This work discusses change and continuities taking place in the transition from the Late Bronze to the Early Iron Ages in Greece. The geographical range will cover the eastern mainland (including Euboea), Naxos and Knossos, in a period starting from the final palatial culture of LH IIIB2/13th century and ending with the Proto-Geometric/10th century burial evidence. In order to collect and observe the archaeological evidence several tombs assemblages have been researched from both original reports and visits to relevant Greek museums. Finds have been tabulated, and continuities, innovations and losses have been identified. The major categories of material evidence analysed included pottery, metalwork and jewellery but also the form of the tombs and the manner of the burials were considered. The final analysis of these categories of evidence refutes theories of major and or abrupt change, whether caused by invasion or natural phenomena. It rather indicates social modifications following the loss of the palatial centres and their administration and culminating in their gradual replacement by new forms of social structure. Although not directly demonstrable from the existing evidence, a possible scenario is proposed to explain the frequent indications of influence from SE and Central Europe during this transition.

When an ancient Near Eastern city was besieged and looted the statues and cultic appurtenances of the gods were often confiscated by the conquerors. Their loss was more than a heavy blow to the defeated people: the statue was the god‘s representation on earth and watched over and protected the city so his abandonment of his city was thought to have a lasting devastating effect. From the point of view of the conqueror the statue could be used not only as a tool of intimidation but for bribery and a crude form of diplomacy and as propaganda for his might and glory. In this thesis the history of the phenomenon of godnap is explored for the first time and there is also an investigation of related problems in religion and cultural history. At the outset a detailed investigation of the numinous character of an ancient Mesopotamian statue is given including an account of the ritual that imbued it with this divine quality. Special attention is given to Marduk of Babylon and the episodes in which even he found himself the victim of theft. The thesis includes an excursus on evocatio and parallels between Hittite and ancient Roman practices are drawn.

This dissertation demonstrates that the presence of Latin basilissai, Catholic wives of the Byzantine despots of Morea, in Mystras between 1349, when the city became the seat of the Despotate, and 1460, when it was surrendered to the Turks, had an impact on the artistic and cultural production at court. These foreign women were agents of the ruling political and economic elites of Italian and Frankish courts, and expressed their agency by mediating their specific cultural and artistic traditions into the production of their adopted city. Art and cultural historical approaches, in which attention is focused on painted and sculpted details, inscriptions, archaeological remains, architectural design, and urban planning, are used to show that the Latin women were historical agents, whose presence can be detected in Mystras. A multidisciplinary analysis of case studies reveals cross-cultural motifs in the artistic production, demonstrating the relationship between pieces of evidence. The production of the workshops of Mystras expressed features that were, in some cases, responses to Constantinopolitan and Byzantine models, while, in others, autonomous and innovative, revealing complex cross-cultural references. Ultimately, this study shows that the particular cultural and artistic landscape of Mystras is indebted to exogenous cultures linked to these women.

This thesis surveys the ninth-century metallic threads decorating silks discovered at Famen temple in Shaanxi province, China. In this research, metallic threads decorating Famen silks have been studied and documented in detail in order to understand how they were produced and how they were applied. Samples of metallic threads were selected and optical microscope and SEM/EDS were used to determine their morphology and composition. Problems regarding the current terminology used to describe metallic threads are briefly considered, and a systematic renaming of different types of metallic threads is suggested. Analysis results show that most Famen metallic threads were made of gold strips without substrate wound around a fibrous core, and that very few are silver strips without substrate wound around a fibrous core. Silver strips with paper substrate wound around a fibrous core are found among Famen silks, providing very early examples of this type of metallic thread in the world. Technical evidence demonstrates that the Famen metallic strips were cut from hammered metallic foil. It was found that metallic threads of different metal composition with different physical characteristics were selected according to the decoration techniques used and the function of the silks. The use of metallic threads with different grades of evenness in dimension and morphology for different decoration techniques was also found. The gold contents of these gold threads are all very high, and the thicknesses of the gold strips are large. All these characteristics are probably related to the function of Famen silks as objects of Buddhist worship that had been donated to the temple by members of the Tang imperial family and other high-ranking people. Technical investigation into the manufacture of modern traditional Chinese metallic threads was carried out in this research. Combined with analysis of the morphological, structural, and material nature of Famen metallic threads, the key technical characteristics of modern traditional metallic threads were found, which provided important evidence for deducing the manufacturing techniques of Famen metallic threads. Successful reconstructive experiments that produced metallic threads similar to Famen metallic threads were carried out in the laboratory by the author. The use of other known related techniques to produce Famen metallic threads was eliminated on technical grounds. With the above evidence, the manufacturing of Famen metallic threads, especially how the metallic strips were wound around the fibrous core, are reasonably deduced here. By investigating a number of currently accessible Chinese historical metallic threads from other periods, the evolutionary principles of Chinese metallic threads are concluded. The special characteristics of Famen metallic threads, the reasons determining these characteristics are better understood, and their role in the development of Chinese metallic threads is assessed.

What is the line between the “ancient” world and the “medieval” world? Is it 476? 330? 632? 800? Most historians acknowledge there is no crisp line and that these are arbitrary distinctions, but they are made anyway, taking on lives of their own. I believe they are much the same world, except for the pervading influence of one flavor of monotheism or another. This thesis endeavors to study top-down, monotheistic conversions in Pontic-Caspian Eurasia and their respective mythologizations, preserved both textually and archaeologically, which serve as a primary factor for what we might call “state formation.” These narratives also function, in many cases, as the bases of many modern nationalisms, however haphazard they may be. I have attempted to apply this idea to Christian Rome (Byzantium)’s diachronic missionary policy around the Black Sea to reveal how what we today call the “Age of Migrations” (the so-called “Germanic” invasions of the Roman Empire), was actually in perpetual continuity all the way up to the Mongolian invasions and perhaps even later. In this way, I hope to enhance the context by which we understand the entirety of not only Western history, but to effectively bind it to a broader context of global monotheization.

