History

In the early 15th through 13th centuries BC, the world of the Near East, from the Mediterranean to modern day Iran, was linked together in what historians today call the First International Age. Correspondence from that period found at El Amarna in Egypt and other sites in Mesopotamia and Anatolia details the diplomatic and economic exchanges between the “Great Powers” of the time (Babylon, Assyria, Mittani, Hatti, and Egypt), as well as letters from the Egyptian vassal kingdoms in the Levant, known as Canaan.
The complex diplomatic interchange and economic trade during this period was made possible because of the status of Canaan as a series of semi-autonomous vassal states under the Egyptian empire. Canaan acted as the economic center for the entire region, linking the goods and kingdoms of southwest Asia, Africa, and southeastern Europe into a singular trading system. As such, Canaan drew the kingdoms of the Near East into the close diplomatic and economic contact that defined the First International Age.
This paper explores the conditions within Canaan that allowed this system of exchange to flourish. My conclusions will show that because of a number of factors present in Canaan, the region was able to act as an international territory facilitating trade and political interaction between the Great Powers of the time.

Since its first performance in the spring of 414 BC, Aristophanes’ Birds has defied a full explanation from any commentary, either modern or ancient. Whereas his previous plays (Acharnians, Babylonians, Knights, Clouds, Wasps, and Peace) clearly target specific politicians, policies, or aspects of the Athenian polis, Birds focuses on none of these in particular. In comparison with these earlier plays, and even later ones, Birds is almost a pure fantasy where the story and setting take precedence over traditional aspects of Athenian drama; there is no break in the illusion, and even in the parabasis and choral odes, the chorus retains its identity as the birds within the play, and there is never an aside where the dramatic setting is broken. What are we to make of this play?
This paper will examine various interpretations of Birds by both modern and ancient commentators, in an attempt to give an overall view of the variety of ways in which the play has been interpreted over the years. These commentaries and interpretations will be analyzed in comparison with the original text of Birds and with each other, in order to present a synthesized view of the text. My conclusion will show a commonality between the differing interpretations, and from this commonality I will offer an interpretation of the text dealing with the growing number and power of demagogues within the city of Athens.

In slave societies, slaves form a fundamental, if not the fundamental, unit of labor.  In slave societies such as the American South and ancient Rome, slaves engaged in a wide range of economic activity, from serving as labor on massive agricultural plantations, to serving as workers in manufacturing, to personal body-slaves.  As such, the study and examination of slavery and institutions of slavery has focused on slavery as primarily an economic institution, and the keeping of slaves as economic activity.
In this paper, I propose a different analysis.  Rather than examining slavery as an institution brought about and propagated by economic factors, I will argue that slavery in the ancient Roman world was primarily a social and cultural institution.  I will argue that while slavery had its economic advantages, it likewise had economic disadvantages when compared to an alternate system of labor, namely wage-laborers.  It is my contention that in the Roman Empire, slavery existed as a social institution, one that was driven by factors of culture, society, and politics, rather than economics. 
To this end, I will examine the existence of the alternatives to slavery in the ancient world and compare these systems against systems of slavery present in the Roman Republic and Empire, and the American South.  Economic analysis and comparison of slave society in the American South and ancient Rome will be primarily based on statistical and archaeological evidence and models derived from both time periods.

Tacitus, in his various works, presents several examples of what can be termed “ethnographies”, works whose purpose is to inform the reader of the various customs and living conditions of groups that are otherwise foreign to the reader.  Tacitus’ Germania serves as ethnography on the various Germanic peoples.  Agricola, while ostensibly a panegyric on his father-in-law, Gnaeus Julius Agricola, also contains ethnography on the various peoples of ancient Britain.  However, in each of these cases Tacitus presents the culture, practices, and institutions of various ethnic groups in such a way so as to demonstrate and thereby prove a political or moral point.  Ethnography in Tacitus is thus not a study or presentation of ethnic groups, but a subversion of a classical historical style and methodology by Tacitus to present “case-studies”, real world examples of the political and moral argument that Tacitus is attempting to make throughout all of his works.
This paper will examine the historiographical background of Tacitus by examining how classical authors prior to Tacitus presented and utilized the issue of ethnicity in their own writing and how these techniques and models are reflected in the works of Tacitus.  This paper will then examine how Tacitus uses these models in his presentation of various ethnic groups in order to highlight his own specific political or moral arguments regarding Rome and Roman culture.  Finally, this paper will present explanations as to why Tacitus either chose or felt it necessary to disguise his moral and political statements as ethnographies.

In the ancient world, with its lack of a strong central state, the absence of an ideology of nationalism, the lack of any type of nation-state, international relations were essentially based on personal relationships of reciprocity between two specific persons of differing cultural and ideological background. The imposition of imperialism and an imperial system of governance created a new system of dependencies and a new hierarchy of players tied to yet different from dependencies and hierarchies present on the "domestic" level within the society itself. The players within an imperial system were thus forced to reconfigure and reinterpret their position; the end result was a type of "dual identity", an identity and position at the imperial level that was simultaneously different and independent from the role played domestically, yet still tied to the player's domestic role and dependencies. The end result was the codependency of the imperial and local elite in validating each other's positions of authority.

