite and Israelite cult centers by biblical and Syro-Palestinian archeologists of the twentieth century. Chapter 3 surveys the material culture of the Iron Age cult centers found at Shean strata VI-V, Sarepta Shrines 1 and 2, Hazor 3283, Khirbat al-Mudayna, Tell Qasile temples 319, 200, 131 and 300, and the cultic room at Taanach. Chapter 4 established definitions for a "temple," a "chapel," and "shrine" based upon the architectural grandeur of the buildings. The chapter also discusses the presence of jewelry in a cultic matrix concluding that these finds indicate that an idol may have stood in the cult center. Finally, the chapter develops tentative artifactual paradigms for a temple, a chapel, an offertory shrine, and a votive shrine. Chapter 5 applies the tentative paradigms to Megiddo 2081 where the architecture is uncertain. The paradigms show that the cultic assemblage at Megiddo 2081 resembles most closely a chapel assemblage. A concluding chapter summarizes the dissertation. The dissertation also has five appendices. Appendix 1 establishes a relative chronology and valid loci from Beth Shean. Appendix 2 provides a listing of the artifacts according to provenance in the order of the database artifact number. Appendix 3 groups the artifacts according to loci. Appendix 4 contains the plates which illustrate the arguments of the dissertation. Appendix 5 has tables which show the statistical similarities between the paradigms and Megiddo 2081.

Building offerings, artefacts or bones that had been placed under or within house features, are considered evidence of rites associated with house construction, remodelling or abandonment, and are an archaeological phenomenon that was common throughout European prehistory. This dissertation focuses on interpreting building offerings dating to the Viking Age in Iceland and Scotland. Each find of this type is unique, which poses a challenge for archaeological investigations that often lack the interpretive framework needed to make comparisons between sites. This dissertation critically refines the frameworks of previous studies of similar types of deposits in AngloSaxon Britain and Scandinavia in order to fill this gap in research and discuss the purpose of houserites. The frameworks of behavioural and cognitive archaeology indicate that the performance of house-rites played a role in the construction of the house as the centre of the world-view of Vikingage people. House-rites are situated as prescriptive behaviours that negotiated perspectives of space throughout the residential life-cycle by adding to house materiality. This refined interpretive paradigm is then applied to a comparative survey of Viking-age houses and farmsteads from Iceland and Scotland. In the North Atlantic region, house-rites appear to have been performed in order for Norse people to reimagine their place in the world. The practical elements of the tradition were altered based on the relevant cultural frameworks and specific geo-political contexts to which Norse people were migrating in the Viking Age. In Iceland, people utilised displays of generosity and skills as providers during house-rites to construct an association between social relationships and residential space. The house itself had agency in situating people both within the landscape and the community. In Norse settlements in Scotland, Scandinavian people were relating themselves directly to the symbols used by native peoples through the use of personal objects in the performance of houserites, integrating their new environment into their mentalities. In Scandinavia, house-rites were a long-standing tradition, leading to a well-established, carefully negotiated sense of identity within the landscape. The Norse people who migrated into the North Atlantic region during the Viking Age were leaving this well-established sense of place. This intensified the climate of uncertainty regarding their place in the world, leading to the negotiation of mentalities through the discursive dynamics of house-rites in altered contexts.

This dissertation applies the principles of fiscal dissertation to the study of the Roman Republic. I argue that the creation of a profitable empire allowed the ruling elite to end their reliance on domestic taxation to fund state activity, and that Rome's untaxed citizens were effectively disenfranchised as a result. They therefore lacked the bargaining power to prevent aristocrats from enriching themselves at the expense of the state. The result was a set of leading individuals whose resources could overwhelm those of communal, public institutions. This wealth allowed them to control the distribution of economic resources within Roman society, reinforcing hierarchies and forcing less fortunate citizens to tie themselves to patronage networks instead of state institutions. This state, unable to command the respect of its constituents, was eventually picked off in the competition between great individuals.

The Iliad in certain key passages construes the Olympian gods as an internal epic audience offering and exploring multiple configurations of audience response to the poem. Chapter 1 explores the special features of the divine audience in general terms and considers previous scholarship. Chapter 2 reads Zeus' provocation of Hera and Athena in Book 4 as a "metaperformative" provocation of the poet's audience. Chapters 3 argues that the audience's mental "viewing" experience is construed as attendance at a live spectacle where the gods also attend, a spectacle for which the duel in Book 3 provides a paradigm. Chapter 4 interprets the duel in Book 7 as a reevaluation of that paradigm, motivated intratextually by the internal audience of Apollo and Athena. Chapter 5 shows that the climactic duel in Book 22, and especially the passage describing Hector and Achilles circling Troy as the gods watch and discuss, problematizes the ethical stance of the extratextual audience. Chapter 6 argues that in the Iliad as a whole the poet uses "the gods" to model a shift in audience sympathy from pro-Achaean bias to pity for the Trojans.