In my doctoral dissertation I explore the key role played by the eighteenth-century enlightened narrative of civilisation in the shaping of a Eurocentric/racist construction of the world. I do this by analysing how, in sources from the realms of moral philosophy and natural history, the intertwining discourses of luxury, sensibility, taste and climate that fuelled the narrative of civilisation created an understanding of human nature that made eighteenth-century scientific racism possible. The entire non-European world (the East, Africa and America) was presented as a space inhabited by unnatural bodies. Although Europe itself was not characterised as monolithic, (these writers saw a clear boundary between Northern and Southern Europe), the joint efforts of both moral philosophers and natural historians clearly distinguished Europe and the European body from the rest of the world. The Eurocentric/racist eighteenth-century construction of the world was so powerful in naturalising the European human and national prototype as a universal normative standard that it even found agents in other continents who were willing to argue that they too belonged to the European civilisation. Even those whom Europeans explicitly cast as inhabiting spaces unfit for the unfolding of civilisation, and thus as spaces where the European human prototype inevitably degenerated, might insist that they too conformed to the European human and national prototype. The idea of Europe as the centre of the world would not have triumphed had agents outside Europe not participated in its making. This was the case of the New Granadan Creoles, the founding fathers of the Colombian nation, who far from questioning the Eurocentric racist/lens of civilisation whereby European savants had dismissed the non-European world as inferior, instead reinforced it.

This thesis examines the neglected architectural decoration from the late antique Mediterranean city (ca. 300-650 A.D.). It aims to address the omission in scholarly literature of any discussion about the decoration of non-monumental secular buildings, namely porticoes flanking streets, agorai, macella and ornamental plazas, small public baths, shops/workshops and ‘middle class’ houses. The decoration of non-monumental secular buildings has been overlooked at the expense of more lofty buildings and remains thus far one of the least known aspects of the late antique city. Considering that public porticoes and their associated structures (shops and workshops), along with small public baths and ‘middle class’ houses were crucial elements and accounted for the large part of any urban built environment starting from the Hellenistic period, the examination of their architectural decoration in this thesis represents the first attempt to redress this imbalance. Drawing upon an array of archaeological evidence, written sources, and depictions this thesis attempts to reconstruct how public porticoes, small public baths, shops/workshops, and ‘middle class’ houses might have looked on a daily basis. The geographical area entailed in this study presents more challenges than when focusing on a single site or province. Such a cross-regional approach of the topic allows to consider the decoration of public these structures as both as part of the history of individual cities and as part of Mediterranean-wide trends, guiding as such toward a more reliable visualisation of the late antique built environment. The picture conveyed in the Mediterranean cities is inevitably not the same. It is argued that as much as they shared similarities on the decoration of these structures, so did they also vary. The topic of this thesis is broad and definite answers cannot be given, nevertheless, it is hoped that a preliminary synthesis can be offered as a basis for future work.

No description available.

This thesis argues that henges, stone circles and ring cairns form a 'spectrum' of monuments with origins in the earlier Neolithic. In that context it is suggested that some of the structures located beneath long cairns were originally free standing foci. How the monuments might reflect contemporary society is discussed and it is shown that some standing stones might have been the focus for gatherings of people as large as those suggested for henges and stone circles. Evidence is presented showing that there appears to have been a continuity of traditions and world view from the Early Neolithic into the Late Neolithic and beyond. Similarly the distribution of later monuments appears to relate to Early Neolithic core areas which continued to be important and linked to 'status'. The relationship of the monuments to particular aspects of the environment is explored and it is shown that wetland environments, including floodplains, are a major feature in the location of the early foci. It is concluded that these would have been important resource areas in the Mesolithic as well as Early Neolithic with implications for our understanding of the Mesolithic -Neolithic transition.

This thesis represents the most detailed investigation into English royal funeral ceremonies 1570-1625 yet undertaken. It builds on earlier scholarship dealing with the French royal funeral and with the social history of death and burial in early modern England. When gathering my source material I consulted manuscript and early printed material at the British Library, the Bodleian Library, the Library of Westminster Abbey, the College of Arms and the Bibliothèque Nationale. My approach is to consider royal funeral rituals in terms of performance. I endeavour to place each of the royal funerals in its immediate performance and broader cultural context. The evidence is analysed using an approach which seeks to take account of both the political and affective implications of ritual. Preliminary chapters establish the form of the English heraldic funeral and the French royal funeral, and assess the impact of the English Reformation on funeral ritual. I go on to discuss the funerals of Mary Stuart, Elizabeth I, Prince Henry Stuart, Anne of Denmark and James I respectively. Included is a bridging chapter which briefly summarises the religious and cultural changes which took place under James I and their impact on funeral ritual. Royal funerals are seen as flexible rather than fixed. They were modified to meet changing political needs but such modifications were always in accord with broader cultural trends. My thesis demonstrates that royal funeral rituals were highly dependent on their performance and cultural contexts. The Epilogue looks at the implications my research has for readings of stage representations of funeral ritual and funeral symbolism in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama. I show that royal funerals formed an important aspect of playhouse audience experience. Dramatists exploited that experience to show the operative nature of funeral ritual performance and the potency of its symbols for political propaganda.