 Explanatory and Interactive  Interpreting and establishing lines of communication, interaction with reality ○ J. Rüpke, From Jupiter to Christ. Oxford: Oxford University Press (2014), pg. 171, 175.  Primarily pragmatic, external  External offering and exchange in order to gain rewards, avoid punishments (Religio) ○ Pax Deorum: Peaceful co-existence with gods.

It is the purpose of this chapter to combine two fields of inquiry that have approached pre-Roman Gaul from distinctly different angles: ancient religion and the development of pre-Roman Gallic societies. Archaeologists have traditionally examined the development of Gallic communities through the developmental complexity of Gallic settlements. In these cases, complexity is quantified through a process that compares these pre-Roman Gallic sites with Mediterranean urban centers, noting the growth of the sites as reflective of a more complex social structure due to contact and influences from Mediterranean societies. Instead, this article will focus on recent scholarship on the nature of cult communities and orthopraxy in the context of polytheistic societies, and the implication that this approach has in analyzing the results of orthopraxic rituals in the archaeological record, specifically the deposition of goods and votive offerings in watery sites and streams. In doing so, this chapter will argue that Gallic communities developed first as cult communities tied through ritual to certain sites within Gaul, and that it was this common underlying cultic membership and cultic connection with specific topoi that defined Gallic identity. Ritual water depositions thus emerge as the first connection between individual, community, and place, serving to delineate the boundaries between differing communities beyond the standard central-place model common within the Mediterranean world.

The sole extant primary source on the Persian invasion of Greece, Herodotus, cites over 50 oracles from the Delphic seer in his work, which at one time comprised more than a quarter of all extant oracles from Delphi.  This article seeks to present Herodotus as an inadvertent apologist for the Delphic Oracle in the years after the Persian invasion of 480 BC, due to the necessities of Herodotus’ work in the creation of a new genre of analytical and narrative writing.  Herodotus’ work also gives us insight into the role that Delphi played in ancient Greece, and how it presented itself to the Greek world as a whole.

As today, dogs played a central role in society during Roman times.  Much has been commented about their role as companions, guardians and hunters.  This interdisciplinary paper seeks to examine a darker and less talked about subject, dogs as objects of sacrifice in purification rituals, and the subsequent emergence of canine iconography in association with items of purification.  By reviewing historical texts and material culture from around the Mediterranean world, it becomes clear that dogs played a significant role in medicinal healing rituals for several different cultures.  The physical sacrifice of canines coupled with the abstract use of canine iconography allows for an analysis of the otherwise abstract concept of purity, and how that abstract state of ritual purity might be achieved through interaction with the physical world.  This paper will then close with suggestions as to how this data can relate to the greater interpretation of the Roman provincial world and the broad interpretation of such concepts as purity and purification, as well as the nature of and how dogs fit within these liminal zones.

In the early 15 th through 13 th centuries BCE, the world of the Near East, from the Mediterranean to modern day Iran, was linked together in what historians today call the First International Age. Correspondence from that period found at El Amarna in Egypt and other sites in Mesopotamia and Anatolia details the diplomatic and economic exchanges between the "Great Powers" of the time (Babylon, Assyria, Mittani, Hatti, and Egypt), and contains letters from the Egyptian vassal kingdoms in the Levant, known as Canaan. The complex diplomatic interchanges and active economic trade during this period were possible because of the status of Canaan as a series of semi-autonomous vassal states under the Egyptian empire. Canaan acted as the economic center for the entire region, linking the goods and kingdoms of southwest Asia, Africa, and southeastern Europe into a single trading system. Though under the nominal control of Egypt, Canaan served as neutral territory for all the powers, enabling complex political and diplomatic interchange throughout the region. This paper explores the conditions within Canaan that allowed this system of exchange to flourish, and will show that a number of military, political, and cultural factors in Canaan, which were cultivated by the Egyptians, allowed the region to act as an international territory facilitating trade and political interaction between the Great Powers.

Perhaps the most striking, and archaeologically speaking the most evident, change that occurred in Gallia Comata from the 1st century BCE to the end of the 2nd century CE was the incorporation of massive, monumental, Roman-style architecture. Many of these monuments still stand to this day, providing an obvious, visual argument for the impact that Roman culture had on Gallic society. Overall, the incorporation of Roman architecture and monuments, paid for and dedicated by members of the local elite, seems to indicate a clear cultural shift in Gallic society and the adoption of Roman conceptions of urbanism and the role of the urban aristocracy in providing munera for the populace. This paper will examine the remains of monumental structures in the Gallic civitas-capitals, examining the initial stages of monumentalization. While early structures advertised the connection between the community as a whole with the Imperial power structure, the construction of amphitheaters in particula...

Beginning with the concept of orthopraxis, this presentation will focus on cult practice and ritual as a communal activity, defining the make-up and participants of communities from imperial, provincial, tribal, municipal, and local levels through participation in cult and interaction with conceptions of the divine. Cult and communal ritual associated with cult served to define the boundaries and contours of communities, and clearly identify, through orthopraxic activities, those to be credited as either insiders or outsiders. In doing so, this chapter will argue that Gallic communities developed first as cult communities tied through ritual to certain sites within Gaul, and that it was this common underlying cultic membership and cultic connection with specific topoi that defined Gallic identity. The subsequent development of Gallo-Roman religion was not the development of a new religious belief system, or even the syncretism of Roman and Gallic religious customs, but rather a new system of political/religious order that incorporated a new community of religious actors and a new system of political authority.