New publications were falling like Autumnal leaves this season!
Among the earliest leaves was Sam Agbamu who wrote on Classics and Italian colonialism from an outsider’s perspective in Italian Studies in Southern Africa. Agbamu also translated and contextualised 'Libya, The Arch of the Philaeni [deleted] - 1937’, a fascinating usage of Horace’s Carmen Saeculare (9-12), on Fascist Latin Texts. Mike Edwards (RHUL), Athanasios Efstathiou (Ionian), Ioanna Karamanou (Aristotle) & Eleni Volonaki (Independent) then published the edited volume ‘The Agōn in Classical Literature’ (Chicago Press) in honour Prof. Chris Carey. We would like to draw special attention to Edwards' contribution ‘The Agōn in Isaeus: A Laudatio for Chris Carey’. Edwards also reviewed Laurent Pernot’s (Institut de Grec) ‘L'Art de Sous-Entendu: Histoire-Theorie-Mode d'emploi’ in Rhetorica.
From later trees, come more leaves. The titans of archaeo-architecture Jari Pakkanen (RHUL), Ann Brysbaert (Leiden) and Irene Vikatou (Leiden) published the open-access edited volume, ‘Shaping Cultural Landscapes: Connecting Agriculture, Crafts, Construction, Transport, and Resilience Strategies’ (Sidestone Press). In particular, Pakkanen’s chapter, ‘Marble in the mountains’ built on last year’s publication, ‘Documenting Architectural Repairs with Photogrammetry’ on the Temple of Athena Alea at Tegea (Edizioni Quasar Rome).
Pakkanen was also recently interviewed by Yle (Finland’s BBC) about a well which was excavated in 2015 at Naxos, Sicily. The interview revolved around ‘astragalomanteia’ and the ritual ‘killing’ of pottery in 403 BC. Most importantly, it reflects a slew of new research on the site. For example, Pakkanen and Maria Costanza Lentini (Archaeological Park of Naxos Sicily) published ‘Crisis, Divination And ‘Killing’ Pottery’, as part of Gocha Tsetskhladze's 2022 Festschrift ‘Connecting the Ancient West and East’ (Peeters Publishers). Both were also central players in ‘Naxos di Sicilia: nuovi dati sulla città del V secolo a.C.’ (C. Ampolo (Ed.), La Città e le città della Sicilia antica) and formed a more-than-capable Triumvirite with Apostolos Sarris (Cyprus) in ‘Topographical Research and Geophysical Surveys at Naxos in Sicily 2012–2019’ (C. Prescott et al. (eds.), Trinacria, ‘an Island Outside Time’. International Archaeology in Sicily, Oxbow). Finally, on something completely different, Pakkanen published recent fieldwork conducted with Lazaros Kolonas (Independent) on the Shipsheds at Oiniadai, Greece. Just imagine Boris Rankov’s reconstructed Trireme setting sail from there – the Olympias in action!
In other news, one of our recent graduates (and now Classical Art & Archaeology MA new starter), Tana Randle, undertook an internship with the Mary Rose Trust. She has written a fantastic blog about XR (Extended Reality) and the Mary Rose, which is without doubt the next trend in archaeology and cultural heritage (just read this!). Inevitably, these innovations lead into new and exciting technologies like Augmented and Virtual Reality, and applications in gaming.
And just before the frosts of 2022’s Beast from the East set in, Erica Rowan finished her unbroken run of major publications. Rowan compared the rich and the hungry in the Roman world through the lens of social and cultural food poverty in the edited volume, ‘Poverty in Ancient Greece and Rome: Realities and Discourses’ (Routledge). Rowan also teamed up with Lisa Lodwick (All Souls, Oxford) to show that Archaeobotanical research is much more than wet buckets in the open-access, ‘Archaeobotanical Research in Classical Archaeology’ (Journal of the Archaeological Institute of America), before commenting on the final location of the miracle Silphion plant in National Geographic - Was it Cappadocia or Nero's tummy?