This dissertation analyzes Socratic ethics in three Platonic dialogues: the Protagoras, the Gorgias, and the Republic. The purpose is twofold: 1) to question the standard view that what is the defining characteristic of Socratic ethics in the Protagoras and the Gorgias is its intellectualism and that the Republic represents a correction to, or deviation from, such intellectualism, and 2) to offer an alternative account of Socratic ethics in these dialogues. The alternative account this dissertation proposes is that what makes Socrates a compelling ethical figure is his unique understanding of what constitutes an agent's self-interest. Moreover, the contention will be that the uniqueness of Socrates' ethical views comes into focus when we consider them vis-à-vis the views and concerns of his interlocutors, particularly the sophists.

This dissertation analyzes the three main protagonists of Lucan's Bellum Civile through their attempts to utilize, resist, or match a pattern of action which I call the "formula." Most evident in Caesar, the formula is a cycle of alternating states of energy that allows him to gain a decisive edge over his opponents by granting him the ability of perpetual regeneration. However, a similar dynamic is also found in rivers, which thus prove to be formidable adversaries of Caesar in their own right. Although neither Pompey nor Cato is able to draw on the Caesarian formula successfully, Lucan eventually associates them with the river-derived variant, thus granting them a measure of resistance (if only in the non-physical realm). By tracing the development of the formula throughout the epic, the dissertation provides a deeper understanding of the importance of natural forces in Lucan's poem as well as the presence of an underlying drive that unites its fractured world.

Despite the long-recognized connection between poverty and charity, and the scholarly attention paid to the culture of charity, there have been very few studies that have yielded the kind of quantitative results that would enable scholars of antiquity to assess the sources and impact of church wealth gained from non-elites. I ask three questions: (1) Who was asked to give? (2) Who could afford to give? (3) Who did, in fact, give? Three bodies of evidence offer answers: (1) The the patristic corpus suggests targets of solicitation as well as a rhetorical strategy for encouraging donation, (2) household economic models give a sense of how potential donors could generate disposable in- come through ascetic practice, and (3) a selection of small donations, specifically Christian small silvers, can be valued in a way that permits conjecture regarding the social profile of donors in late antiquity. Pursuing charity in this way offers the opportunity to get past ecclesiastical self- representation and gaps in evidence by looking at the underlying structures of the phenomenon. This in turn promises a clearer idea of the relationship between charity and philanthropy, placing church institutions back in their social context.

Multiple natural philosophers in antiquity proposed that nature possessed considerable technical skill. Yet, the specific conceptual implications of this assertion were quite different in fourth century BCE Athens--with its pots, bronze tools and cisterns--than in second century CE Rome--where large-scale aqueducts, elaborate water machines and extensive glassworks were commonplace. This dissertation assesses the impact that these different technological environments had on philosophical and scientific theories. In short, it argues that contemporary technologies shaped ancient philosophers' physical assumptions by providing cognitive tools with which to understand natural phenomena. As a result, as technologies evolved--even in relatively modest ways--so too did conceptual models of the natural world. To explore these assertions, this dissertation focuses on two main fields of explanation, the vascular system and vision, and includes investigations of such technologies as pipes, pumps, mirrors, wax tablets, diagrams and experimental apparatuses. It demonstrates the ways in which scientific theorists use the specific material technologies around them as heuristics to conceptualize physical processes.

In Athens in the early 5th century BCE, a new genre of funerary vase, the white-ground lêkythos, appeared and quickly grew to be the most popular grave gift for nearly a century. These particular vases, along with their relatively delicate style of painting, ushered in a new funerary scene par excellence, which highlighted the sorrow of the living and the merits of the deceased by focusing on personal moments of grief in the presence of a grave. Earlier Attic funerary imagery tended to focus on crowded prothesis scenes where mourners announced their grief and honored the dead through exaggerated, violent and frenzied gestures. The scenes on white-ground lêkythoi accomplished the same ends through new means, namely by focusing on individual mourners and the emotional ways that mourners privately nourished the deceased and their memory. Such scenes combine ritual activity (i.e. dedicating gifts, decorating the grave, pouring libations) with emotional expressions of sadness, which make them more vivid and relatable. The nuances in the characteristics of the mourners indicate a new interest in adding an individual touch to the expression, which might “speak” to a particular moment or variety of sadness that might relate to a potential consumer. To facilitate a meaningful discussion of the range of ways that white-ground painters articulated grief and lament in their vases, the dissertation is divided into six chapters, each of which concentrates on a particular type of mourner: women, men, elderly men, infants, vocal visitors and the deceased. Discussing the visual iconography across these different groups demonstrates that the shared and individual, public and private, intentional and candid aspects of grief and mourning can be shown simultaneously and that it was of interest to the Athenians to look at images that incorporated all of these aspects.